The Beauty of the Busted Fruit By Natalie Diaz (Grades 7-9)

Natalie Diaz was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is the author of the poetry collections Postcolonial Love Poem (2020), When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012), and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She explores with visceral language and poetic sense, the tensions of wanting, the inability to have, as well as the insatiable hunger that has festered within her. It is that hunger that festers in the heart “The Beauty of a Busted Fruit” that manifests in a beautiful reconciliation of trauma, healing that leaves behind the wounds, and the miracle of beauty that stains the lips an overwhelming red.