Jaswinder Bolina’s insightful, raw and honest collection of brilliant essays illuminate the joys and pains of being a specific person Of Color and through his unique lens we also come to understand the universal ongoing story of America.
— Wajahat Ali
(A) powerful and wise collection of essays, one that will make reverberations into how we look at this country in the future.
— Cathy Park Hong
Of Color would be an excellent collection any year, but it feels particularly necessary in 2020. Educators will find the essays perfect for the classroom. Scholars will draw from Bolina’s insight in their own work on race and identity construction. But what sets Of Color apart, for me, is that these essays are just as vital to the common reader. They humanize conversations about race and exemplify how to navigate these conversations without minimizing difference.
— Ronnie K. Stephens, Hippocampus Magazine
(M)oves from the polemic to the personal with the candidness and flair of a rollicking dinner conversation.
— Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Maybe it’s because Bolina’s humility has proved so difficult to conjure in my own life that I see it so clearly here, why I’m marveling, as if watching a magician at work. Bolina waves a comma like a wand and the positive space recedes, the negative space rises to the surface, the play of words proffering a sense of relief.
— Sarah Haas, The Rumpus
Lyrically intelligent, exceptionally alert… A crucial addition to the growing canon of works about race in contemporary America.
— Sarah Manguso
Eminently readable… entrusts us with an honest conversation that we all should be having with each other.
— Ploughshares
(T)hese companionable essays squeeze one’s arm with the firm, fraternal pressure of a trustworthy adviser.
— Ron Slate, On the Sea Wall
A book of colorful depths, Of Color will treat those wishing to unbind themselves of surface identity politics. They deserve attending to Bolina’s book. Feast on it, take his poetry for dessert…
— Sherif Abdelkarim, Green Linden Press
