My Mother’s Transvestites by Tiff Holland

In “My Mother’s Transvestites,” Tiff Holland takes a head-on look at issues of gender expression, starting with “Hot Work,” a poem that lovingly recalls the men who came to her mother for discreet help with unfamiliar wigs and makeup, and concluding with “The Last Dress,” where Holland expresses the uncomfortable realization that she eschewed jewelry because “all adornment was drag.” Drag becomes a touchstone in this book. Once I walked along a mountain path, and there were places so narrow that ropes had been strung for hikers to hold on to. Drag is like that rope for poems that peer down into gaping depths. It’s a lifeline through these deeply personal poems, and together, they offer a peak reading experience.

–Karen Craigo, author of Passing Through Humansville (Sundress, 2018) and No More Milk (Sundress, 2016)

At this moment in time when it seems everything is telling us to move more quickly, the poems in Tiff Holland’s collection somehow slow the world down and navigate the space between what can’t be said and what must be; they are both the eclipse and the box designed to view it. Rarely does a book so perfectly capture the past, the present, and the future, but somehow Holland’s poems accomplish this feat with both precision and beauty. This is truly a stunning debut from a remarkable poet.
–Adam Clay

Tiff Holland’s My Mother’s Transvestites is a salon where patrons can request any service without shame; where they are enhanced with empathy for the roughly used, and worlds of tension and heartache become the elegance of exact language. These honorable poems live among the everyday in service of difficult truth and the barely caught nuance of absolute beauty.

–Angela Ball