Wishbones - Elena Montes

Wishbones is a hybrid memoir-in-verse that blends poetry, prose, and photography to explore what it means to grow up Costa Rican-American between two cultures, two languages, and two versions of home. In this intimate coming-of-age collection, Elena Montes reconstructs a childhood shaped by family separation, sibling loss, and her father's struggle with alcoholism. 

Structured through a nonlinear, memoir-driven form, the book traces her journey from adolescence into adulthood as she grapples with identity, love, friendship, and the complicated inheritance of culture from an immigrant parent. When language itself begins to slip away, what remains? Montes examines the experience of losing fluency in Spanish while trying to preserve a connection to the father and heritage tied to it. 

Blending lyrical poetry with candid prose and striking photographs, Wishbones captures both the dramatic ruptures and the quiet, formative moments that shape belonging. Throughout the collection, Montes navigates the tension between family loyalty and self-preservation, connection and distance, asking: how do we reclaim a culture tied to complicated love? How do we rebuild memory when the past resists coherence? 

Tender, unflinching, and formally inventive, Wishbones will resonate with readers of hybrid memoir, Latinx literature, and coming-of-age narratives exploring addiction, grief, identity, and the enduring search for home. 

The final poem in the collection received the Andrea K. Wilson Award for Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.