Driving Without a License

* Winner of the 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize* Winner of the 2018 Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Award * Honorable Mention, 2018 Shiela Margaret Motton Book Prize (New England Poetry Club)* 2018 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist* 2017 Oklahoma Book Award Finalist* 2016 Julie Suk Award Finalist* Profiled in The Los Angeles Times
The best way to hide is in plain sight. In this politically-charged and candid debut, we follow the chronicles of an undocumented immigrant speaker from the Philippines over a twenty-year span as she grows up in the foreign and forbidding landscape of America.
"It stands far apart from most first books, and from most books of autobiographical or narrative poetry, for the unpredictable vigor in its rhythmically irregular lines, especially in its depictions of youthful adventures." -- Stephanie Burt, The Los Angeles Times
"Through her variety of lines, of old and new forms, and of voices adopted and inhabited, Joseph, herself Filipina-American, does justice to the raw emotions around immigration with verve." -- Publishers Weekly
"As she guides us through constant fearfulness...and unimaginable hurt...Joseph blends everyday anxieties with deeper ones, avoiding outright reportage for smarter inflection. The tensions of visiting the immigration lawyer's office, for instance, are seen in the mad drive away. VERDICT: A gifted writer's view on an all-American issue." -- Barbara Hoffert, Library JournalFrom "Ivan, Always Hiding":

I strained for the socket
as you pulled me,
bare legs against your legs

in the windowless dark. The room,
snuffed out,

could have been no
larger than a freight car,
no smaller than a box van;

we couldn't tell anymore, the glints
in the shellacked floor, too,

were dulled. This is like death, you said,
always joking. I slid my head
into the crook of your neck,

and didn't disagree.

JANINE JOSEPH was born in the Philippines. Her writing has appeared widely, including in The Atlantic, World Literature Today, The Poem's Country: Place & Poetic Practice, Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, Zócalo Public Square, The Journal, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. Her poems and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, Zocalo Public Square, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. A librettist, her commissioned work for the Houston Grand Opera/HGOco include What Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline, "On This Muddy Water": Voices from the Houston Ship Channel, and From My Mother's Mother. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Houston and an MFA from New York University. Janine is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University.