Wolf Woman & Other Poems by Jo-Ann Vega is a poetry collection in which the author recounts the challenges and difficulties she faced. This collection covers everything she experienced, from leaving her native country and coming to America to finishing her education amidst warlike conditions to coming to terms with herself and speaking her truth. It shows the challenging journey of the author as an independent woman with perspective and as being gay. Three parts make up the collection, with different timelines of her life accounted for in each.

Jo-Ann Vega has done an incredible job of portraying her emotions through poetry. One can effortlessly feel the anguish, pain, and sorrow in each poem. Considering that this collection was forty years' work, each poem is well written and relatable. She has done a fantastic job portraying the grief of losing someone we love dearly and how that loss can affect someone. Some poems were difficult to understand. Knowing the full extent of the author's suffering or the challenges would have been a plus. For me, the poems lacked the angst required when someone who had been silent for a long time decided to express themselves. But, despite any shortcomings, Wolf Woman & Other Poems is a perfect blend of love, loss, grief, and moving on. If you liked the book "The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo, you will love this book of poetry.

Wolf Woman and Other Poems by Jo-Ann Vega is a collection of poems that details the personal experiences of Vega and her family, living as immigrants in America. Vega was different from what her culture expected of a young woman. Instead of marrying and having children, Vega never yearned for that. She was an outspoken and dissenting woman who had to learn to become comfortable with who she was. In addition to the typical teenage pressures, she also had to face the expectation imposed on women by her culture and society. As the odd one out, Vega details the journey to finding herself and how death changed the people around her and inadvertently changed her perception of life. Deaths and relationship losses that affected her personally and deeply all figure strongly in these poems, as she carves her way, independent of expected norms.

Wolf Woman and Other Poems by Jo-Ann Vega is a beautifully written coming-of-age collection of brilliantly bold and emotionally resonant poems. It’s the story of how one woman who was always alone and considered strange became independent, confident, and knowing. In one of the poems, she speaks of traveling during bad weather and how foolish she was not to heed the warnings. Still, after arriving home, she felt proud because she “had braved the unknown." This signifies a start in her journey of self-discovery and the risks she would continue to take. The more difficulties she conquers, the more she moves closer to her destiny of becoming a Wolf Woman. I think every woman will see parts of herself in Vega’s poems. I could relate to the bold steps Vega took and women must often take to live up to their full potential to become powerful in their own right, powerful beyond measure.

Celebrating a lifetime of creation and perpetual growth, Wolf Woman & Other Poems...is a poetic memoir that hums with ongoing curiosity...powerful and deeply personal pieces throughout this well-curated collection.

Jo-Ann Vega's latest anthology, Wolf Woman, presents a moving testament to her gift for illuminating and confronting human emotions in their simplest form...goes forward courageously and writes with such intensity and honesty...the wolf woman of Vega's dreams is granting her 'freedom, r=creativity, and connection' as she emerges as a writer with great stories and talent to share with others.

https://www.storycircle.org/book_review/wolf-woman-and-other-poems