Suzi F. Garcia’s Dorothy is blown apart by gale forces and put together again in a deconstruction of girlhood—and its Hollywood irrealities—that strikes at the very heart of fantasy, faith, and survival. These poems are electric, bursting forth like images on the silver screen: magical, sensual, and powerful.

In A Homegrown Fairy Tale, Garcia reimagines the Wizard of Oz and Dorothy’s story as a queer love story where fantasy, sensuality, and magic inform the voices of the poems. One series of epistolary poems in the chapbook entitled “Dear Dorothy” imagines a queer lover speaking to Dorothy about her experiences, imploring Dorothy to see the elemental magic in her being. Garcia’s work evokes accepting one’s power in the fables and fairytales that shape us.

Garcia offers a benediction to the brokenhearted: may you recognize yourself as your own best company; may you someday see the love you once worshipped in a new light.