From Marcy to the Ivy: Verses of Ascent - Paperback

by Darling Jimenez (Author), Brent Casey Cavin (Editor), Ashleigh Joyce Cavin (Illustrator)

From Marcy to the Ivy: Verses of Ascent is a poetry collection about migration, memory, ambition, and the complicated cost of becoming.

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Brooklyn's Marcy Projects, Darling Jimenez traces a life shaped by family, language, poverty, culture, and the relentless desire to reach beyond the circumstances she inherited. From stories of Trujillo and Villa Mella to bodegas, food stamps, subway rides, classrooms, and Ivy League halls, these poems move between the worlds that formed her-and the distance that sometimes grew between them.

At its heart, this is not simply a story of "making it out." It is a meditation on what we carry with us when we leave, what success cannot erase, and what it means to return to your roots after learning to see them differently.

Tender, unflinching, and deeply rooted in Dominican and Brooklyn culture, From Marcy to the Ivy explores race, colorism, belonging, class, family sacrifice, cultural inheritance, and the tension between assimilation and preservation.

It is a collection for anyone who has ever crossed into a new world and wondered how much of themselves they were expected to leave behind.