* Meena Alexander was compiling this book during the last year and last months of her life.
* The poems on the life of Sarra Copia Sulam are accompanied by Alexander's own original artwork.
* Meena Alexander is an important writer in the disciplines of contemporary poetry, Women's and Gender Studies, Asian American literature and studies in globalism, migration and immigration as well trauma studies.
* In the sequence "Grandmother's Garden" Alexander returns to the subjects of her groundbreaking memoir Fault Lines, which dealt with displacement and sexual trauma.