The Four Ugliest Children in Christendom

Poetry. Women's Studies. In this strange, bold collection of poems, four "ugly" children are plucked from their homelands and cast in a makeshift family to be studied by anthropologists as they navigate toward adulthood and, against all odds, toward self-worth. At once achingly invisible in all the ways they wish to be seen and terrifyingly visible in all the ways they'd wish to disappear, THE FOUR UGLIEST CHILDREN IN CHRISTENDOM are ghosts we cannot look away from. While others recoil from the children's "lumpy shadows" and "laddered bones," their "throats full of whistles," Camille-Yvette Welsch's sharp, unwavering eye requires that we look, while challenging our judgments about appearance and acceptance on every page. Nothing is more true than ugly, these poems say. Voyeuristic yet sensitive, this book unravels a story of awakening, how a group of outsiders can cling to each other like interlocking gears and how they can break free.