Reflecting on the process of creating literature out of personal testimony and drawing on her own experience of political oppression and escaping persecution, Carmen Bugan explores the relationship between language and freedom. Bugan has written a deeply personal account of her travels across the languages of poetry and oppression. These two languages, she argues with admirable clarity, are not isolated from one another; they are often co-present, compelling us to come to terms with the fragility of poetry. Bugan's own poems scattered across the pages are a gift, as are her reflections on Whitman, Mandelstam, Milosz, Wole Soyinka, and so many others.