When Can We Be Soft?: Poems of Female Resilience (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781961045019)

In this debut poetry collection, Bobbie Isabel explores the pressure women face to constantly be strong, and the exploitation they endure when the world will not let them be soft. Employing a combination of free verse and more traditional forms, Bobbie expresses the female perspective of strength and resilience through pain, trauma, and ultimately hope. Within poetic expression, she has found her voice, as the poem "Keeping Silent" says, that speaks for the little girl she was, that comforts her tormented adolescent self, and that fortifies the broken woman she has been with boundaries of empathy and compassion for who she was at each stage and what she lived, understanding that her tears were not silent but rather screams of injustice.

This collection of poetry comes from a place of pain; even the poems of hope grew from those ashes. Therefore, there will be subjects some will find difficult to read.