Amyra León is a Harlem-born author, poet, musician, playwright, and director whose autobiographical work moves among page, stage, screen, and song. Her writing returns to foster care, Black liberation, generational trauma, communal healing, and the freedom to imagine beyond imposed limits.
In this free-verse work, Amyra León reflects on childhood in Harlem and the forces that shaped her life. The poems move through foster care, grief, music, Blackness, womanhood, self-love, and resilience without separating private experience from social injustice. León asks young readers to imagine lives beyond circumstances and limits imposed on them while recognizing that the freedom to dream is not equally available to everyone. The result is both a personal journey and an invitation to speak out.
Print · Penguin · 2020-10-13 · English ISBN 9780593095195
Print · Turtleback Books · 2020-10-13 · English ISBN 9781663631220
More About Amyra León
Amyra León is a Harlem-native author, poet, musician, playwright, and director whose work crosses genre while remaining rooted in autobiography. She frames that practice around generational trauma, Black liberation, and communal healing, using art to examine both the violence and the wonder held in personal and collective history.
In the PBS documentary Strange Grace, León describes words, breath, and silence as central to her process and improvisation as the place where she feels most free. The film follows her as she develops music and theater from histories of Black womanhood, personal trauma, and collective survival, showing how writing, performance, and conversation feed one another.
Concrete Kids brings that practice into a free-verse memoir of childhood in foster care and Harlem. León says she wrote it for the child she had been and for young people and educators navigating lives shaped by violence, poverty, family separation, and resilience. Kirkus reads the collection as a heart-rending account of loss, belonging, community, and the difficult work of imagining freedom.
