Acosta's work insists on a critical understanding of Chicana/o cultural practices and political ideals. She emphasizes the limitations of an at times too narrow nationalism and also strives to develop new strategies to express an emancipatory poetics. Nile and Other Poems does not participate in the mythology of identity, nor does it seek the instauration of authenticity. Rather, these poems bring into focus the contradictions of Chicana/o cultural politics and at the same time rethink the lasting legacies of movement poetry.—"Afterword" by Sheila Marie Contreras in Nile and Other Poems