"...at the Island of Lost Luggage, they line up: the disappeared, the lost children, the Earharts of modern life. It's your bad luck to die in the cold wars of certain nations. But in the line at Unclaimed Baggage, no one mourns for the sorry world that sent them here..."

The abused. The oppressed. The terrified victims of institutionalized insanity. Making daring connections between the personal and the political, Janet McAdams draws new lines in the conflict between the new and old worlds as she redefines the struggle to remain human. This award-winning collection of poetry forges surprising links among seemingly unrelated forms of violence and resistance in today's world: war in Central America, abuses against Nature, the battleground of the bedroom. McAdams evokes the absurdity of everyday existence as she sends out a new call for social responsibility.

The Island of Lost Luggage is the poetry winner of the 1999 First Book Awards competition of the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.