For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons illustrates the struggle of leaving, finding, and trusting good places. Drawing from the Ramayana epic and Biblical accounts, the poems candidly explore the complex dynamics of belonging and faith as a daughter and mother where walking often resembles seeking, changing, and returning.

"In this spectacular debut, notions of what it means to be beautiful-both inside and out-get complicated with a refreshing vulnerability. Komal Mathew makes captivating poems bubbling over with uncommon wisdom and grace." —Aimee Nezhukumatathil

"In For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons, Komal Mathew presents us with a speaker obsessed not just with leaving home, but with being welcomed upon return: 'The first time I heard / the story of the prodigal son, / I was in college and always jealous.' The poems in this collection are filled with questions about the journey: How can a woman be certain of her safety in such a dangerous world? Is it possible to return to open arms? 'Who could / trust the future with a past like that?' In this stunning book, Mathew lists the dangers that await us in the open world, and she shows us why it's still worth exploring." —Paige Lewis

"In a gorgeous debut collection, Komal Mathew's poems yield a faith of transparency and yearning, a lyric pulse arisen from the longing of our souls to be clothed with eternity, our heavenly home: 'Though my love for you didn't end / because the singing ended, the lullaby / moved to a wind that promised a nest…' This lovely book is a festival of light infused with love, bejeweled by the elemental truths in this earthbound life of family, motherhood, and human desire: 'Blessed be the one who hears you cry out / like a million pressed stones - / jasper, turquoise, emerald with gold - / and uncovers your breath of bees.'" —Karen An-hwei Lee

Komal Mathew is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Diode Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Narrative, The New Republic, and others. Her debut collection of poems, For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons, won the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. She lives with her family in Smyrna, Georgia, where she is working on a middle-grade novel in verse.