Difficult Fruit names and claims the fruits of a passage into womanhood. This is a journey which includes coming to terms with sexual violence and loss, celebrating love and connection, and bearing witness to the world that shaped that journey. These poems are urgent as the most sincere prayers, full of vulnerability, doubt, conviction and hope. With the authority of a poet who has reflected deeply on her experience, and shaped technical giftedness into accomplished craft, Lauren K. Alleyne's poems affirm again and again the capacity of poetry to discover beauty in the midst of human duress.