"How to Triumph Like a Girl" is the opening poem from Ada Limón's 2015 book Bright Dead Things. The poem is a celebration of female triumph as the speaker finds kinship between her body and the wild, animal power of racehorses. In the years leading up to Bright Dead Things, Limón left a New York City marketing career to write full-time and moved to Kentucky for her husband Lucas's work in the horse racing industry. The book abounds with images of horses and the natural world as Limón dealt with homesickness, familial loss, geographical distances, and her evolving relationships. "How to Triumph Like a Girl" is conversational in language, free verse in form, and yet striking in its assertion of unbound female power and grace. It is a defiant counterpart to many of her other well-known poems, which are darker in tone and deal with political resilience or overcoming loss.
Ada Limón won a Pushcart Prize (Best of the Small Presses) for "How to Triumph Like a Girl," one of the highest honors bestowed on single poems. Bright Dead Things, in turn, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award, among other accolades.
In 2022 Ada Limón became Poet Laureate of the United States. She grew up in Sonoma, California, is of Mexican-American descent, and lives in Lexington, Kentucky as a full-time writer.
