Ask the Brindled: Poems

Ask the Brindled is a powerful intergenerational reclamation of narratives foisted upon Indigenous and queer Hawaiians, written by No‘u Revilla. It combines history of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi with contemporary experiences of queer love and grief, aiming for sovereignty and condemning colonization. It is a testament to queer Indigenous women and a vow to those yet to come.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 88 pages
Publication date: 22 September 2022
Publisher: Milkweed Editions

In her debut collection, No‘u Revilla crafts a lyric landscape brimming with shed skin, water, mo‘o, and ma‘i. She grips language like a fistful of wet guts and inks the page red—for desire, for love, for generations of blood spilled by colonizers. She hides knives in her hair "the way my grandmother—not god— / the way my grandmother intended," and we heed; before her, "we stunned insects dangle." Wedding the history of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi with contemporary experiences of queer love and queer grief, Revilla writes toward sovereignty: linguistic, erotic, civic. Through the medium of formal dynamism and the material of ʻŌiwi culture and mythos, this living decolonial text both condemns and creates.

Ask the Brindled is a song from the shattered throat that refuses to be silenced. It is a testament to queer Indigenous women who carry baskets of names and stories, "still sacred." It is a vow to those yet to come: "the sea of enough is our daughters / our daughters need to believe they are enough."

Dimension: 215 x 139 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781639550005