Samantha Tetangco
Description
Don’t let the subtitle fool you, or the section and poem titles alluding to still life, landscape, photography, studies in color, all suggesting that
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this book somehow is about art, providing the metaphor in the title, of “blending in” in the sense of colors combining to make something new and whole out of initial difference. But this is America, where for all of the melting pot myth we know that colors do not blend easily, and perhaps now even less so gender identity; and in her powerful debut collection Samantha Tetangco writes from the perspective of a “queer person of color” where the hope of her title is hope of survival, “for the promise / of home” despite knowing that like an invasive plant species, “certain visitors are not welcome here.” She surveys a landscape of violence, the reality of “bullets, bullets” everywhere, employing another metaphor, our national symbol of an eagle that “was not real, but they killed it nonetheless” to express her anguish: “I pulled its dead body onto my lap. Tell me: / what should I do with it now? / It is heavy. My arms are tired. / If I put it down, who will pick it up?” The real hope here is found in that question, in caring enough to remain committed to the promise of wholeness. Her closing line is the exhortation “Repeat the words: Don’t forget, don’t forget.” Don’t forget, that is, to live, which in the end is the art that this book truly is about.
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