ten-cent flower & other territories explores what is lost in lineage, translation, transaction, and seeks reclamation through mapping. Through etymologies of place names and monuments and godheads to navigating complex geographies of mother/daughter, lover/other, colonizer/colonized; from ledger of transgressions to passage through birth canal, with quiet defiances against autocorrect, capitalization. It is a collection of constellation, origin story, futures, says author Charity E. Yoro about her debut poetry collection.
ADVANCE PRAISE
"Charity Yoro's poems astonish-carefully wrought yet equally wild. Navigating the tensions between beauty, commodity and place, they perform a richly textured quick-step that is bold, sly, funny, tender, fierce. But it is Yoro's dexterity and inventiveness with form that allows her work to be both
a brilliant means as well as an outcome of exploration into personal and cultural trauma; expressed anger and restraint; loss and reclamation; the experience of time; aesthetics as a political act; invisibility and strength. These poems move in surprising ways, guided by an intelligence that is adept at making thinking a deeply emotional and sensuous act." -Michele Glazer
"Charity E. Yoro's ten-cent flower & other territories sets the notion of Hawai'i as a 'taste of paradise' alongside the acknowledgment that this homeland is 'a museum of pretty / stolen things.' In this collection that is at once searing and tender, Yoro reckons with the effects of conquest and tourism on the islands, writing of and through erasure, interruption, and displacement. This question of legacies-what painful histories and what gifts the coming generations will inherit from us-is at the heart of ten-cent flower & other territories. Through poems that range in form from haiku to crosswords to abecedarian primers, Yoro asks us to consider the urgency of language: what words will offer those who come after us, and will these words tell the truth of our histories, in all their terrors and delights?" -Jennifer Perrine
"In this astonishing achievement of a book, Charity Yoro expands the artistic repertoire of poetry with refreshing self-awareness, technical dexterity, and grace. Whether working in inherited forms, found forms, or invented ones, Yoro's writing is marked by a singularity of voice and vision. She is clearly a rising star in the contemporary literary landscape." -Kristina Marie Darling