Ask the Brindled by No'u Revilla

OVERVIEW

In this debut collection, No‘u Revilla crafts a lyric landscape brimming with shed skin, water, mo‘o, 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 ea of enough is our daughters / our daughters need to believe they are enough.”

PRODUCT INFO

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Milkweed Editions (August 9, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 104 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1639550003
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1639550005
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.3 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.25 x 9 inches