Books

In JAW, America pulls a splinter out of a child’s hand, a man hides beneath a body to avoid Japanese soldiers, and God eats spam, white rice, and a fried egg. Giving us an inside look into microaggressions in America, these poems present American and Filipino cultures side by side as they grapple with immigration, identity, and family. This book invites us into the most vulnerable moments of a life, such as a grandfather decomposing in a coffin across from a little boy’s bedroom. To read this collection is to wade through the complexities of place, identity, and the Filipino immigrant experience.

"In order to speak, to loosen his lyrical jaw in this marvelous debut, Abonado invokes a mandibular menagerie to say what the human family might otherwise leave unsaid. This is a totemic book, animal guides appearing when needed in the most ordinary spaces touched by trauma and the surreal, the DNA of our post-racial legacies rearranged to accommodate what is both funny and uncanny to the bone."
—Timothy Liu

“Jaw marks the impressive debut of a poet who doesn’t duck complexity, but speaks in a life-affirming voice we need to hear.”
—Stan Rubin

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