From the intersection of Onondaga, Japanese, Cuban, and Appalachian cultures, BenjamÃ­n Naka-Hasebe Kingsley's newest collection arrives brimming with personal and political histories. "'You tell me how I was born what I am,'" demands Naka-Hasebe Kingsley--of himself, of the reader, of the world. The poems ofDÄ"mos: An American Multitude seek answers in the Haudenosaunee story of The Lake and Her children; in the scope of a .243 aimed at a pregnant doe; in the DÅ&#141;gen poem jotted on a napkin by his obaasan; in a flag burning in a church parking lot. Here, Naka-Hasebe Kingsley places multiracial displacement, bridging disparate experiences with taut, percussive language that will leave readers breathless. With astonishing formal range,DÄ"mos also documents the intolerance that dominates American society. What can we learn from mapping the genealogy of a violent and loud collective? How deeply do anger, violence, and oppression run in the blood? From adapted Punnett squares to Biblical epigraphs to the ghastly comment section of a local news website,DÄ"mos diagrams surviving America as an other-ed American--and it refuses to flinch from the forces that would see that multitude erased. DÄ"mos is a resonant proclamation of identity and endurance from one of the most intriguing new voices in American letters--a voice singing "long on America as One / body but many parts."

Dēmos: An American Multitude

Literature & Fiction

Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Benjamín

Poetry

MILKWEED EDITIONS *

Winner of the Saturnalia Books Prize Winner of the American Fiction Award (Poetry)Alice James Award for Poetry FinalistCrab Orchard Series Prize in Poetry Semi-finalistNew Issues Press Prize FinalistPleiades Press Prize Finalist "Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley has an athlete's feel for moving through poems. Just as the reader settles into an image, Kingsley pivots and plots a new course. In the process we learn to let go of our assumptions about who this poet might be, and instead read in awe at the play. These poems play with such fervor that every reading reveals another detail, another escape hatch Kingsley has left for us to find. I love these poems and their many voices. I love their contradictions. I love their energy. Read Colonize Me and then read it again."--José Olivarez, author of Citizen Illegal

Colonize Me

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Saturnalia

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Books by Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Benjamín