How do you keep some of yourself for yourself and what is lost in the process? I’ve always been interested in that question and tried to write into it while I was putting this collection together. 

Is it possible to write in English by remaining acutely aware of and consciously borrowing from Indigenous and vernacular aesthetics?

"I believe anything can be said on the page. The issue may be whether the writer has the courage to say what needs to be said."

It’s interesting to think about moving through the sections of the book like moving through different rooms in a building

The poems are built on a foundation of refusal — to choose between two truths

I try very hard to make the English language sound beautiful. But in doing so, I can’t ignore how language (and yes, even poetry) can also be made odious, or how eloquence can be used for malintent.

...that’s how memory works. There are always addendums, always missing details, always mess and emotion and things you can’t recall until much later.

Many of the poems in the collection deal with guilt and shame because, for me, those are often the emotions that spur a poem and make me feel I need to write.

I wanted to pay homage to Asian American women in my life and writers, which is why there is Mitski.