Ask the Brindled

“In her debut collection, which won the 2021 National Poetry series, Native Hawaiian poet No’u Revilla explores bodies, language, the legacies of colonialism, the natural world, and grief. Her poems blend the history of the Hawaiian Kingdom, stories from ‘Öiwi culture, and experiences of queerness and queer love. It’s a beautiful book that honors the unique stories of queer and Native Hawaiian women in bright, unflinching, unforgettable language.”

“Poised in the electric space where history and lyric converge, Noʻu Revilla’s Ask the Brindled has new things to say about old things—the work of love, the work of family and community, the work of articulating a self that is ‘shattered & many-named.’ Sustained by a wily variety of forms, the poems’ abiding figure is the shapeshifter, underscoring Revilla’s accomplishment of a complex testimony. With both tenderness and urgency brought to poetry’s reparative labor, Ask the Brindled shows survivance as a gorgeous unfolding of story and polemic, audacity and song.”

“Ask the Brindled is an astonishing addition to the canon (or canoe) of Pacific Islander literature. No‘u Revilla embodies the many definitions of a queer, Indigenous shapeshifter. In this collection, she transforms the origins of hurt into seeds of healing through verse, prose, erasure, visual typography, and even a Hawaiian alphabet abecedarian. Cling tightly to these poems because they will crawl under your skin like sly lizards and ask you to shed fear and swallow abundance.”

“As you devour Noʻu Revilla’s poems in Ask the Brindled for their stories and secrets, for their deftness and innovation of language and form, you will, in turn, be devoured by their shape-shifting, regenerative beauty and power. Like Hāʻōʻū, Maui and the great moʻo deities from whom she descends, Revilla reveals herself as warrior, protector, witness, survivor, lover, mana wahine, healer, and teacher. With the fire of transformation, the fluid memory of water, and the shimmer of light on scales, this collection is nothing short of Indigenous queer feminist decolonial revelation and revolution. This is not poetry for the heart; this poetry is only for the gut. Prepare to be swallowed whole in body and emerge with new, raw skin. Here is ʻŌiwi poetry at its finest and fiercest.”

“In Ask the Brindled, No’u Revilla revives a lineage nearly severed at the hands of occupation and empire. These protection songs and incantations of remembrance and resistance are forged by saltwater and mettle of queer, indigenous alchemy. Both in armor and in tender flesh, I feel seen in Revilla’s world. Here, queer-femme-rage is medicine. To know the languages and aesthetics of the archipelagoes is to understand the vital arteries of earth: ‘No matter who you are, who you / pretend to be on dry land, / when we get you, it is wet and honest.’ Revilla wields narratives of sacrifice, regeneration, matriarchy, and femme identified myth with ferocity that resuscitates ancestral voices back to the sensual, back to blood.”

“No’u Revilla is as singular a voice as can be found.”

“No‘u Revilla gifts us vertical language with words falling down the page like droplets of rain and growing up like saplings in Ask the Brindled.”

“Revilla’s debut poetry collection is both lyrically and formally dynamic as she tackles themes such as sovereignty, queer desire, Hawaiian history, decolonization, queer grief, and sacred stories…. The book’s approach is intergenerational, both forward and backward looking as the poems reclaim past narratives foisted on queer Indigenous and Hawaiian peoples and dream up a future of abundance.”