The Mother Who Couldn't Describe a Thing 
available July 20, 2024

Shareen K. Murayama’s The Mother Who Couldn’t Describe a Thing if She Could explores the myriad containers of life—family, culture, language, body, grief, and geography—with remarkable precision and tenderness. “Sandwiched between sun and Pacific,” these poems inhabit a metaphysical space where the interplay of potentiality and reality meet. An ode to both absences and futures, she wonders, “How can you want what you can no longer see?” A searing commentary, she reflects, “Historically, I am the colonizer and the colonized; violator and infiltrated; but mostly, I carry the weight of shame.” An impassioned call to action, she challenges all failed power structures, “Why aren’t there more types of mothers?” Perhaps most triumphant is her unflinching analysis of negative space, noticing that “Both an island and a daughter are nouns,” each whose “exterior hardens” like the “dinner plate before being plated.” This invitation to sit at Murayama’s bountiful table rich with literary sustenance is nothing short of a blessing contained between two covers.

—Candice M. Kelsey, author of Choose Your Own Poem,
finalist for Best Microfiction