unMothered, unTongued: Lyric Essays

by Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh, Chloé Cooper Jones (Compiler)

unMothered, unTongued is a collection of lyric essays written from the liminal space of the in-between. These essays thread themselves around questions of language, landscape, and identity, weaving together intersectionalities and intertextualities. Author Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh, a biracial LGBTQIA+ Nisei who was born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming, to a non-native-English-speaking Issei mother, considers not only the tensions in the rifts between intersectional identities (biracial Nisei, LGBTQIA+) but also the tensions between marginalized identities and the landscapes and cultures of the American West; the tensions between nonnative, second, erased, and/or forgotten languages; and the tensions between those who abuse and those who survive. These rifts, intersections, and fractures, while frequently a source of violence and immense grief, are also a source of illumination and clarity. The essays in this collection are written almost entirely in hybrid/lyric forms—oftentimes braided, oftentimes patchworked, oftentimes segmented—reflecting some of the fractured complexities and intersections of Horikoshi Roripaugh’s own hybrid identities.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir

234 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2025

Reviews

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some really great essays in here, really great. Her writing about her mom in particula is often generous but also so honest, a bit funny, very thoughtful. Lee Horikosh  Roripaugh had a pretty wild childhood, growing up in the Southwest of the US with a Japanese mom who probably had borderline personality disorder and a white American dad who didn't do anything to help or protect her from her mom or any of the other bad shit happening. Gorgeous  prose. Highly recommended!

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best essay collection I’ve read all year. Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh’s lyric essays on language, place, and growing up in a dysfunctional home deeply resonated with me. She writes beautiful prose with astonishing clarity. I’ll be thinking of this book for a long time.

[Lindsay Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh’s latest book unMothered, unTongued brilliantly and beautifully navigates trauma while knitting together their hybrid, marginalized identities with deep senses of place and ecologies. Roripaugh’s second prose collection, following 2023’s Reveal Codes, will not disappoint. Their distinct poetics shimmer on every lovely and searing page as they tour us through the competing traumas of parental abuse, anxiety-ridden pandemic responses, racism, sexism, queerphobia, and beyond. But throughout this confessional, highly personal, and deeply cathartic book, Roripaugh’s keen humor also shines through as they document their writing processes and experiences as a working writer in the Unites States—and even the world of roller derby. While each of the essays could easily stand alone, together they comprise a beautifully fractured yet coherent narrative that will leave the reader in utter awe.

[Lindy Obach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh’s unMothered, unTongued: Lyric Essays is a raw and powerful collection unlike anything I’ve read and that I can’t stop thinking about.

For me, this is Roripaugh’s most vulnerable and indelible work yet, as abuse, mental illness, isolation, loss, identity, and pain are laid bare in the most beautiful of sentences. Yet, as heavy as these are, and as heavy the weight — of a complicated family, of a complicated America— placed on the narrator’s shoulders, I leave this collection hopeful for the narrator’s buoyant reclamation of self and balance.

Roripaugh has always been a master of imagery, and this collection is a sensory triumph. I won’t soon forget the Laramie house, the banana slugs, the mother’s voice. My heart was broken and stitched back together a million times while reading unMothered, unTongued. What a brilliant and profound read.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
I loved this book and am glad I read it while studying creative nonfiction. Horikoshi Roripaugh is especially brilliant in her use of forms to organize her essays (rather than content), such as her "Falling" essay, where each part contains the word "fall" and has something to do with a definition of the word. Her derby-themed essay was especially brilliant. If you want to learn how to write effective lyrical essays, this is the book for you. As a fellow writer of lyrical essays and a fellow biracial Asian-American, I resonated with the writing in multiple ways!

[Stevan Pullins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lee's collection of essays is so raw and open, it hurt my heart to be taken through all of the brokenness. But then there were moments in between that took me to the astonishing beauty of the natural world that gave me a respite to reflect, and to continue on through the journey. You will be changed reading this.