Marilyn

by Amanda Ngoho Reavey

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Asian American Studies. Amanda Ngoho Reavey's first book, MARILYN, began as an exploration through somatic experiments on what it means to stay and became a fragmented map of the immigration system, the international adoption process, and family. How do you articulate disenfranchised grief? How does a person who has no origin write herself into existence? What happens when all you have left is, as Sarita Echavez See says, 'the body to articulate loss'? Framed by a return trip to the Philippines in 2011, her first time back since leaving, Reavey takes the most intense images [real, imagined, dreamed] encountered while living in-between six different countries, and expunges them in attempt to stitch the Asian, diasporic body. The result is an ancestral line, a path back not to the beginning of life nor just before, but rather to the primordial. To ancestral roots. To orality: a name.

"Amanda [Ngoho] Reavey has written a work of loss, healing and place. What is a page, both before and after a radical fire? What does it mean to come to language again as to life? Reavey answers these questions through her many attempts in this book, and beyond it, to breathe, create, survive, think and be." –Bhanu Kapil

"MARILYN combines lyric essay, documentary image, and visual poetry to investigate origin, identity, and transformation. The multiple literary forms speak to the work's thematic preoccupations with 'camouflage and adaptability and shapeshifting, ' all concerns of the diasporic body. The author renames herself, moving the work beyond literary convention into performative, conceptual, and shamanistic contexts: 'The name I go by now is 'Ngoho.' It is a verb.' A verb expresses action. This is an active work by an active mind." –Amy Catanzano

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

126 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2015

About the author

Amanda Ngoho Reavey is a poet interested in restoryation, ethnoautobiography, and healing. Among others, her work appears in Construction Literary Magazine, Anthropoid, TRUCK, and Evening Will Come. She is the author of Marilyn (The Operating System), winner of the 2017 Best Book Award in Poetry from the Association for Asian American Studies. She earned an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University.

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Amanda Ngoho Reavey, for this stunning book of poetry and prose. As a fellow Pinay transracial adoptee, there were so many life affirming moments, when I truly felt known and understood in only the ways we can. I’m allowing this body of work to sit deeply with me more and continue to unfold its meaning in my life.

[SP Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a work of experimental poetry, of ethnoautobiography, it is excellent and effective in it's execution, but I cannot say that I enjoyed the experience of reading this. Though to be fair, the content is not something that I would think is meant to be enjoyed. Reading this put me in a foul mood and ruined my day with a directionless anger for which there was no outlet. Read this if you are looking to be challenged.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It usually takes me a while to get into poetry, but this is a really beautiful book that I enjoyed a LOT. I loved the visual elements.

[rei · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*