I Am Not a War

by Sophia Terazawa

EP #15
a winner of the 2015 Essay Press
Digital Chapbook Contest
selected by ROSEBUD BEN-ONI

70 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Jenna]

I learned about this chapbook, I Am Not a War (if someone reading this is a Goodreads Librarian, the title should have the word "a" in it!), from the list of 2017 Elgin Award nominees, on which my own poetry book A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora also appears. This is the latest in a string of experimental literary works I have read this winter that defy genre definitions, straddling the border between prose and poetry (see my recent Goodreads reviews of books by Anhvu Buchanan, Jenny Boully, Natalie Vestin, and Carole Maso). Like Maso's The Art Lover (and like Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, probably a more direct predecessor), I Am Not a War uses a collaging technique, juxtaposing sometimes-lengthy quotations from other sources, photographs, drawings, scanned documents, schematics, and other artifacts with original verbal compositions, a few with line breaks, most without. There are footnotes and self-referential metatextual digressions. This may sound overly theoretical and academic, but Terazawa's language is often searingly alive, fierce as a slap to the face, as in these examples (italics added by reviewer to emphasize the physicality of the poet's word choices): "Their faces appeared soon after, choking with tales," "I could not silence their anger. It changed the shape of my jaw, my chest," "all these spirits were entering my teenage body and tearing it in half to make space for testimonies." Some people have an instinct for poetry, and in Terazawa's work this manifests as a seemingly subconscious tendency to experience psychic events as physical ones. Although she uses some vocabulary from antiracist activist movements, her work is recognizable as poetry from the fact that her words burn like nuclear fire. Really, anyone who can coin a phrase like "Princess-Me-but-don't-Pocahontas-Me costume dresses" is a born writer, in my book.

The main subject here is colonialism, a historical force that shaped Terazawa's family history on both her father's side (Japanese in origin) and her mother's side (of Vietnamese roots). "I am Agent Orange.//I am Atomic Bomb" runs one repeating refrain in the text. Other, interlinked topics include inherited trauma, self-harm, and competing terms for the same thing (spirit possession vs. mental illness). This is not a book for the type of reader who easily grows defensive, possessive of what they think they know, the domain of expertise they think they own; I expect that kind of reader will view Terazawa's self-assertive stance on her subject matter as a personal attack. For others, there is a lot of food for thought here: provocative ideas on the inherent inadequacy of reportage, the intrinsic incompleteness of knowledge. Attempts to communicate via language are fraught with failure, Terazawa claims, partly because "Language wants me to be a referee. Take two words and separate them--mother, father, Viet Nam, Japan.... There is no aggressor, no victim, only reality."

As Terazawa explicitly states, her goal is not "educating the oppressor" but "evolution of a collective self." What she demands on behalf of the ghosts she carries is not "statements of accountability" but "intimacy":

Here is where the shrapnel pierced my flesh. Do you want to hold it?

[Cassie Fleurs · Rating 4 out of 5]

If i had to resume this book in one word , it would be : STRONG
It is sharp bared teeth. This is an experimental book by Vietnamese-Japanese author , dealing with racism, colonialsm and generational trauma. It borders on poetry and prose while trowing out shivering inducing passages and single line questions at you that put you in the most uncomfortable position. I loved it

[Taha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terazawa's I AM NOT A WAR is a force to be reckoned with. It is fierce and ferocious and deeply haunting.

[Exquisite Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely stunning chapbook