Jill Yamasawa

Aftermath Jill Yamasawa

This remarkably moving first collection of poems by Jill Yamasawa focuses on a teacher and her students in a militarized and colonially occupied Hawaii. Poet Susan Schultz writes of the collection: "Jill Yamasawa's documentary poetry reflects the poet's own capacity to empathize with her students, caught up in domestic dramas that are also national in scope. Nowhere in the book are we permitted to forget the Iraq War or the military recruiters who have settled just off campus. Yamasawa has given us the words, the voices, and some of the images. If we are to act ethically, we must look and listen."