A Nuclear Family [Paperback]

April Naoko Heck's collection gives striking image and voice to the questions of a daughter, and the answers tell the story of a mother, the story of a hundred, no, a thousand mothers and daughters. These poems are flickering shrines built from the debris of history and memory, both Japanese and American. Heck is strong enough to revisit, to cradle even, the bombs of our history, as well as the many smaller detonations that ripple through our lives with specific destructions--family, death, alcoholism, identity, or as she calls it: my mummy, my memory. --Natalie Diaz

April Naoko Heck was born in Tokyo and relocated with her family to the U.S. when she was seven. She is a Kundiman Fellow and has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Brooklyn.