Under a Future Sky [Paperback]

Brynn Saito takes her readers on a journey with her father to the desert prison at Gila River where, over 80 years ago, her grandparents met and made a life together. Born of an unquenchable desire to animate the shadow archive, Saitos poetry sings a song of rage, confusion, and, ultimately, love; descendants of wartime incarceration exchange dreams, mothers become water goddesses, and a modern daughter haunts future ruins. Mystical inclinations, yellow cedars, and sisterhood make a balm for traumas scars. This work opens a dialogue between the past and present, radical ancestor and future child, desert prison and family garden.

Under a Future Skyis a collection of poems that gives voice to the intergenerational impact left by WWII Japanese internment camps.

“Brynn Saito writes with a rare, inimitable grace in her most personal and politically engaged book to date. The epistolary poems for family and the impact of internment and inheritance are imagined with music and wisdom. I feel more alive after these poems and her reminder, ‘Beautiful prayer animal, rise to the occasion of your living.’Under a Future Skyis a masterpiece.”—Lee Herrick, author ofScar and Flower

The stark beauty and physicality of the Arizona desert, where Saito’s paternal grandparents were imprisoned during World War II, are ever-present in her latest book. Using the framework of letters to and from her father and other family members, she honors the “riverstream of ancestors” and, in a celebration of ghosts, recovers stones for the living. Saito’s fearless entry into her “gate of memory” is a radical guide for us all to make meaning from the past.—Amy Uyematsu, author ofBasic Vocabulary

“Through gorgeous epistles to family, friends, and even a dragonfly, Brynn Saito ql“Æ