Aftermath - Paperback

by Jill Yamasawa (Author)

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."

Author Biography

Jill Yamasawa was born in Kona, Hawaii and raised in Holualoa and Honaunau on citrus and coffee farms. Her paternal great-grandparents were from Hiroshima, but the ancestry of her maternal great-grandparents is unknown. She graduated from Konawaena High School. She has a BA in American and British Literature from Santa Clara University and an MA in creative writing from the University of Hawaii at Manoa where she also studied fine arts. She teaches writing at Roosevelt High School. Jill has been published in Paradigm (2007), Ka Lamakua (2008), HOW2 (2008) and Tinfish (2008). This is her first book of poems.