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alissa417's review against another edition
5.0
Such a powerful voice for this moment in America's story. As the adoptive parent of two young girls born in Asia, I dream one day my girls will be able to deliver strength in their own ways to the international adoptee community as Nobile does in CLEAVE.
haley_radke's review
5.0
I loved this poetry collection. The weaving in of Harlow's experiments with the adoptee experience is brilliant. Tiana shares some deeply personal struggles, thoughts of Korea, and of adoption. Her mastery with word choice is evident throughout: the title choice alone is spectacular. Poems to savour.
I'm still thinking about some of her phrasing using cleave.
I'm still thinking about some of her phrasing using cleave.
tqsims's review
5.0
A very focused collection of poetry about the experience of being a transnational adoptee. As someone who is white and not adopted, I felt like this collection was a compassionate invite to witness someone’s very personal experience about being adopted into another family, culture, and country. I’m so grateful that I got to read it. It helped expand my view and my heart.
eggmama's review against another edition
Reading this was so?? When I saw the title of the first poem "Moon Yeong Shin" I felt a sudden flash of familiarity (or maybe something closer to recognition?). Sometimes a name is all we have, and some of us don't even have that. Parsing our korean names for meaning, for significance, for something we've lost and can't recover...
Hauntings, ghost mothers, bodies!
I almost feel like I wrote some of these poems, the way they articulate so cleanly some of my own experiences (like "Mother of Cloth"). But Nobile also comments on the larger transracial adoptee experience too, using Harlow's monkey experiments to examine love, affection, and loss. So while things felt similar to my own writing, there were also lots of instances of "I never would have thought to write about it that way, or use this to talk about that." I really liked seeing someone take a different angle!
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello and Sun Yung Shin come to mind when I think of other korean women adoptee poets (what a beautiful moutful), but Nobile's style felt closest to mine of the 3 which made this a really interesting read for me.
Favorites:
- Abstract (Mother of Ghost)
- The Last Straw
- Mother of Wood
- Personal Fiction
- Revisionist History
Hauntings, ghost mothers, bodies!
I almost feel like I wrote some of these poems, the way they articulate so cleanly some of my own experiences (like "Mother of Cloth"). But Nobile also comments on the larger transracial adoptee experience too, using Harlow's monkey experiments to examine love, affection, and loss. So while things felt similar to my own writing, there were also lots of instances of "I never would have thought to write about it that way, or use this to talk about that." I really liked seeing someone take a different angle!
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello and Sun Yung Shin come to mind when I think of other korean women adoptee poets (what a beautiful moutful), but Nobile's style felt closest to mine of the 3 which made this a really interesting read for me.
Favorites:
- Abstract (Mother of Ghost)
- The Last Straw
- Mother of Wood
- Personal Fiction
- Revisionist History
More...