UnMothered, UnTongued Lyric Essays

"unMothered, unTongued is a collection of lyric essays written from the liminal space of the in-between. These essays thread themselves around questions of language, landscape, and identity. This is a collection that weaves together intersectionalities and intertextualities. In this book, Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh, a biracial LGBTQIA+ Nisei who was born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming, to a non-native-English-speaking Issei mother, considers not only the tensions in the rifts between intersectional identities (biracial Nisei, LGBTQIA+); but also the tensions between marginalized identities and the landscapes and cultures of the American West; the tensions between non-native, second, erased and/or forgotten languages; and the tensions between those who abuse and those who survive. These rifts, intersections, and fractures, while frequently a source of violence and immense grief are also, at the same time, a source of illumination and clarity as well.