I AM NOT A WAR

Sophia Terazawa

Sophia Terazawa’s debut chapbook I AM NOT A WAR is not to be consumed. It asks simply of the colonized, “What do you intend?” With this question, collective symbols and memories of an Asia America gather at the crossroads of empire, violence, erasure. According to Rosebud Ben-Oni, “Terazawa does not only testify to historical transgressions; she provokes the very idea of what it means to write about them.” I AM NOT A WAR spares nothing, explains nothing. It only trembles with rage and demands a kind of intimacy that could either scorch the earth or free us all.

“Where does it start? This memory of a border I once had but never owned? Is it at the bottom of the sky, stretched like lightening across the Pacific? No! No! It is too safe in the dark. What do you hear? What do you hear?”

SOPHIA TERAZAWA is a Vietnamese-Japanese poet and performer working with ghosts. Her poems, essays, and performances (film, music, dance, etc.) have been featured in Project As[I]Am, The Fem, HYSTERIA, Bluestockings Magazine, and elsewhere. Currently, she is a columnist for THE DECOLONIZER, where she writes about love and intimacy as radical healing practice.