Birthmark: Poems by Jon Pineda

In Jon Pineda’s debut collection Birthmark, loss takes the shape of a scar, memory the shape of a childhood, and identity the shape of a birthmark on a lover’s thigh. Like water taking the form of its container, Pineda’s poems swell to fill the lines of his experiences. Against the backdrop of Tidewater, Virginia’s crabs and cicadas, Pineda invokes his mestizo―the Tagalog word for being half Filipino―childhood, weaving laments for a tenuous paternal relationship and the loss of a sibling. Channeling these fragmented memories into a new discovery of self, Birthmark reclaims an identity, delicate yet unrelenting, with plaintive tones marked equally by pain, reflection, and redemption.  A limited number of autographed copies are available.

Review
“With the publication of his first book, Jon Pineda shows himself to be one of the premier poets of Asian American literature. This stunning and beautiful collection delivers a strong message: This poet loves the sheer act of creating poems and discovering universal truths that begin in a specific culture but extend beyond broken and triumphant horizons.”―The Bloomsbury Review

“Birthmark is brimming with a wisdom that seems not contrived from literary ambition, but born of a joy for life quite incidental to such ambition. It is the wisdom of Telemachus, the prototypical son, gained from long hours contemplating the missing father, then reconciling to the father’s return. It is a wisdom that begets tenderness and broadcasts, with strength and humility, a vision of contraries reconciled at the core of longing.”―Richard Katrovas, author of Dithyrambs

“Jon Pineda’s strength lies in an unusual music and his feel for Tidewater, Virginia and the marvelous stories it tells him. Among these stories is the beautiful homage to family and the brave character of Filipino culture making that all-too-familiar journey toward new life in America. Birthmark is, like its namesake, tender, bright, lasting, and filled with identity we are called to remark is, if not our own, close enough to feel our own.”―Dave Smith, author of The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970–2000 

“Birthmark is one of those rare first books that will make its mark on a  generation. These masculine poems explore the father/son dynamic in a mixed race context. The son is half Filipino and half white, and this cultural conflict colors his interaction with his family members and the white American society of Hampton Roads, Virginia. This is a book that many poetry anthologists will turn to for years to come.”―Nick Carbó, author of Secret Asian Man

"Birthmark by Jon Pineda, Southern Illinois, 2004, 64p, paper $14.95 • Jon Pineda's poems plumb the complex relationship between a Filipino father and a son who is hapa, "half  a mestizo," a "'half-breed." For example, in a poem where the father is teaching his son to swim, "There are only so many words he uses, some in English & some / in Tagalog, & the boy, flailing his arms to stay afloat, understands none of them." Their mute connections are through masculine rituals: fishing, boxing (your hand lifted mine above my head / as if I had or maybe we had won / . . survived another night / in the long history of fathers & sons"), the tortured stories of war and military service. Pineda's craft subtly underscores being "hair "the whiteness of the barrier island: a squat light- / house in the center of the neighborhood, the occasional white- / caps disappearing"; note how he juxtaposes "whiteness" to "barrier", and how "light" and "white" are hyphenated, both techniques suggesting emotional distance and separation. A bravura debut book." --Vince Gotera, North American Review

About the Author
Jon Pineda was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised in Tidewater, Virginia. He studied in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University and has received a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His poetry has appeared in Many Mountains Moving, the Asian Pacific American Journal, Puerto del Sol, and other publications. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife, Amy.

Series: Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry
Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (March 11, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0809325705
ISBN-13: 978-0809325702
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces