Balikbayan - Dujie Tahat

Like its namesake, Balikbayan holds dear life's extraordinary essentials. Which is to say, this is a collection of shape-shifting care packages: nn poems as reminders of what sustains us; poems that bear witness to needful defiance; poems of generosity and grit. -R.A.

Villanueva nn n nn I love these poems. They are pasalubong from that distant cousin who somehow knows you as intimately as you know yourself. -Angela Garbes nn n nn In Dujie Tahat's latest work, they speak of a longing that cannot merely be erased through the accumulation of things.

Tahat questions our insistence in the economy of our grief by constructing delicate, jewel-like memory boxes. And in the moment when we open these gifts, we are offered a chance to return to a home that is within ourselves. -Oliver de la Paz nn n nn This collection is an innovative wonder-to borrow Tahat's words, here there are no blemishes.

Only bloom. -Janine Joseph nn n nn With invention and verve, Tahat packs and packs each balikbayan box to gift us history and tsimis and music and grief, memory and flowers and anger and forgiveness and legacy. These boxes are of and for kasama and pamilya-not limited by borders or time or space.

-Michelle Peñaloza nn n nn What Dujie Tahat is able to do with multiple languages (English, Tagalog, Taglish, Hip Hop) is surreal and only further proves an entanglement that only they are able to deliver so gracefully. One of the most compelling collections of poetry I've ever come across. -Ebo Barton nn