Ransack

In Ransack, essa may ranapiri addresses the difficulty of assembling and understanding a fractured, unwieldy self through an inherited language—a language whose assumptions and expectations ultimately make it inadequate for such a task. These poems seek richer, less hierarchical sets of words to describe ways of being.

Punctuated by a sequence of letters to Virginia Woolf's character Orlando, this immersive collection is about discovering, articulating, and defending—to oneself and to others—what it means to exist outside of the western gender binary, as takatapui. It describes an artist in a state of becoming, moving from Te Kore through Te Po and into the light.

This is a significant body of work by a seriously talented writer. It's moving, sometimes startling, and a pleasure to read. And, for many of us—but especially for those of us whose experience reflects Ransack's larger themes—it's a book in which those of us who have rarely done so can also manage to see ourselves.

—Stephanie Burt