Ichiban

Patricia Aya Williams' Ichiban follows a Japanese mother, an American father, and their daughter from post-WWII Japan to the Gen-X schoolyards of East San Jose. The collection exuberantly insists that "we too / sing America" applies to teenage girls whose tampons charge like a "battering ram in a moat of blood" and to a tough mother who loves watching sumo and rooting for "wrestlers from her prefecture-Ishikawa" and harshly judging them: "Aww he too little / he not gonna make it." After the father's early death, the speaker revisits photos of him on aircraft carriers, and the mother, as she nears her own death many decades later, asks him: "Pat, my handsome young sailor / ichiban yasashii na kao, most gentle face // God ever show me on this earth- // how you will recognize / my prune face, more than twice your age?" As if anyone could forget her, especially after Ichiban captures her voice, humor, and tenacity with such vibrancy.

-Allison Pitinii Davis, Line Study of a Motel Clerk and Business: a novella

Ichiban is an unsparing and unsentimental coming of age poetry-coming to terms with parents, coming to terms with cultural expectations, and with one's self. I am particularly taken by the variety of angles and poetic forms through which Williams views and recounts salient life-shaping episodes. The title poem "Ichiban" could stand alone-illustrated and animated. The entire collection is a gem.

-Donna Hilbert, Louis Award judge and author of Enormous Blue Umbrella