Ask The Brindled is a poetry collection about the body, indigenous queerness, Native Hawaiian culture and decolonisation. 

I already struggle with poetry and as this is about a culture that is not my own and that I am not familiar with, I’m sure there is a lot of nuance that I didn’t pick up on. However, I still found this collection really beautiful and artistic. 

The exploration of self, queer identity, and commentary on tourism and colonisation really had me in a choke hold. There’s something about poetry that is just so beautifully genius. I appreciate that the author didn’t edit their own writing styles to accommodate for people like me who is not familiar with the Hawaiian language or cultures. I like that Revilla was true to themselves in this and I really loved the pieces of this collection that I could understand. Maybe one day I can come back to this and understand all of it. 

My favourite pieces in this collection were “After She Leaves You, Femme” and “For Sisters Who Play With Fire”. I appreciated the explanations of where Revilla drew her inspirations from for each piece and I plan to check out all of the works that she referenced. I’m not gonna lie, the dedications pages made me so emotional, especially the one she wrote to her wife. So sweet. 

To conclude, I would definitely recommend this. Even if you aren’t able to understand every piece, there’s still a lot of great material here that is easily understandable for uncultured people like me. This is definitely worth your time, it is truly a work of art. 

TWs/CWs - Animal Death; Blood; Colonisation; Death; Drug Use; Homophobia; Infidelity; Missionaries; Smoking; War; White Washing