Praise for Sourcing Siapo
‘If violence rules the house/ how does one get out?’ How do ten children of Samoan, African, Irish and German heritage survive poverty? Cruel discrimination? The absence of a beloved Samoan father? The violent abuse from an alcoholic stepfather? Using forms both protean and richly inventive, sourcing siapo gives us the answer. In this family saga told in many voices, Penina Ava Taesali indelibly conveys to us how she and her siblings found “a way out through each other.” This is the poet’s collective song of transcendence. This book is Taesali’s courageous, moving medicine to ‘cleanse the blood.’”
—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita
“Sourcing Siapo tells a story about a mother with ten children and a drunk husband, a story that is relentless in its explorations of complications. And what she writes is something beautiful and resonant for its pursuit of all sorts of loves and its refusals of ease.” —Juliana Spahr, Author of The Winter the Wolf Came
“Sourcing Siapo is a marvel of language as formally innovative as it wrought with intimacy and human emotions. This is a book of poetry that pulls no punches. I celebrate the publication of this important book for its intellect, realness and above all, necessity. It is about time!” —Truong Tran, Author of four letter words
“In Sourcing Siapo, Penina Ava Taesali tells the profound story of one family’s loves and losses, bonds and betrayals. In a central scene, one daughter “hollered for everyone to get out as if the house was smoldering”—not for a crisis this time, but to look at “the map in the starry sky.” The narrator continues, “she was only a child but…the cosmic dome is a dot-to-dot-line-to-line compass” so she could “see how—everything connected.” Powerfully universal and incredibly intimate, this book can speak to each of us. Like the constellations, Taesali is a poet we can look up to and admire.”
—Jennifer Richter, author of No Acute Distress and Threshold
“Siapo is Samoan tapa—cloth made by pounding the inner bark of mulberry trees. Sourcing Siapo is a book made by pounding languages and memories into poetry. Not a collection of separate poems, it is a single whole—a journey-quest to find, remember, and reconcile mother, father, siblings, ancestors, languages, races, and cosmologies. The hero, January, is a heroine. One of ten children, each born in a different month, she is Samoan, African, European, and American. Penina Ava Taesali has fashioned, out of the languages and stories that are her heritage and the love, pain, struggle, violation, and imaginative vision that have been her life, a siapo/poetry cloak that is also wings, a garment that wraps and protects—and that lifts and carries. It carries, through the ecstatic rhythms of its impassioned utterance, the whole sweep and tangle of a life, and makes it part of the reader’s own.”
—Eleanor Berry, President Emerita, National Federation of State Poetry Societies
Author of Green November and No Constant Hues
"Several worlds collide in Sourcing Siapo- the world of a reckless mother, a beloved but absent father, and a houseful of children at risk. Out of this collision the poet has woven a harrowing tale in language that is new and unforgettable. The reader is entering new territory when opening this book."
— Maggie Mayer
“Penina Taesali’s words pierce through us and reveal her painful truths about mother, father, sisters, brothers, but at the same time she gently surrounds the reader with nurturing, forgiveness and grace. The image of siapo connects us to her earliest memories of identity that reach beyond a deep love of father and kin but more importantly to a tender love of self.”
—Ellen Bepp
“Elegant, rhythmical, natural, hypnotic, revolutionary, and transformative, Penina's writing as well as her mentorship has inspired so many to unearth the sacred poetry and stories of our communities, to liberate voices and threads from our ancestors, to be in tune with our inner callings. As a Samoan American writer, to be authentic in the midst of exoticized stereotyping, binary landscapes of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment makes Penina's craft that much more of an artistic practice for self-determination. To write is an act of liberation for herself and her people. Her work is unapologetically real and grapples with the beauty and pain of being human in a time of world endangerment and chaos.”
—Alicia Yang
"A moving memoir as a life remembered and recorded by Penina Taesali sends me to places of deep reflection and mourning. Every time I read her words or hear her speak them, I am delivered to a place I imagine of my own disappointments and sorrows. I journey with her and find the courage to face my own life challenges with the same determination and introspection that Ms. Taesali offers up to her audience. Both the journey and her poetry have left me fulfilled."
— Jacqueline Jenkins
—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita
“Sourcing Siapo tells a story about a mother with ten children and a drunk husband, a story that is relentless in its explorations of complications. And what she writes is something beautiful and resonant for its pursuit of all sorts of loves and its refusals of ease.” —Juliana Spahr, Author of The Winter the Wolf Came
“Sourcing Siapo is a marvel of language as formally innovative as it wrought with intimacy and human emotions. This is a book of poetry that pulls no punches. I celebrate the publication of this important book for its intellect, realness and above all, necessity. It is about time!” —Truong Tran, Author of four letter words
“In Sourcing Siapo, Penina Ava Taesali tells the profound story of one family’s loves and losses, bonds and betrayals. In a central scene, one daughter “hollered for everyone to get out as if the house was smoldering”—not for a crisis this time, but to look at “the map in the starry sky.” The narrator continues, “she was only a child but…the cosmic dome is a dot-to-dot-line-to-line compass” so she could “see how—everything connected.” Powerfully universal and incredibly intimate, this book can speak to each of us. Like the constellations, Taesali is a poet we can look up to and admire.”
—Jennifer Richter, author of No Acute Distress and Threshold
“Siapo is Samoan tapa—cloth made by pounding the inner bark of mulberry trees. Sourcing Siapo is a book made by pounding languages and memories into poetry. Not a collection of separate poems, it is a single whole—a journey-quest to find, remember, and reconcile mother, father, siblings, ancestors, languages, races, and cosmologies. The hero, January, is a heroine. One of ten children, each born in a different month, she is Samoan, African, European, and American. Penina Ava Taesali has fashioned, out of the languages and stories that are her heritage and the love, pain, struggle, violation, and imaginative vision that have been her life, a siapo/poetry cloak that is also wings, a garment that wraps and protects—and that lifts and carries. It carries, through the ecstatic rhythms of its impassioned utterance, the whole sweep and tangle of a life, and makes it part of the reader’s own.”
—Eleanor Berry, President Emerita, National Federation of State Poetry Societies
Author of Green November and No Constant Hues
"Several worlds collide in Sourcing Siapo- the world of a reckless mother, a beloved but absent father, and a houseful of children at risk. Out of this collision the poet has woven a harrowing tale in language that is new and unforgettable. The reader is entering new territory when opening this book."
— Maggie Mayer
“Penina Taesali’s words pierce through us and reveal her painful truths about mother, father, sisters, brothers, but at the same time she gently surrounds the reader with nurturing, forgiveness and grace. The image of siapo connects us to her earliest memories of identity that reach beyond a deep love of father and kin but more importantly to a tender love of self.”
—Ellen Bepp
“Elegant, rhythmical, natural, hypnotic, revolutionary, and transformative, Penina's writing as well as her mentorship has inspired so many to unearth the sacred poetry and stories of our communities, to liberate voices and threads from our ancestors, to be in tune with our inner callings. As a Samoan American writer, to be authentic in the midst of exoticized stereotyping, binary landscapes of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment makes Penina's craft that much more of an artistic practice for self-determination. To write is an act of liberation for herself and her people. Her work is unapologetically real and grapples with the beauty and pain of being human in a time of world endangerment and chaos.”
—Alicia Yang
"A moving memoir as a life remembered and recorded by Penina Taesali sends me to places of deep reflection and mourning. Every time I read her words or hear her speak them, I am delivered to a place I imagine of my own disappointments and sorrows. I journey with her and find the courage to face my own life challenges with the same determination and introspection that Ms. Taesali offers up to her audience. Both the journey and her poetry have left me fulfilled."
— Jacqueline Jenkins