These Aren't My Woods Anymore

With irresistible and unflinching honesty, Soon Jones' gorgeous debut collection of poems, These Aren't My Woods Anymore, captures the experience of living as a mixed-race, queer, Asian American from the rural South. Jones' poems reflect on a deep connection to the natural landscape, burgeoning sexuality and futile attempts to hide it, the violent homophobia of their church-steeped childhood, and what can only be described as "the unrelenting hunger of the world." These visceral poems re-live and re-imagine, question and declare. Reading them, we are reminded of how language and life can so powerfully dislocate, and yet how home may be found in re-writing a world of one's own making.