By Christian Hanz Lozada
FROM: East Wind

Late in 2021, after reading just a handful of pieces in Navigating With(out) Instruments while bedside as my brother recovered from surgery (surgeons removed a tumor and he’s recovering nicely), I messaged traci kato-kiriyama about feeling seen on so many levels so quickly into their book. In two of twelve sections, they touched on not having children, cancer, and the loss of a grandparent who was a familial pillar from an Asian American lens. In reading just a fraction of their work, I felt like I was being shown pieces of me.

In response to my message, traci invited connection as deftly as their pieces I had just read. They shared excitement about Naomi Hirahara, Edgar Award-winning author, writing blurbs for both of our books and said, “we’ll have to read together at some point down the line!” That simple and earnest invitation is repeated regularly on each page of Navigating With(out) Instruments: poetry—micro-essays—notes to self.

The brilliance of kato-kiriyama’s book is it takes all the facets of being human, with its individual influences, histories, pains, and collects them with a challenge: try not to relate to some part of me. In it, you will read about the layered loss of the Japanese internment camps, but you will also learn about making art and art communities, punctuated by what kato-kiriyama calls “Death Moments” where the speaker finds rejuvenation near death. In other words, this book is about living and getting through. The scope of such an endeavor is so vast, but kato-kiriyama deftly creates a map to help the reader navigate through from one identity to another. Read Rest of Review Here