Do Not Feed the Animal
With poems that glow with energy, humor, heartbreak, and risk, Do Not Feed the Animal, the astonishing debut from Hikari Leilani Miya, breaks molds and reshapes expectations. Food, culture, behavior, voice, and self-portraits-Miya confidently paints her canvas with the shades of her Japanese-Filipina identity. Innovative in approach and moving in message, Do Not Feed the Animal soars by way of the ingenuity and heart of its storyteller.
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"Alluring like 'a panda with boba, ' Hikari Leilani Miya brings forth the razzle dazzle, 'a shining bag of hershey's kisses beneath the chicken breasts, ' and punches you in the face. It's beautiful, it's rainbows, it's very big hearts. If you're lucky enough to read it, this book will 'boost your self esteem and all the sea pigs will become turtles.' A ferocious debut ... it has my complete and total endorsement!"
-Michael Chang, author of Synthetic Jungle
"Hikari Leilani Miya's Do Not Feed the Animal is an incredible debut. She is so good with titles! The titles set the stage for the poems: 'help, i've locked myself inside the moon, ' 'vocal ransom note from a witch, ' 'i am ready to be your sandwich.' The poems are alive with a beloved albino snake, and San Francisco, and several turtles, and love letters, and the poet's singular voice. Her voice feels immediate, very present, like let's go right now, and we go. I'm neurodivergent and I adore reading neurodivergent poetry like this-associative leaps, incomplete sentences, fragments, lyrics, haiku, ars poetica, self-portraits, list poems, dialectics-and with such a big heart. I wanna be on the sprectrum with the Autistic baddies and Chronic Pain baddies and Anxiety baddies. Have you read our poetry? Buy this book. It's incredible. I feel honored to read about the litany of animals dear to the poet, and all types of nourishment, whether food or fellow beings. Did I mention the poems are funny? Oh, so funny. This collection slays at tricking me into a laugh at a line and then suddenly, a sharp turn into a devastatingly sad line. I've never read a book like this and now I want to read 20 more books just like this. Quite frankly, I love it."
-The Cyborg Jillian Weise, author of Cyborg Detective
"Owls try really hard to sound as awesome as Hikari's poems, but they just can't do it. Sorry, owls."
-Kyle Flak, author of Sweatpants Paradise
