Aunty Uncle Dog Chicken Bee is the story of community and movement. Through an exploration of prose poetry, lyric, sound poetry, and character sketches, Tiare Picard tells the stories of the aunties and the uncles, the dogs and the chickens, and the bees all around us, who forge their homes in a world that marginalizes them. Picard guides us through a community in ʻAiea, one uncannily familiar to Hawaiʻi residents and those abroad alike. Neighbors struggle against the ever-growing economic gap, animals slip through broken chain-link fences, there is a precarity in these quiet existences. Yet in these shared spaces, the people are vibrant, determined, and alive in a way that defies societal classification.

Capturing complex layers of island culture and challenging inequitable structures of power, this collection gives voice to the people and the beings who all too often exist in the outskirts of Hawaiʻi’s stories. Each poem portrays the movement of people, the movement of poetic forms, and the movement of language itself as the text shifts fluidly from English to Pidgin English and back again.

Aunty Uncle Dog Chicken Bee invites us to appreciate the living, the agile, the fragile, and the steady hum of bees.

• Tiare Picard, Author

  Tiare Picard teaches composition and creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu.