Mix-Mix

Throughout this triumphant collection, Dani Putney stretches again and again across the Pacific, searching for some way to be ""the most Filipinx version / of myself""—a ""yearning for an archipelago / denied to me at conception"" that juxtaposes uneasily, in fact brilliantly, with the yearning of American men for Filipina women. Caught between two countries and three languages, Mix-Mix will suspend you, too, in the traditional Filipino dessert [Halo-Halo] of which [Mix-Mix] is the English translation: you'll find yourself in a tall glass, surrounded by the sweet, the colorful, and the cold.”  — Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, A Brief History of Fruit Dani Putney's second full-length collection, Mix-Mix, is sharp and smart and vulnerable. The poems move across time and space as the speaker explores and interrogates identity, sexuality, family history, and intergenerational trauma. The speaker writes: ""Imagination is all I have / when history gives me nothing. Percent / this, percent that, but my blood burns / for a vigil full of ghosts. I want to know / who I am, but I only find my father's / grave. Am I already dead?""  Indeed, imagination buoys the reader alongside the speaker through the haunting guides to ""marriage by correspondence,"" the dissection of gender-theory, and finally, the journey to understand the self and find a place to come home to.  — Roseanna Alice Boswell, Hiding in a Thimble and In the House | In the Woods In Dani Putney's new collection Mix-Mix, the poet writes ""imagination is all I have when history gives me nothing""—and yet, lush imagination is what allows this poet's stunning work to breathe and bloom, as the speaker grapples with existence as a mixed-race nonbinary Filipinx American. ""Mix-mix,"" a translation of the name of a Filipino dessert called ""halo-halo,"" refers, yes, to the complex idea of miscegenation, but also to the trauma experienced via imperialist notions of what it means to be both of and other, as well as what it's like to be at once queer and brown. The book is also rife with nostalgic food references describing nourishment from the Philippines: ""chicken / adobo, a row of fish heads, / & my mom's favorite, pork / blood stew""—imagery that feeds even those unfamiliar with the dishes. Still, because the speaker was ""born with ghosts in [their] eyes,"" it is clear why they ""want / to touch the history in [their] bones""—as if everything that matters is contained, hidden within. Yes, imagination is potentiality and nourishment, and the future is malleable, yielding under the brown body's efforts to find home in both self and surroundings. Putney's important collection proclaims ""I am the ultimate possibility""—an anthem for the colonized everywhere.  — Ina Cariño, Feast The title of this book, Mix-Mix, is the English translation of the Filipino dessert halo-halo. Halo-halo is a layered dessert, made up of beans and fruit and topped with shaved ice, condensed milk, ice cream, and leche flan in a clear glass. Similar to this dessert, Mix-Mix examines the layers of yearnings, confusions, and loves within the speaker's hybrid history and intersectional identity. It asks: How did we travel from here to here? How were we deprived by and lured toward America, toward its hollow calories, which leave us 'forever gutom,' forever underfed? These poems offer a kind of antidote to imperial deprivation. As soon as I opened this book, I felt that I was being invited to a family member's home, that I was being offered a meal, that I was being told the truth. Dani Putney's Mix-Mix is a beautiful and profoundly satisfying read, shaped by this speaker's vulnerability, empathy, and artistic brilliance. — Marianne Chan, All Heathens In Mix-Mix, the reader may feel the inescapable weight of Putney's circumstances stemming from the life one is born into, but this is only in order for Putney to better illustrate how empowering those personal truths can become if given the chance, and how illuminating those same truths can prove to be in helping us find our place in the world. Mix-Mix, as a testament to such self-discovery, will resonate long after the final page has been turned and culminates in a stirring collection of poems that burn and crackle in the light of unwavering faith in the fact that a life truly lived must be fully examined, no matter the cost.  — T.K. Lee, Scapegoat