No one is safe in the world of Sabrina Guo's electrifying debut, Catalogue of Ripening. The village fish are poisoned with mercury. Children rehearse their endings with lockdown drills. A seawall becomes the sea. Balancing narrative impulse and lyric flair, Guo takes us on a journey from childhood to adolescence, from innocence to knowledge-the world no longer a site of wonder but corruption, contamination, cancer. Through poems that realize the world's capacity for violence first in language, then in action, Guo captures the unique anxieties-and joys-of growing up in Generation Z.
