In Nimrods, Kawika Guillermo chronicles the agonizing absurdities of being a newly minted professor (and overtired father) hired to teach in a Social Justice Institute while haunted by the inner ghosts of patriarchy, racial pessimism, and imperial arrogance. Charged with the “personal is political” mandate of feminist critique, Guillermo powerfully recounts his wayward path, from being raised by two preachers’ kids in a chaotic mixed-race family, to his uncle’s death from HIV-related illness that helped prompt his parents’ divorce and his mother’s move to Las Vegas, to his many attempts to flee from American gender, racial, and religious norms by immigrating to South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Canada.
Through an often crass, cringey, and raw hybrid prose-poetic style, Guillermo reflects on anger, alcoholism, and suicidal ideation—traits that do not simply vanish after one is cast into the treacherous role of fatherhood or the dreaded role of professor. Guillermo’s shameless mixtures of autotheory, queer punk poetry, musical ekphrasis, haibun, academic (mis)quotations, and bad dad jokes present a bold new take on the autobiography: the fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir.
September 2023 from Duke University Press
ENDORSEMENTS
“Punchy prose alternating with incantatory poems, and sometimes melding into a haibun, Kawika Guillermo’s Nimrods magnifies perspectives on the father-son relationship and mixed race and ups the bar on the memoir genre. Irreverent, edgy, and—the only kind worth reading—brutally honest.”
—R. Zamora Linmark, author of The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart
“Lucid about the contradictions, Nimrods is incandescent in its rage, grief, and beauty. This is the poetry-story-theory we need to survive our battered and entangled inheritances and find our way into another time, unsettled but livable.”
— Larissa Lai, author of Iron Goddess of Mercy
REVIEWS
“As the story of one man’s life, Nimrods is worthwhile due to its unconventional approach as well as Guillermo’s honesty, creativity, emotional maturity, and overall skill as a writer. As something even bigger, it is an effective meditation on the power of perseverance and the possibility of reconciliation between the people we once knew and the people that we are now.”
“In this raw mix of poetry and prose, Guillermo chronicles his early life and experiences in academia as a bisexual, mixed-race man. . . . An affecting, unmistakable narrative: one in which Guillermo catalogs his difficulties, considers their effects, . . . and learns to find hope anyway. Though not for the faint of heart, this chaotic, fascinating self-portrait lingers.”
“With stylistic techniques ranging from biblical verse to punk lyric, Guillermo paints an empathetic, yet resentful picture”
Kawika Guillermo 