Brandon Shimoda Livres

Exploring the theme of identity and belonging, this memoir delves into the grandson's journey to understand his grandfather's enduring battle for citizenship. Through personal reflections and poignant storytelling, he grapples with the contrasts between their experiences, highlighting the complexities of heritage and the impact of immigration on family dynamics. The narrative serves as a tribute to his grandfather's resilience while seeking to bridge the gap between past struggles and present realities.

​A book of poetry, dreams and speculative talks, collected from the psychic detritus of living in the US-Mexico borderlands. Part coping mechanism, part magical act, Hydra Medusa was composed while Brandon Shimoda was working five jobs and raising a child--during bus commutes, before bed, at sunrise. Encountering the ghosts of Japanese American ancestors, friends, children and bodies of water, it asks: what is the desert but a site where people have died, are dying; are buried, unburied, memorialized, erased. Where they are trying, against and within the energy of it all, to contend with our inherited present--and to live.