Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight: Mia Ayumi Malhotra
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their publishing careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC). We hope using our platform to highlight this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to celebrate and support emerging women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities; featured poems will be from poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
October 2024 Poet: Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Isako’s Rules to Remember
You will be sent for by mail and arrive by ship. Shocking pink is a fine color to wear. To travel in style is the only way. A daughter-in-law is like a servant without a wage. Your mother will arrive by plane with feet swollen in her new shoes. The daughter you bear will neither speak your language nor understand your customs. Your granddaughter: even worse. Monday. Wednesday. Tuesday. How are you. Go away from here. You will help your mother copy these phrases into a small black notebook and one day you will find her marching in a parade at the county fair. With this you will learn there is more than one way to make a way.
Source
Isako Isako, Alice James Books, 2018
Poet Bio
Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Isako Isako, a California Book Award finalist and winner of the Alice James Award, the Nautilus Gold Award for Poetry, a National Indie Excellence Award, and a Maine Literary Award. Her second full-length collection, Mothersalt, is forthcoming in May 2025, also from Alice James Books. She is also the author of the chapbook Notes from the Birth Year, winner of the Bateau Press BOOM Contest. Mia holds degrees in creative writing from Stanford University and the University of Washington, and her work has received the Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry and the Singapore Poetry Prize. She is a Kundiman Fellow and founding member of The Ruby SF, a gathering space for women and nonbinary artists. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches poetry and writes about music and the interior life.