Description: Coconut Milk is the first book-length collection of poems by contemporary queer Samoan writer and painter Dan Taulapapa McMullin. His poems humorously attack cultural appropriation, gender, and the hypocrisies of Western influence in Oceania today. Pulling at the stereotype of a beautiful Polynesia available for the taking, his poems challenge and carve out new avenues of meaning for Pacific Islanders.
Review Quotes: "McMullin's Coconut Milk is a brilliant collection of both narrative and avant-garde poems descended from traditional storytelling that give voice to Samoan fa'afafine culture as it continues to flourish in Samoa and in the colonial diaspora."--Brandy Nalani McDougall, author of The Salt-Wind: Ka Makani Pa'Akai
"Tiki decor, as the advert says, can remind you and your customers of an exotic and tropical climate. The question posed by Dan Taulapapa McMullin's Coconut Milk is whether we want to be reminded of an exotic and tropical climate, that is to say, of the reality of an exotic and tropical climate, which may be humid, might be fetid, could be bee-stung with breezy beauty, as foreign and falsely friendly as our very own backyards, and as our own sense of family, who we keep, at our peril, in our back seats. Where you might, at your peril, keep these bristling lines."--Vanessa Place, author of Statement of Facts