Taitano, Lehua M.: A Bell Made of Stones

A Bell Made of Stones by Lehua M. Taitano (Tinfish Press, paperback) Publication Date: November 1, 2013 Publisher Marketing: Poetry. Pacific Islander Studies. Queer Studies. "Lehua M. Taitano was born on Guåhan (Guam), the largest of the Marianas Islands, to a Chamorro mother and a Euro-American father. When Taitano was four years old, her family migrated to the Appalachia mountains of North Carolina. Since that time, she has lived in many different places on the continental United States. The poetry in Taitano's first collection, entitled A BELL MADE OF STONES, attempts to reconstruct the foundations of home through story, fragments, echo, and type. Chamorro people, indigenous to the Marianas archipelago in the region of Pacific known as Micronesia, once built their houses atop rows of 'latte,' a two-tiered stone structure composed of a pillar and a capstone. The shape of the latte resembles a bell. These poems experiment with typographic representation and juxtaposition; in addition