Nimrods

In <i>Nimrods</i> 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 honestly and 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 which 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.