RaveHigh Country News\"The power of Vara’s collection rests, for me, in the sense of freedom characters are afforded through the realm of abjection: Facing the unthinkable helps these characters loosen themselves from expectations about how their feelings should manifest and why.\
Brandon Shimoda
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksUnlike the hydra in Greek mythology, Hydra Medusa’s wounds refuse cauterization, instead serving as sites of transformative historical encounter ... Rather than providing clear answers, Shimoda’s work offers something much more crucial: a kaleidoscopic way of seeing the world in which normative boundaries—of past and present, ancestor and descendant, dreaming and waking—blur past recognition.
