This collection is at once a memorial to the past and a survey of its aftermath. Any single section would alone form a strong book. In Hydra Medusa, Shimoda has created a cohesive work of great depth and power.
Shimoda’s writing exists in a kind of polyphonic conversation with itself ... That this is exciting should go without saying—it’s almost like reading in a nascent form. It makes Hydra Medusa not only unexpected but also wholly fresh, not least because it is inchoate and difficult to pin down.
Unlike 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.
