The two collections of poems in this work, Shadowgraph and Zoltan's Food, demonstrate the role inheritance plays in the lives of those underrepresented in the annals of American and world history. Shadowgraph is comprised of autobiographical lyric poems that revolve around the author's struggles growing up in a multicultural, multiracial home. Matsumoto's desperation to blend her father's Japanese heritage and her mother's Irish legacy into a unified whole is illustrated in poems dealing with racism, identity, and acceptance. The second set of poems, Zoltan's Food, chronicles the life of Zoltan, a young boy living in 1970s Poland. To escape his country's communist past, he and his family embark on a journey of multiple migrations which are described in a series of narrative prose poems. Both collections confront history and rework it to include the voices of those silenced by a dominant culture.
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