ko yo te
by ageha
how do we forgive those people who have hurt us most?
a girl who has no family; an argument in heaven. ko yo te is a novel torn to pieces, formatted as poetry, framed as myth, tells a story of being lost, and from there of how to find oneself again.
this short, eclectic book is written as something like a collective autofiction, with details and perspectives merging and diverging as it explores the fuzzy spaces between women and men, stories and truths, and living and dying. as an experimental (read: barely parseable) novel, it includes snippets of various languages and some very heavy use of japanese, without which a reader will probably be lost. it also makes reference to and builds upon mythologies of japan, greece, ancient israel, and the o’odham of arizona and northern mexico. essentially this is a book that probably can’t be read by anyone (including in the future its own author) without a few dictionaries and an internet connection handy, so be warned. (but, if you read it anyways, that would make its (present) author very happy.)
published march 2023