Within the contours of TENDER lie field notes from a life lived across multiple affinities, kinships, and desires. Equally visual and textual, TENDER is a beautifully complex collection spanning thirty years of curious inquiry into our shared human–animal condition. Laiwan traverses diverse terrains – the body, land, language – which are rooted in her courageous and uncompromising history of activism and in experiences of building community across and beyond difference. TENDER offers a radical and decolonizing cleansing of all that oppresses and alienates.
The words and images in this collection reveal the heroic struggles of gendered, raced, and sexual differences from a place of incredible tenderness and vulnerability. Laiwan’s words imprint in us the need to breathe our animal skins back to life after the scarring of fearful states of abandonment and betrayal. Read as a retrospective and as a continued call for a passionate caring for one another, TENDER offers us freedom in the face of limitation: a working at setting free. Each section of the book captures a moment in time and feeling. Ghostly images are choreographed to leave us alerted to longing and hope, absence and presence. It is as if the entire collection were a garden at different stages of growth, with the inevitable decay and renewal that each season brings. Haunting, political, and defiantly sexy, Laiwan’s voice is a guiding force.
"Laiwan's poetry moves between myth and minutiae with bright, buoyant optimism."—Rebecca Peng, Rungh Magazine
"A book which reminds its reader to wander without objective, 'for intimacy is new every time.'"—PRISM international
By Laiwan
Laiwan is a visual artist, writer, activist, thinker, speaker, and educator in Vancouver, British Columbia. It has been said that she is reticent and modest, shying away from the spectacular, and these traits may belie the cosmopolitan and eclectic sources of her thought, as what she produces is so often surprising, even in its exploration of the ephemeral.
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news | 2022-12-14
Holiday Titles
…of the West End. Sometimes twisted, sometimes tender, I Saw Three Ships will speak to all who have …
news | 2022-05-06
New Title Arrival
…linger. Spirited, vulnerable, and achingly tender, Kirton journeys through memory to illuminate the …
news | 2022-03-08
International Women's Day
…Margaret Christakos. Earle Street by Arleen Paré. TENDER by Laiwan. Iron Peggy by Marie Clements. …
news | 2022-02-24
Recently Arrived in Office
…of his stage character: Destination Paradise tenderly narrates Édouard’s rite of passage. We’re …
news | 2021-12-17
Holiday Book Recommendation
…of the West End. Sometimes twisted, sometimes tender, I Saw Three Ships will speak to all who have …
news | 2021-07-22
Book Recommendations for Vancouver Pride 2021
…Landry Jones in the leading role. “Funny, harsh, tender, and terrible, the play engages us in a twisted …
news | 2020-12-17
Talonbooks Fall 2020 Launch!
…read from Earle Street . Laiwan will read from TENDER . Gladys Maria Hindmarch will read from Wanting …
news | 2020-03-24
An excerpt from Laiwan's new book, TENDER
…of the world,” a poem from Laiwan’s TENDER , which just arrived in-house at Talon. Pick up … your copy of TENDER today! a celebration of spring, the coming of …
news | 2020-03-16
Talonbooks' Spring 2020 Launch: Postponed
…. Margaret Christakos: Charger . Laiwan: TENDER . Mercedes Eng: my yt mama . …
news | 2020-03-04
TENDER has arrived in-house!
…that Laiwan’s debut book of poetry, TENDER , is fresh from the press! Within the contours of … TENDER lie field notes from a life lived across multiple … kinships, and desires. Visual and textual, TENDER is a beautifully complex collection spanning … building community across and beyond difference. TENDER offers a radical and decolonizing cleansing of … oppresses and alienates. Pick up your copy of TENDER today! …
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