Though origin story is a story of family and past, it is, of course, a story about the poet.--Jaclyn Youhana Garver, Colorado Review

From post-Korean War era to the present day, ongoing brutalities upon Black bodies, and the complexities of a speaker born to a Black-Asian mother and Black father, Jackson's poems in origin story reveal the porous interconnectedness of our boundaries--bloodlines, memories, trauma, silences--and how origin stories and their contested retellings hold deep roots to our sense of betrayal and belonging.--Esther Lee, author of Sacrificial Metal

From post-Korean War era to the present day, ongoing brutalities upon Black bodies, and the complexities of a speaker born to a Black-Asian mother and Black father, Jackson's poems in origin story reveal the porous interconnectedness of our boundaries--bloodlines, memories, trauma, silences--and how origin stories and their contested retellings hold deep roots to our sense of betrayal and belonging.--Esther Lee, author of Sacrificial Metal

origin story is both intensely intimate and utterly everyman. These are poems of both great weight and profound lightness. . . It is impossible to read origin story and not feel obliged to think hard about one's own upbringing, impossible not to be moved and changed by what these poems bring to light.--Tim Seibles, author of Fast Animal

In origin story, Gary Jackson delivers a work of beauty and talent. Like so much honey down our throats, he channels the voices of his mother, his grandparents, his family, and his encyclopedic knowledge of comics to create a new and necessary universe. It challenges racism and carried assumptions while creating an honest dialogue that ultimately ends with connection and compassion. These poems are where the body becomes word.--Juan Morales, author of The Handyman's Guide to End Times: Poems