In her debut YA novel-in-verse, An Expanse of Blue, Kauakanilehua Māhoe Adams offers an intimate slice of life about grief, sisterhood, and the power of being seen.
Aouli Elizabeth Smith, a Kānaka (Indigenous Hawaiian) teen living in Hawk Valley, Wash., is unmoored. In Hawaiian, her name means "blue, sky, expanse," and she holds that meaning close to her heart: "My soul is great/ sweeping like the sky." But lately, she feels lost in that great swathe--she is not pliant and perfect like her sister Kāia; not silent and godly like her mother; and is one of the few brown faces in the crowd of white that is her suburb and church. Her stoic father's moods have begun to shift like unpredictable tides, the entire household subject to their sway.
Aouli finds some solace in her journal, a place for "all the songs in [her] head to go," though they are less songs and more "lyrics/ aching/ for a melody." And her physical refuge is Aunty Ehu's house, where the Kānaka community in Hawk Valley gathers on Saturdays. But when Aouli discovers a life-altering secret on her father's phone, even that safest of havens becomes tainted. When a boy with eyes "full of stars" appears at church youth group, he immediately guesses Aouli is Hawaiian, highlighting for her what it is she needs: to be seen. Her identity isn't hard "to figure out," she thinks, "when someone was born/ of the same sky/ of the same sea/ of the same people/ as you."
In the tradition of Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X and Dean Atta's The Black Flamingo, An Expanse of Blue is a novel-in-verse with spare text and expansive feeling. As Aouli moves through a particularly turbulent time, Adams uses the urgent language of poetry to convey Aouli's inner world. While the story unfolds in a linear narrative, the poems are often potent afterimages of Aouli's emotional experiences.
Adams's skill is evident in the way she plays with the form and structure of her text. Aouli moves between a variety of poetic forms, from visually striking concrete poems to surreal depictions of dreams. Adams tells the story from inside a specific diasporic community and, because of its diaristic format, An Expanse of Blue is intrinsically intimate. But as is so often true of poetry, its specificity is what lends to its universality--in the wide expanse of space between Aouli's words, anyone might find a piece of themselves reflected. --Mariel Fechik DesLaurier, librarian, freelance writer, music reviewer
Shelf Talker: In this subtle but powerful debut YA novel, a Native Hawaiian teen explores connection, heartbreak, and identity through poetry.