In Bone Light, Orlando White’s debut volume, he explores the English language from a Diné (Navajo) perspective. He invites us to imagine that we, as a people--all people in this imaginary country called the United States--are speaking an Indigenous language and that the English language exists merely as a remnant of the colonial past. Despite its tenuous existence in this re-imagined present, English remains a danger to Indigenous thought, as it threatens to impose an alien worldview through its vocabulary and syntactical maneuvers. Historically, English was used by non-Natives to document Indigenous cultures; against this historical backdrop, White also writes to document, but he works to create something more beautiful than harmful. He does not attempt a critique of the English language; he works with it and against it to gain a better understanding of its peculiarities and limits, creating a relationship through these sometimes humorous, sometimes irreverent acts of exploration. Throughout Bone Light, Orlando White approaches the English language as if he has just encountered it, as if it were a mysterious set of symbols. Focusing on the particles of the language—the punctuation marks, the letters, the spaces between words—he turns them a while in his hand like strange inexplicable artifacts from a lost world, then sets to work, refashioning them into something he can use.

In Bone Light, Orlando White’s debut volume, he explores the English language from a Diné (Navajo) perspective. He invites us to imagine that we, as a people--all people in this imaginary country called the United States--are speaking an Indigenous language and that the English language exists merely as a remnant of the colonial past.

Despite its tenuous existence in this re-imagined present, English remains a danger to Indigenous thought, as it threatens to impose an alien worldview through its vocabulary and syntactical maneuvers. Historically, English was used by non-Natives to document Indigenous cultures; against this historical backdrop, White also writes to document, but he works to create something more beautiful than harmful. He does not attempt a critique of the English language; he works with it and against it to gain a better understanding of its peculiarities and limits, creating a relationship through these sometimes humorous, sometimes irreverent acts of exploration.

Throughout Bone Light, Orlando White approaches the English language as if he has just encountered it, as if it were a mysterious set of symbols. Focusing on the particles of the language—the punctuation marks, the letters, the spaces between words—he turns them a while in his hand like strange inexplicable artifacts from a lost world, then sets to work, refashioning them into something he can use.

“Orlando White's Bone Light recreates poetry from the molecular level. His vision presents language letter by letter: as body, as recipe, as originary myth, as admonition. Here, poetry moves stealthily through the smallest increments, in the ‘pause between ink and letter when words are silent, unclothed.’ In that bare space, poems keep time through their own arcane measure and the reader sees a ‘human clock’ emerge, one whose face is as much halo as empty zero. This astonishing writing dissects language with surgical and magical precision. White peels back our assumptions like a skin and gives us the irradiated, irreducible light of the bone.”

-Elizabeth Robinson,

author of Apprehend

Purchase Here: Amazon or Barnes & Noble