R. Vincent Moniz, Jr., records the life and times of a mostly uneducated, economically disadvantaged, literary award-winning urban Indian. Much of his work reflects the people and stories from a neighborhood with the moniker Cockroach while simultaneously depicting contemporary issues of Native America. Poems in this collection are filled with a dreaded fire of wit and cynicism given to him by the Oglala and NuuÉtaare peoples who helped to raise him. With a great deal of bathos, he glides and slides seamlessly from silly to sorrow without effort. His formidable verse irradiates and acknowledges the lives of an in-between people who are too urban for the reservation and too indigenous for American culture, while he himself navigates multitudes, including his place within nerd/pop culture, which widens the scope of his writing. This collection mirrors a subculture that is being either hustled or altogether overlooked, and does so honestly without filter or worry. Moniz’s poetic genetics are a blend of orators that came before him and a new wave of emerging Indigenous American voices. The reader can see these narratives twist and turn to the heartbeat he writes them in.
