https://www.cynthiadewioka.com/connect daily 0.75 2025-11-10 https://www.cynthiadewioka.com/home daily 1.0 2026-03-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/ae48be9e-7b88-4406-bd08-33abda3c979d/Tinderbox_Final_CVR_LG.jpg Home - available now. “This, this, this is a book that so many have been waiting for. Cynthia Dewi Oka writes in a lineage of defiant artists who were killed, exiled, or otherwise hurt for taking on this subject, and this book is a freedom - scalpel-cut from the tangled, corporeal forest of intergenerational trauma, from Western complicity in the 1965-66 genocide and the decades of violence after.” KHAIRANI BAROKKA, author of Ultimatum Orangutan “Evocative and haunting, Cynthia Dewi Oka’s A Tinderbox in Three Acts…refuses the trickery of objectivity, and is instead frank in its imaginings, in its need for imagining. Bringing this imagination of poetry to bear on the imaginations of fascism and genocide, this stirring collection is not an argument of equivalence, but of the many forms of risk we undertake in being with each other." SOLMAZ SHARIF, author of Customs “I cannot say enough how critical this work is for its history, specificity, and devotion… This book is a fire. A ceremony. An unburying.” ARACELIS GIRMAY, Editor-at-Large for Blessing the Boats Selections “Keenly observant and deeply imaginative, the collection rings as an elegy which resists easy narrative clarity and coherence of an irrepresentable historical event. Readers are to simply listen, mesmerized.” “Best Asian American Books of 2022,” Soapberry Review "Oka delivers a collection that is at once a remembrance and a revolution.” The Dawn Review https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/d86a442e-2a95-43da-be13-49622dc5c50d/Fire+Is+Not+a+Country+cover.jpg Home - availABLE NOW. “In Fire Is Not a Country, the devotional is alive and freed from those who have abused it … I kept this book by my pillow for weeks. Night after night, I returned, wanting to experience it again.” JENNY ZHANG, author of My Baby First Birthday “Funny, heartbreaking, filled with terror and degree of rigorous compassion one rarely sees in poems, Fire Is Not A Country achieves a formal range and virtuosity that really brought me to understand what the idea and practice of witness can mean in the hands and heart of a truly visionary poet.” GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI, author of Rocket Fantastic “Sensitive to the ways women often wear all of the hats—here poet, critic, director, and dramaturge—Oka is an auteur allergic to pre-packaged emotions… These poems help us map ourselves in a society where 'having a body is not the same thing as being seen.'" GREGORY PARDLO, author of Digest "Across a range of playful styles, Oka’s third collection favors talkative lines that chew on themes of global unrest and the Indonesian American heritage that 'lives like a witch in my house, turning the rice / yellow.'" GREGORY COWLES, New York Times “Oka challenges the perceptions of “us” versus “them” as she takes the audience on a journey about what it means to be seen or understood beyond the physical realm.” International Examiner “Oka’s speaker may be grappling with purpose, and point, and how any of it matters. But her poems leave me believing everything does.” The Night Heron Barks https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/c8eadd4b-9116-4896-b9a2-9bc791a657fe/Screen+Shot+2025-08-30+at+1.58.22+PM.png Home Image by AFP. Hind Rajab was a six-year-old Palestinian child who, alongside her family members, was killed by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza in January 2024 while they were attempting to evacuate. Click on image to learn about the investigation conducted by Forensic Architecture. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1624122945712-7LU1AMWW6HSJI5YUE8KO/Roger+Camp+photo.png Home Issue cover art by Roger Camp. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/bd8453af-023d-4223-9ee3-0b04aecccd49/Screen+Shot+2025-08-30+at+1.44.04+PM.png Home Image by AFP. Click on image to learn more about The Sameer Project, a Palestinian-led mutual aid initiative to support families displaced in Gaza by the ongoing US-Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1631543492685-6QXV1OLR7D00RP15GVUO/The+Rail+Park+billboard1.jpg Home https://www.cynthiadewioka.com/works daily 0.75 2026-04-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/9e41230f-9107-4ef1-aad2-9881134b2a0b/Tinderbox_Final_CVR_LG.jpg Works - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1624137386730-E5PRLZG55C8OLF4IDVBP/Fire+Is+Not+a+Country+cover.jpg Works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1624137425646-GNE2V9KJS59GYMG456ZM/salvage+cover.jpg Works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1624137708042-GG5M6JR0NY3ACHASQKU8/Nomad+of+Salt+and+Hard+Water+CORRECT.jpg Works https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1624204959930-KK96OT4252OGAXG6BE1C/Cynthia+Dewi+Oka+-+Ma%2C+A+Multidisciplinary+State.png Works - Make it stand out “Ma: A Multidisciplinary State,” a visual poem commissioned by Adi Magazine for their Fall 2020 Issue, Policy Recommendations: Poets Intervene. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1624145366784-HZRJU9JN957E2R3YJED8/mangostectomy.jpg Works - Make it stand out “Mangostectomy” by Cynthia Dewi Oka (2021). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ce0930cb78a410eb649ecb/1624204690175-U3YPSVMM1J7LUDC9D1KR/femme_borealis.jpg Works - Make it stand out “Femme Borealis” by Cynthia Dewi Oka (2021). https://www.cynthiadewioka.com/about daily 0.75 2026-03-27