To the Unnamed: Poems

A powerful document of surviving cycles of violence, child abuse, and cultural erasure to reclaim a place, an identity, and a name

Rob Arnold’s debut collection To the Unnamed is a wrenching exploration of family and monstrosity. It recounts, in glancing narratives and jagged lyrics, a painful history beginning with the poet’s early life as an Indigenous child-abuse survivor adopted out of foster care into a White military family with its own secrets. One thread involves Arnold’s biological mother, a CHamoru woman who lost her children while trying to save them from violence. Another follows Arnold’s adopted family as they fall into disease and addiction.

At the center of this collection is the chimera—a monster composed of incongruous parts, a figure for Arnold’s experiences as a biracial adoptee living a divided life. Survival has meant renouncing those divisions and reuniting with his birth mother and their shared CHamoru identity.

To the Unnamed is an unflinching confrontation with child abuse and an America armed against itself—and a moving account of how Arnold learned to tell his story.