Highlighting the prominent and contradictory place children occupy in Western culture, where they are at once cherished and reviled, As Lightning interrogates the nature of childhood itself. Offering multiple pathways through her own past via unexpected means—tests, riddles, word searches, rhyme, and a tour-de-force grouping of choose-your-own-adventure poems—Lenna Mendoza reveals the inherent pitfalls of imposing a narrative on a life.

In a paean to “the stuffed puppy I won’t leave,” she deftly observes, “we can hold more than we think.” This collection traces one multiracial queer girl’s experiences of identity, sexuality, trauma, race, gender, and the body itself, in vibrations and resonances that reconfigure these lenses of self-awareness and the limits of our understanding.