"Jackson Bliss seems to have dispatched DREAM POP ORIGAMI from a future where technically adventurous nonfiction blends so perfectly with vulnerable self-discovery that it's impossible to imagine the two functioning without each other...Bliss has made a memoir about how to nurture the different worlds that occupy a self that is beautiful, fascinating, heartbreaking, essential." -John D'Agata, A New History of an Essay
"The crackling sound you hear is me feverishly and compulsively turning the pages of Jackson Bliss' utterly original, genre defying riff on autobiography, memory, language and detail...From an exploration of video games to Tibetan higher planes, Bliss expresses the varied ways in which the second sight of his hapa artist self animates the landscape, while taking readers on a journey through unabashed emotion, memory and a life lived with intensity and great feeling." -Marie Mutsuki Mockett, American Harvest
"Bliss masterfully captures the kaleidoscopic gymnastics of his multicultural (hapa) identity, inviting the reader into humorous, heartbreaking, and insightful moments strung along a choose your own adventure." -Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark; Where We Go When All We Were is Gone
"Take a life and fold it in half then fold that half into another half; keep going until there is nothing left. Make it into something beautiful, dreamed, imagined; it can be any vision you want, that is, until it's time to take it apart, to examine just how such a self was constructed. You'll never be the same dreamer again. Jackson Bliss nonetheless exposes the creases, the wearing away of self and soul, the deterioration of appearances and the texture of the fragile nature of the idealized self against the reality into which we are constructed. Do you want to do this? he seems to ask, allowing us to spy or avert our eyes. If life is an adventure, what does it mean when you have to unfold, uncrease, unravel, destroy your life in order to live it? With candor and honesty, Bliss investigates how plans go awry, how following the pattern never leads to the perfection we seek. DREAM POP ORIGAMI is a beautifully made star. See for yourself." -Jenny Boully, Betwixt & Between: Essays on the Writing Life; The Body: An Essay
"In DREAM POP ORIGAMI, ceaseless migrations and reincarnations actualize playful transformation tales just like the samadhi of freedom folds across any and all barriers." -Duncan Ryuken Williams, American Sutra; Hapa Japan
"By turns sly, sorrowful, pensive, and forthright, DREAM POP ORIGAMI makes us rethink the possibilities of nonfiction writing, and of how we name and shape our identities." -Beth (Bich Minh) Nguyen, Stealing Buddha's Dinner
"At the risk of sounding trite, this book is just so much fun! But...fun is just a diversion tactic for DREAM POP ORIGAMI's honest profundity and Jackson Bliss's expert storytelling. Each adventure is delivered in its most perfect form, ready for your interactive pleasure: To feel the complicated pleasure of nostalgia, go to chapter 22. To feel the adolescent pleasure of a game, go to chapter 28. To feel the naughty pleasure of reading Jackson Bliss's prose, go to chapter 35. To fulfill satisfaction, read this book." -Lily Hoang, A Bestiary
"DREAM POP ORIGAMI moves with an exuberant voice that keeps on singing, because it knows there might not be anything on the other side of singing, and what do we have left but gameplay, lists, quizzes, graphs, and a valentine kind of love for the dying world? It's exactly the kind of company I need right now." -Paul Lisicky, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
