In a world that silenced her voice, Sammi Yamashiro's own thoughts provided her the solace that she needed.

The Peach Pit Mask details her teenage years almost like diary entries.

The collection is divided into four parts:

Part One (2017 / ages 15 &16): Searching For & Reclaiming My Voice

My father and this dreadful world tried their best to mute me...

Part Two (2018 / ages 16 &17): Numbness All Throughout... Yet, I Had Found God

I return to my mother, but she wants little to do with me...

Part Three (2019 / ages 17&18): My First Love: My Salve & My Second most Significant Abandoner

I thought God gifted me my brightest blessing...

Part Four (2020 / ages 18 &19): The American Dream Isn't What It Seems

I move halfway across the world to introduce myself to the other side of my identity, that of my American side. Perhaps she will take me in?

In its entirety, the collection covers enduring and internalizing familial abuse, self-loathing, hopelessness, experiencing abandonment numerous times. Her poems also cover her identity issues and experience with depression, anxiety, depersonalization, life-ending thoughts, and other deeply personal experiences.

Yet, a sizeable portion of these works are empowering and optimistic. Within every abuse/ trauma survivor is the core that fights back: the vigor which knows the strength that has never left. This collection shows both the struggles and the acknowledgement of that power.

Poetry, in Sammi Yamashiro's eyes, is the form of literature that truly encapsulates the reality of what is contained in the human mind, whether it be vulnerability which most don't publicly voice but reminds us that our heartaches are universal, or the relentless spirit which could emancipate one from their darkness, even if only a little bit.