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jayisreading's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Sally Wen Mao strikes again with yet another lyrical and thought-provoking collection and, this time, puts the (mis)treatment of East Asian women in dialogue with stolen Chinese art (e.g., silk and porcelain). It was especially interesting to see how Mao explored how her two subjects experience objectification and fetishization in tandem with violence.
Much like her past poems, Mao plays a lot with form and style, ranging from concrete poems in the shape of vases through her "On Porcelain" poems, to free verse poems. Her poems shift in tone more in this collection, I feel, than her previous two, which I found engaging.
Some favorites: "On Porcelain" poems, "Batshit," "On Silk," "The Kingdom of Surfaces," "Playing Dead," "American Loneliness," and "On Garbage"
Much like her past poems, Mao plays a lot with form and style, ranging from concrete poems in the shape of vases through her "On Porcelain" poems, to free verse poems. Her poems shift in tone more in this collection, I feel, than her previous two, which I found engaging.
Some favorites: "On Porcelain" poems, "Batshit," "On Silk," "The Kingdom of Surfaces," "Playing Dead," "American Loneliness," and "On Garbage"
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Colonisation, Death, and Animal death
Minor: Drug use, Murder, and Pandemic/Epidemic
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