Reviews

The Kingdom of Surfaces: Poems by Sally Wen Mao

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anneliehyatt's review

4.0

read my review here :D : https://c-j-l-c.org/portfolio/the-shell-of-another-empire-a-review-of-sally-wen-maos-the-kingdom-of-surfaces/

hein's review

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Poetry

Thank you Graywolf Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available August 1st 2023.

Evocative and endlessly imaginative, Sally Wen Mao's The Kingdom of Surfaces crosses time and space to bridge together the migration story of East Asian American women and femmes. Using fashion and art as her portals to the past, Mao effortlessly crosses through different eras of Chinese and American history. By juxtaposing past and present, she creates a "looking glass" distortion, showing how the distant past is very much still alive today. I was constantly looking up the artwork she was referring to, which made for a fun scavenger hunt type of reading experience. Somewhere between poetry and prose, between art history lessons and fiction, Mao's women demand to be seen, heard, and respected.

sapphodemia's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

ac_rva's review

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

nataliedc's review

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

A lovely full-length collection of poems that explores the intersection of beauty and violence, commodification and colonization through motifs of porcelain, silk, and pearls. Sally Wen Mao's verse is both delicate and powerful as it uses fragile images like vases to invoke heavy subject such as anti-Asian hate perpetuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While I wholly enjoyed the writing style and resonated with much of the themes discussed, I felt the collection was a little too drawn-out and that many of the poems (specifically in the middle part) could've been cut out as they covered such similar ground. With that said, I still really enjoyed this collection and hope to check out more of the author's works soon. Favorites include: All the "On Porcelain"s, "Batshit," "Minted," and "American Loneliness."

madamewritelyso's review

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4.0

This was my first book by Mao that I've read. (I have her other two poetry books bookmarked for later!) This poetry collection was marvelous in its language, juxtaposing past and present in poems about the Chinese-American diaspora and social injustices. Reading this collection once through, I now want to read it again. There's so much layered in each poem that deserves many more reads.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!