A review by samandtheirbooks
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan

4.25

Some of the poems were a bit too pretentious. 

I also had trouble relating but that isn't a flaw of the work. Or a flaw of my own. It just... is. 

Some quotes I liked were
"How tears come on like poems" 
"Love, when socially accepted, becomes habit"
"My mother loves the handmade noodles, enjoys the cacophony of families" 

I don't know. I like it but some of it felt preachy. 

It's hard to criticize a work. Maybe I wouldn't find it preachy and pretentious if I related more. 
But it was more about the phrasing, the words used, than it was the material. 
Poetry is an inherently pretentious art though.