Poetry and Prose
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Poetry and Prose
Committee Members: Marie Lee, Julie Shigekuni
Winners:
Mouth, by Lisa Chen (poetry)
The Last Communist Virgin, by Wang Ping (prose)
Our committee selected Mouth, by Lisa Chen, for the poetry award. The author’s work is quite “hip and original” while simultaneously drawing together Asian American historical conditions such as the Chinese immigrants’ thoughts and [End Page 351] feelings for leaving to find wealth in “Gold Mountain” in her poem “Songs of Gold Mountain.” Her “plainspoken” writing distills as well as encapsulates unique Asian American experiences into precise images. For example, “Parachute Girls” captures and highlights the growing phenomenon whereby parents who live in Asia (“Taipei, Seoul, Hong Kong”) set up homes for their children in the United States in order for these children to earn a college degree, not realizing the consequences of fracturing their families. As she writes:
Parachute girls believe once they get their degrees, they’ll live at home again, when in fact they have begun to die here with their strange names in the Western style.
(23)
More important, Chen’s work contributes to the study of migration and diaspora, since many of her poems relate to the conditions of people constantly traveling and journeying to a different geographical region. Her poems “Landscape Series” and “I Didn’t Always Look This Way” address issues of exile and belonging, especially when someone is from another “place” or space.
Finally, Chen’s work articulates many current social and cultural conditions of Asian Americans today, whether she is writing about problems with translation, border crossings, or the media.
Our committee selected The Last Communist Virgin, by Wang Ping, for the prose award. The author’s work consists of a series of interwoven narratives strung together by combining comedy (typically humor) and tragedy that convey microhistories and personal stories of those living in China and the United States. The depictions of the various characters’ personal experiences are set within a broader landscape of current issues facing those living in China and the United States in order to highlight the complexity and heterogeneity of the lives of Chinese nationals, Chinese Americans, and, more broadly, Asian Americans as a whole.
Yet what makes Ping’s work stand out is her interplay of sex, sexuality, and drama, which is also combined with a playful sense of humor locating a unique sensibility that causes her audience to rethink the prose genre. Ping has a distinctive ability to highlight social, economic, political, and cultural phenomena through the exchanges and relationships of her diverse Asian and Asian American characters. These stories honor the evolving tradition of Asian America and contribute to the canon of Asian American literature.
