Motherlands: Poems

by Weijia Pan

Winner of the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, this engrossing debut interrogates history, identity, and the power of poetry to elucidate both.

Motherlands opens with a child drawn early to poetry. “In summer I write. Two lines at a time, two vying souls / running up the wall.” The collection follows this speaker-poet through a childhood in post-Maoist China and an eventual move to the United States, laying bare cultural and linguistic tensions in both historical and modern settings. He cites Chinese laborers toiling in American factories—an echo of the brutalities endured by those who constructed the Transatlantic Railroad—and speaks to anxieties around belonging, assimilation, and identity. “If I forget one character a day,” he writes. “I will have forgotten Chinese / by the end of 2042.”

In these attentive, imaginative poems, Weijia Pan questions the artist’s duty—his duty—as a chronicler of truth, especially through issues of displacement and global injustice. What can the poet do but observe? And yet, in unpacking ancestral traumas connected to Maoist China and modern-day bigotry exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, he still finds himself turning to art as a way to understand both the self and the world at large. Through elegant juxtapositions, Pan crafts an emotional world that is at once regional and universal—Li Bai and Du Fu sit alongside Glenn Gould and Sviatoslav Richter, pepper used to bless new roads is repurposed in the mace used against protesters, two languages compete on a single tongue. Lyrical and visionary, this collection embodies poetry’s capacity to ground us, teach us, and change us.

Genres: Poetry, Audiobook

74 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 17, 2024

Reviews

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suspect I might have done better reading this physically rather than listening as an audiobook, but there were parts of it I liked. Motherlands is a modern poetry collection in conversation with the political and personal complexity of being from China, among other things. I received an audio review copy via Libro.FM, all opinions are my own.

[Sasha Fountain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Motherlands by Weijia Pan is a solid poetry collection that immerses us in the sights, sounds, and feelings of the poet's lived experience and his ancestors' history. This book is a beautiful tribute to heritage and identity, inspiring readers to connect with their roots and appreciate the richness of diverse cultures.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this twice. Interesting prose poems!
Thank you to Milkweed Books via Libro.fm for my ALC!

[Sarah Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always have trouble rating poetry. It is always great to hear someone’s story in verse but I probably would not reread this one. Thank you to Libro.fm for the ALC!

[Ashley Scow · Rating 2 out of 5]

(2.5 rounded down) While I loved the accent of the author/narrator, I kept losing focus and had a hard time capturing the essence of his experiences. While I was hoping for more lyrical material, it seemed a bit bland and clunky.

[Bethany Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think this worked for me, but I feel I'd enjoy it more as an ebook. While the author narrates it well enough, I found it hard to focus on the poems. The poems seemed more like prose, so maybe my expectations were a bit off on this one.

Overall, some interesting writing, but I didn't really get it.

Thank you to Libro FM for the ALC

[Lynne Fort · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I found in these poems was something I have thought often in my own life, which is that there are a lot of questions about our families and the lives of people we either know ourselves or have heard about from older relatives that will never be answered. There will always be things I wonder about that I know will remain an open question forever, but I also know I will continue to imagine how it could have been forever too. For me, this is also a collection about where we come from and how we remember and reframe those origins.

[Ahu Terzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyrical (great to read aloud) and very thoughtful, using juxtapositions to bring what’s foreign closer to familiar, what’s global to local, what’s historical to our every day. My favorite was the poem titled “A Man Writes a Ghazal, A Son Grows Up, and What Nostalgia Tells Us.”

[Caroline Mickey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry isn't always my thing, and that was the case with this collection.

I was able to read this courtesy of the ALC program with Libro.fm

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid poetry collection that immerses us in the sights, sounds, and feelings of the poet's lived experience and his ancestors' history.

[Andrea (Hammock and Read) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Childhood in China and goes to today in America with Covid. I listen but this might be better via ebook for this one. More Prose than poems.

thanks to Milkweed Books via Libro.fm for my ALC

[Jerry Muzsik · Rating 4 out of 5]

China and the USA - mainly China.. train songs and life as an immigrant and connectedness to a homeland with vivid scenes of said place

[Haylee Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounding this up to 3 stars just because I listened to it and I think that negatively impacted my experience

[Nicole Mayberry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Libro FM and Cupboard Maker Books for the ARC. Listened to the audio - which is always cool to hear the author.

[Isa King · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of poems that touches both the personal and political, andwhat it means to feel displaced in a home that is far from home. Weijia Pan's poetry speaks to his experience in the diaspora, how such a movement puts him farther from both country and history as the years pass, but also brings him closer to their heart as he reflects on the specific way the world encounters him as part of these legacies. Legacy is a central motif in this collection, and in particular, those passed between family—son, father, grandfather, and country all reckoning with the inheritance of trauma. Interestingly, Weijia Pan characterizes the country as "mother," when all the most important relationships traced in this collection were about men.

Overall, did not work for me. While the subjects and themes covered were interesting, the poems themselves felt imagistically weak and lyrically boring.