A Place Called No Homeland

by Kai Cheng Thom

This extraordinary poetry collection journeys to the place where forgotten ancestors live and monstrous women roam—and where the distinctions between body, land, and language are lost. In these fierce yet tender narrative poems, Thom draws from both memory and mythology to create new maps of gender, race, sexuality, and violence. Descended from the traditions of oral storytelling, spoken word, and queer punk, Thom's debut collection is evocative and unforgettable. Kai Cheng Thom is a trans writer and performance artist whose work has been published in Buzzfeed , Autostraddle , Asian American Literary Review , and xoJane . She writes regularly for Everyday Feminism .

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Transgender, Canada, Race, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2017

About the author

Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, social worker, fierce trans femme and notorious liar who loves lipstick and superhero cartoons. A prolific essayist and poet, her work appears online in publications including BuzzFeed, xoJane, Everyday Feminism, and Autostraddle; and in print in Asian American Literary Review, Plenitude, and Matrix Magazine, among others. Her first collection of poetry, a place called No Homeland, will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in Spring 2017. As a spoken word artist, she has appeared and featured at venues including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She is also a mental health community worker and co-founder of the collective Monster Academy: Mental Health Skills for Montreal Youth. Kai Cheng lives in Montreal and Toronto, both of which were built on unceded Indigenous territory. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir is her first novel.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic debut for this poet, focusing on identity and survival, navigating borders between gender expectations and gender identity, Chinese cultural background and Canadian "home," never feeling quite like they belong, but tackling life with a fullness and energy that comes across in every word.

There is a great video on YouTube of the poet talking about the poetry and concepts therein, but I haven't been able to find any performances of the poetry itself. I would LOVE to see it performed because I feel that is what the poems are intended for.

Poems I loved:

the river
"...shadows without bodies, words without tongues
these names swirl in the river of sighs, whispering
the secrets of their meanings as they wait for the nameless
to return..."

queer tribe
"..where are our leaders? who can teach us how to justice, not just on tumblr
but on the dance floor in our homes in each other's arms?
i think we gotta stop fetishizing survival we are all survivors...."

you & me
"...i used to steal
but i don't anymore
no longer the scared shitless
streetwise queer teen..."

And perhaps the best title ever goes to:

sometimes my body is a slutty bitch bad girl

Thanks to the publisher for providing me early access to this title through Edelweiss.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fucking phenomenal collection of poetry. I can't even believe it's her debut. Poems with strong roots in oral traditions and spoken word, you can really hear them in your mind and heart. Tough and tender meditations on family, race, being trans, femininity, trauma, relationships, community, sex, books, and love.

"All i want is to turn my lungs into a glass instrument and let them sing glory to my sisters"

"there is a poem
scratched onto the walls of my throat
no one has heard it
but it is there"

"dear white gay men:
you are neither the face
of my oppression
nor the hands
of my salvation"

See my full review here

[Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury · Rating 5 out of 5]

"জন্মের আগেও জন্ম পরেও জন্ম তুমিই এমন
সুরেরও গভীর সুরে পদাবলীর ধরন যেমন।"

ক্যুইয়ার সাহিত্য অল্প কিছু নেড়েচেড়ে দেখার অভিজ্ঞতা থাকলেও এই কাব্য সংকলনটির মত কিছু আমি কোনোদিনও পড়িনি।

লেখিকা চাইনিজ বংশদ্ভূত কানাডিয়ান, জন্মসুত্রে ছেলে হলেও নিজেকে আইডেন্ডিফাই করেন মেয়ে হিসেবে (Transwomen), পরবর্তীতে শারিরীকভাবে পরিবর্তিত হবার জন্য কিছু মেডিকেল প্রসেসের মধ্য দিয়ে যান। একদিকে পারিবারিক গন্ডিতে প্রাচ্যের ঐতিহ্য, শরীরে বয়ে চলা চাইনিজ রক্ত; অন্যদিকে, জন্ম, বেড়ে ওঠা, পড়াশুনা পাশ্চাত্যে - সব মিলিয়ে বিচ্ছিন্নবোধ, কোনোটিই যেন নিজের দেশ হয়ে উঠতে পারে না। সেই সাথে নিজের পুরুষ দেহটাও যেন নারী মনের বাড়ি নয়। এগুলো একাকার করেই কবিতাগুলোর সৃষ্টি। এসবের সাথে জড়িয়ে আছে শৈশবের পারিবারিক নির্যাতনের স্মৃতি, ভালোবাসা খুঁজতে গিয়ে বারবার ধর্ষিত হবার হাহাকার, হরমোন থেরাপির মধ্য দিয়ে যাবার সময় এতদিনের চেনা দেহটাও অপরিচিত বোধ হওয়াতে নিজেকে, নিজের পূর্বপুরুষদের সাথে আত্মার বাঁধনকে হারিয়ে ফেলার আশংকা। নিজে ক্যুইয়ার হলেও পাশ্চাত্যের ক্যুইয়ারদের চাইতে সেক্সুয়ালিটি, স্ট্রাগল সবই আলাদা। তাই একাত্ম হতে পারেন না পাশ্চাত্যের ক্যুইয়ার কমিউনিটির সাথে, তাদের আন্দোলনে। কর্মক্ষেত্রেও জায়গা করে নেয়াটাও দূরহ। এত ধাক্কা খেয়ে খেয়ে শিখে নিয়েছেন নিজেকে ভালোবাসতে, পথটা খুঁজে নিতে, নিজের জায়গাটুকু করে নিতে।

কবিতার গঠন নিয়ে প্রচুর খেলেছেন, বইয়ের এই জিনিসটা খুবই ইন্টারেস্টি। 'ডাউনটাউন বিস্টসাইড', 'দ্যা রিভার', 'গার্ল বয়, ইউ ফ্যাম ফ্যাম ফ্যাব্যুলাস', 'হাংগার ফ্যান্টম' এর ফর্মগুলো দেখে খানিকটা নড়েচড়ে বসতে হয়।

অজানা-অপরিচিত গঠনে, অজানা-অপরিচিত বিষয়বস্তু নিয়ে লেখা কবিতার মাধ্যমে একজন অজানা-অপরিচিত কবিকে আবিস্কারের সু্যোগ আসে বলেই মনে হয় আমি আজও সর্বভুক পাঠক।

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this slim volume of poetry by Kai Cheng Thom about gender, race and trauma. She has a way with words; so many poems hit like a punch. A lot of them will stay with me. I especially loved Queer Tribe, among many others and the one line that I remember is this (paraphrased): "you're fighting for the right to love freely, I'm fighting to be loved at all" in describing the struggles of transwomen and it made me really emotional.

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shorter Version

A Place Called No Homeland is the debut collection of poetry by Kai Cheng Thom. Her poems are very powerful and autobiographical in nature, filled with authentic and gut-wrenching experiential truths of love, violence, longing and pain. It is a true story of the painful experiences of a boy who knows from a young age that he is/wants to be a girl but must live like a boy. Growing older, the pain intensifies and Thom presents to the world as the female she knows she was born be. I thought her achievement of writing with such strength and honesty about a real life in poetry was daring, inventive and very successful.

Thom’s poetry is so personal that I cannot describe it. To try to do so would do her poetry a disservice but I can say honestly and wholeheartedly that I really, really felt where Thom was coming from. I felt the pain, the longing, the rage and love that came from deep inside. Thom uses words to express how she feels but her communication is far deeper than words can express. Her words created images and feelings deep within me - very powerful, very moving, and very worth feeling. Thom took me with her on her journey from a young boy wanting to be a girl, through the tough times of being a young male offering himself to anyone to make human connection, a seeming deliberate punishment of himself for being less than, unlovable, unwanted, the wrong colour and the wrong sex etcetera. Thom also shared with me his transition to present himself to the world as a she, as the female he always knew he wanted to be and was born to be.

In the end Thom’s message is that all she wants and really anyone wants is to be loved and valued for who they really are. She longs to be loved unconditionally, to be honest and open, to show both her dark and bright aspects and to be loved for “exactly everything about her.”

This powerful, harshly honest and emotional collection of poetry will call you back to read repeatedly. 4 stars.

Longer Version

A Place Called No Homeland is the debut collection of poetry by Kai Cheng Thom. Her poems are very powerful and autobiographical in nature, filled with authentic and gut-wrenching experiential truths of love, violence, longing and pain. It is a true story of the painful experiences of a boy who knows from a young age that he is/wants to be a girl but must live like a boy.

Thom moved to Canada with her parents from China. The country and culture of China, her familial ancestry, her yellow skin and the racism she’s experienced are often in her poems. Her written word on paper read and sounded like a live voice performance in my head. The cadence, rhythm and power takes on its own life, much like the spoken work of a rapper or the strong vocal performer that Thom is.

Thom’s words are very evocative with a great deal of intensity. I could feel the pain, the violence, the longing, the anger, the rage, the loving, the every “thing” that Thom experiences deep in her body, soul and heart. Thom describes her own reality and her feelings about important issues she has faced over a young life - racism, white privilege, brown poverty, sexual dominance of white males over brown bodies, everyday rape, sex addiction, sadism, self-violence, cutting and scarring, violence by others - by males, females, families, intimates and friends.

Thom’s poetry is so personal that I cannot describe it. To try to do so would do her poetry a disservice but I can say honestly and wholeheartedly that I really, really felt where Thom was coming from. I felt the pain, the longing, the rage and love that came from deep inside. Thom uses words to express how she feels but her communication is far deeper than words can express.

Her words created images and feelings deep within me - very powerful, very moving, and very worth feeling. Thom took me with her on her journey from a young boy wanting to be a girl, through the tough times of being a young male offering himself to anyone to make human connection, a seeming deliberate punishment of himself for being less than, unlovable, unwanted, the wrong colour and the wrong sex etcetera. Thom also shared his transition to present himself to the world as a she, as the female he always knew he was born to be.

p. 51 “there is no need for silence there is no need for shame your body is a map of the divine”

p. 80 “I know that I am capable of pouring love like lavender oil into your cupped palms there is forgiveness like honey pooled in the chambers of our hearts you are the thing I am most grateful for all bodies know how to heal themselves given enough time all demons carry a map of heaven in their scars beneath the skin of every history of trauma there is a love poem waiting deep below.

In the end Thom’s message is that all she wants and really anyone wants is to be loved and valued for who they really are. She longs to be loved unconditionally, to be honest and open, to show both her dark and bright aspects and to be loved for “exactly everything about her.”

This powerful, harshly honest and emotional collection of poetry will call you back to read repeatedly. 4 stars.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

“there some stories that are never told/but known
nonetheless we bake them into bread/fill buns with secrets
like sweet lotus paste/ “what can’t be cured must be endured
“chinese families
don’t talk about our feelings”/“we wash them down
with pork”/ “do as you are told, child”/ “eat what’s in your bowl”
swallow it/bitter or sweet
some violence, we
keep inside our bodies/scar tissue/“what love?
the kind they show in gwai lo films?
chinese women don’t speak
of love”/ “we know
that people will laugh at us”
some bodies can’t be touched/some poems
cannot be written/just felt”

No poetry has moved me more. At once soft and welcoming like coming home, and at the same time heart wrenching and painful and burning. Excerpt above from “diaspora babies” and many more continue to stick with me.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

diaspora babies, we
are born of pregnant pauses
spilled/from unwanted wombs
squalling invisible ink poems
written in the margins
of a map of a place
called No Homeland
p7

I want to see, to listen between the lines...
there is more to us than we can say. p12

Kai Cheng Thom not only has found the words, she articulates something vital that is often lost in translation from the heart to the page.

we searched for something to love in each other
uncertain...if we remembered how

from trans-femme warrior girl
p75

they tried to teach us to be afraid of ourselves
because they were afraid of us

from the poem Stealing Fire p61

It can't be said that there is nothing to fear in these pages.
KCT is an urgent voice encouraging readers to proceed despite all that.

I am with you
in the Homeland
where my spirit is waiting for the body it left behind

from What the Moon Saw p13

[Leah Horlick · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you ever have a chance, do your soul a favour and make sure you can hear Kai Cheng Thom perform these pieces aloud. This work shakes up the very foundations CanLit is built on, and I am just thrilled that Kai Cheng was named the winner of the 2017 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBT Writers - I know there's so much more of this incredible work to come.

[Anu Khadka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of beautiful and powerful poems 🙏 Loved it ..

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and necessary.

[Kailyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating and beautiful.

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn. How do you describe a book of poetry that is so full of rage and hope that even though it discusses many things outside of your experiences, you are awash with empathy and a great need to cry/scream. Thom is a transwomen with a lot to say about bigotry and survival in beautiful, knife-like, poetic language. She shies away from nothing, whether it be painful insights and lessons about her own behaviour, or the horrible actions of society as a whole. This is a fantastic, powerful, angry book.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounded up. At its best, this collection sings, and is a brilliant representation of Thom’s skill as a performer, writer, and multimodal theorist. At its weakest, however, it reads a little like the poetry you’d find on the bestseller shelves of Barnes and Noble or on Instagram — didactic and jarring that closes further conversation rather than generating it. I found myself switching rapidly between these registers as I read, and really wish there was more consistent work with the level of brilliance achieved in Thom’s tribute to Amber Dawn, or “book fetish.”

[Bina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection of poetry!

[Barbara McEwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read anything quite like this. This is some powerful poetry. So many concentrated emotions, it is like a poetry bomb.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stylistically, A Place Called No Homeland isn’t my cup of tea. However, I think Thom’s poems were meant to be read aloud and heard from her specifically, not just seen in text. Despite not being the biggest fan of her writing style, it was absolutely fascinating to “hear” her voice based on the structures of her poems.

What I appreciated most about this collection was the brutally honest depictions of what it meant to be trans, queer, the child of immigrants, to be a person of color. Some of her poems were prickly at times, but there were many tender moments as well; which is always the case when it comes to identity. Thom shared what it meant to be stuck in-between everything and how it impacted her physically, emotionally, and mentally. It was an invitation to get the smallest taste of what it meant to be a trans woman of color.

Particular favorites from this collection: “diaspora babies,” “girlboy, you femme femme fabulous,” “queer tribe,” “you & me,” “dear now,” “stealing fire,” “3 love stories”

[Sonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

a place called No Homeland is a stunning and unflinchingly powerful poetry collection. Kai Cheng Thom, a Chinese Canadian trans woman, breaks down boundaries between the body, history, and nature with her poetry.

It’s hard to describe the writing of poems because it’s such an individualized experience of reading. Thom’s poetry made me feel longing, discomfort, loneliness, privilege, in awe — all in the best possible of ways that poetry can unapologetically bring about such a multitude of feelings.

This collection is expansive in its themes: the bittersweetness of the diaspora, longing for ancestral connection and homeland, being qtpoc in white queer communities, emotional violence, physical violence, the violence of erasure, exoticization of Asian-ness, sex and intimacy and love, finding strength yourself and with others.

Cw: sexual assault

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is it everyone: my favorite poetry collection of all time. Well, at least so far. It's absolutely stunning. Extraordinary. Bone-chillingly vulnerable. She blends memory and mythology, invokes the fist of her father and the call of her ancestors. Sex and longing, meditation and trauma, identity and diaspora, sexuality and survival — all are topics that Thom navigates with both hope and rage. Do yourself a favor and RUN to this poetry collection.

Some favorites: “diaspora babies”, “what the moon saw”, “when you die”, “made”, “dear white gay men”, “growing pangs”, “the lady in the moon”, “when is a woman?”, “your white cisgender boyfriend can’t save you from the end of the world”, and “trauma is not sacred”. But honestly, there was not a single poem that I did not fall painfully in love with.

I am absolutely floored that Thom doesn’t have a wider readership. This collection is EVERYTHING.

[boocia]

i was really impressed by thom's sense of form. she's not afraid of using spaces and indents to good effect, which is way harder than it looks. 'downside beastside' is a two column poem that can also be read as a one column poem across two pages. 'hunger p(h)antoum' has some villanelle-esque patterning going on - she's a very technically talented poet!

i have not read very many poetry collections, but this one felt especially therapeutic, i think. by that i mean many poems felt like they were helpful to write, and just happened to also be very good to read. thom is unrelenting in her descriptions of sexual assault, and domestic abuse, and sexual degradation, and desperate need for intimacy. which is a lot, and refreshing, though of course not pleasant. i do sort of wish the poems had dates-written attached? the lot seemed heavily like a temporal, direction-full narrative of growing into identities, and growing through traumas ...

wasn't a big fan of poems/stanzas like 'diaspora babies', but i think i'm especially salty about the genre that is asians + parental trauma: sometimes your dad just fucking sucks, and i've never been able to pull more meaning out of that fact of life by fusing it with "asian stoicism" or "generational loss" or "culture shock" or whatever. i'm still in my edgy teen phase where i think asian-diaspora-culture-poems-with-food-metaphors is a bit rote.

however, what i fucked with the most was her poems were the ones fusing queerness/transness and asianness and the difficulties integrating the two. 'growing pangs' starts: "considering male to female hormone replacement therapy, i am struggling to remember who i am" and by the end goes: "ancestors, i call to you ... i am afraid of changing my body, afraid to lose you&myself. and yet, you have always been with me ...". 'hunger p(h)antoum' was the one poem that made me cry: "hormone therapy makes me hungry /... my ancestors died hungry, and so i shall / keep on starving with my mouth still full / like the insatiable Goddess of Vengeance / of my ancestors' poetry"

overall i think this collection - the poems themselves - oscillate from just good poems to truly breathtakingly impressive.

[Amanda Aurigemma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memorable Quotes:
---
i want you to see, to listen between the lines / to notice not only the four letters that set love and violence apart / but also the four they have in common
---
my father, his fist, my mother, the scar. me and the moon and you , my love / and you
---
i remember how sad and alone i felt / when i realized that your revolution was different from mine / you fought for the right to love freely / and i fought to be loved at all
---
why is it fear stops us from hurting each other and love seems to do the opposite?
---
i want to be able to honestly tell the difference between those who didn't make it and those we left behind
---
dear white gay men: / you are neither the face / of my oppression / nor the hands / of my salvation
---
i was shamed, as a child. i was ashamed, as a child, and i cannot separate those two truths
---
the white queers taught me to love myself like the moon at its fullest, fat and unashamed, unapologetic, unabashedly singularly unrestrainedly entirely whole. in my rage, i learned to spin the world, tangle the stars, draw the ocean in my wake. but my mother & father, grandmothers & grandfathers taught me to love myself like the moon at its darkest, gracefully and silently, without fear or rage, sweetly in surrender and in sacrifice and knowing
---
i am reminded that though the body of the ocean may change, though the waters may shift, the salt always remains
---
you are always disappearing in the hope of being seen
---
mama, / can you tell me / when am i / a woman? / love, / your son
---
they tried to teach us to be afraid is to be beautiful
---
trauma is not sacred violence is not special pain is not holy suffering does not make angels abuse defines no one you are more than the things that hurt you you are more than the people you have hurt do not make an altar to your woundedness
---
we have all seen the darkness now give us the dawn tell me about the joy you keep in the hollow spaces between your bones tell me again how you laughed when you realized that you were not wholly unloveable i'll tell you again how i cried when my best friend told me that i was not a bad person

[andreea. · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

I didn't like the simplicity of the first poems in this collection and I was pondering skimming my way through the end, but halfway through, I changed my mind. While there are highs and lows in here, there is per se a very strong voice, one that isn't afraid but used to, which dominates the discourse and almost aggressively shows you what it is to write your own body: to write as a trans woman and a person of colour.

My favourites: Diaspora babies, Downtown beastside, The river, Dear white gay men, Interracial psychology, Growing pangs, When is a woman, The funny thing about violence, Hunger p(h)antom, Stealing fire, Doctor's daughter.

from When is a woman?
dear mama,

you said you wanted to know

what it is i am learning in this university

upon which you have spent so much blood, sweat,

and money (we must not forget money, never

forget money, of course, mama)

so i could get a good job

and earn a respectable living

and find a decent wife

and raise two or three healthyhappychildren

and take care of you in your old age

you said you wanted to know, ah-ma,

well:

today, in my fem-in-izz-em class,

a white lady asked

what is a woman

and another white lady

said does the transsexual

threaten the woman

to which the first replied

but what is the woman

and the second said

not a man

and she looked at me

mama, when is a woman?


and doctor’s daughter

swallowing elixirs

beneath the moon/i am

a slow-burning alchemy

in midnight’s tube/shape-shifter/

skin-changer/doctor’s daughter/i

am demon mother

with barren womb. sweet nectar

puddling in my pores. sometimes/to survive,

we must become more than alive

the other night i dreamed

that there were two flowers

budding inside my chest.

like cereus, my body blossoms/

swells/

beneath cool

blue

fingers

[Joynab Rimu · Rating 5 out of 5]

"is it sacrifice that makes a mother
is it suffering that makes a woman
is it sacrifice
suffering
sacrifice
suffering?"

I am not a big fan of poetry,It's not my cuppa tea actually. But Sometimes some lines of some poetic excellence clutch me so hard that,it becomes really hard to keep it unfinished. 'A Place Called No Homeland ' was such one, so beautifully woven, Neat. This lines got me like that !

"there are no words in your mouth
but there's a pen in your head
you want to tell the truth
but you told stories instead”

I came across Kai Cheng Thom's writing in Buzzfeed and thought to give her poetical work a go.Nonetheless, it was a great read. Being a Trans Woman with Asian root in a foreign land, she had to face the world with all her might.Her poems sprouts up on her journey to become a woman she always cherished to be and finding the truest form of what 'Femme' really stands for.

I liked the way she experiments with forms and words.In Her urge to reveal her mind up, she is successful with beautiful words.
"Forgive me, for my violence
Save me, with the gift of silence"

[Sadifura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

Speechless.

Absolutely amazing poetry that resonated with me, even if my experiences don't necessarily align with Cheng Thom's. This book was a deeply grounding and emotional experience.

Favorite poems are abound in this one, it was hard to pick them, but a notable standout was "trauma is not sacred", a beautiful poem with a message I honestly need to heed at times when I get too focused on my own trauma.

Only "flaw" would this poetry collection being essentially a sort of time capsule for when the only thing I had to worry about as a (white) nonbinary trans person who desperately wanted to (and still wants to, but is unable to because of the current climate and being disbelieved about being trans because of being perceived as "not mature enough" to understand my identity) socially transition was trans discourse and representation, but that just makes me more depressed and the poems more resonant than anything.

I wish I could rate this 10/10 stars.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This woman is an advocate for transgender youth and this passion shows through in her poems. There is an intimacy to her poems that make you feel as though you were reading her diary. These poems are graphic and it is clear that this poet has been through many struggles in her life. I appreciate that I was able to get a sense of what it must be like to walk in her shoes. Beyond that there is a way that she is Kai Cheng Thom is able to play with words that were fun and creative as can only be seen in artistic poetry. I love love loved it.

[brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can’t get over how beautifully written these poems are.

i think i let my mind create the visuals for me as i turned each page (well figuratively because i tapped a screen to flip pages) no matter how haunting the words became —— they created —— created color, created light, created beauty beyond the walls of what pain “should look like”.

pain doesn’t have to be gruesome or horrid, pain can be beautiful as well and that’s what Kai Cheng Thom did.

she showed life in all aspects. the good, the bad, the ugly.

life.

[Liz Mc2]

Poems that speak of:

Identities—queer, trans, femme, Chinese-Canadian
fluidity and fluids—blood, tears, cum too
Finding herself and her voice—this is a collection rooted in oral and spoken word traditions
Searching for love and shelter, belonging—wanting safety and taking risks
Sex, violence, and the bitter, traumatic, painful ways they intersect

Rating poetry seems even sillier to me—or I feel even less qualified to do it—than rating other books. So I don’t.

[feux d'artifice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not Kai Cheng Thom coming for us with the knives!!!!

Which is to say, some of these poems completely destroyed me. My reading experience went something along the lines of, ok poem, ok poem, ohhh that was interesting, oh i like this one, IM WEEPING, ok ok, KNIVES AGAIN, oooo this is rlyyy good, ok ok, TEARS FOR YEARS, etc etc

Poems i liked: good communication, DOWNTOWN BEASTSIDE!!!!!! made, between friends 😭, the lady in the moon (bc I'm always weak for chang'e poems), Hunger p(h)antoum, book fetish!!!!! trauma is not sacred

Kai Cheng Thom is a keeper! Worth every penny of purchasing a hard copy 🥰

[Gally · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, explicit collection of poems on body, love, and abuse from a transgender, asian-canadian woman's experience. Through gender, race, and sexuality, the collection explores self and belonging, often told through a frame of mythology or folklore. Each poem reads as though the author put her heart and soul into it, and there is no topic she shies away from. A very good debut collection.

[Noor Shirazie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the most refreshing poetry compilations I've read in a while. Truly a feast for the eyes. Can't wait to explore more pieces by Kai.

[Otone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic collection - so many poems moved me that I can’t list them all.