Recombinant

by Ching-In Chen

Can a poetry seek to examine the erasure and reconstruction of a community history? Ching-In Chen’s recombinant is a work of material critique, philosophically jarring in its use of syntax, sound, the erasures held in the stillness of its whitespace that again and again mimic a historical registry. Drafting and growing multiple discourses, this text urges the reader to investigate female and genderqueer lineages in the context of labor smuggling and trafficking. Its syntactical utterances create a music that is masterful in these poems’ fractured words and experimental representation of page and praxis. Voices from various communities interact with each other to create what Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan calls an assertion of diasporan realities where multi-directional, heterogeneous modes of representation challenge conventional representation via photographs; newspaper articles; maps; city directories; records of immigration, birth and death; as well as scholarly research and archaeological records. recombinant is a work of insistence, a refusal of erasure, a proof of shared memory through the rewriting and remixing of historical remnant.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Transgender, Gay, Queer Lit

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2017

About the author

Descended from ocean dwellers, Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of 'The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems' (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009) and 'recombinant' (Kelsey Street Press, 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) as well as chapbooks 'to make black paper sing' (speCt! Books) and 'Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters' (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of 'The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities' (South End Press, 1st edition; AK Press, 2nd edition) and currently a core member of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project as well as a Kelsey Street Press collective member. They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Intercultural Leadership Institute as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They are currently collaborating with Cassie Mira and others on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation, health and environmental justice. They teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at University of Washington Bothell and serve as Writer in Residence at Hugo House. www.chinginchen.com

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

A slap in the face - jarring and disquieting vision that is unique; will stay with you long after you put it down.

[Bogi Takács]

Loved this volume of poetry. I worked on some of the original appearances (a long section in the middle was originally published in An Alphabet of Embers) so there is probably a conflict of interest involved in me reviewing this book, and therefore I won't. But I thought it was breathtaking.

Source of the book: Bought with my own money (it wasn't cheap, but totally worth it; also it is larger format than most other poetry books and THIS WORKS GREAT)

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recombinant is experimental in the way it's written, which means it may not be for everyone, but anyone who enjoys a versatile and unique use of form will appreciate this. The past and present are inextricably and painfully tied together in a way that works well and reads beautifully.

This was worth the wait I had to get a copy through the library. I hope to read more from Ching-In Chen.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

island here these ghosts
a salt dress shorn
a body chrysalis
turned to bullet and dance
twist and shout
your last name could be mine
could be a moor
printed on your anklet

—diagram: early coroner's songbird, p79

[Laurel Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To me, poetry is a way to tell stories and represent the texture of our lives.” – Poet Ching-In Chen

Ching-In Chen's recombinant is a work of material critique, philosophically jarring in its use of syntax, sound, the erasures held in the stillness of its whitespace that again and again to mimic a historical registry. This text urges the reader to investigate female and genderqueer lineages in the context of labor smuggling and trafficking. It challenged conventional representation via photographs; newspaper articles; maps; city directories; records of immigration, birth and death; as well as scholarly research and archaeological records.

[RTB: Review of Texas Books]

by Sydne Clark

Recombination is the process of recombining things, which is what Ching-In Chen's Recombinant does. The poetry collection pieces together history through fractured phrases and descriptive imagery, recombining and re-telling the tragic story of eastern Asian civilizations being forced into human trafficking. Not only do these poems shed light on labor smuggling and slavery, but they also approach social issues such as racial inequality and gender inequality. Though faced with an intricate and heartrending plot, Chen succeeds in visualizing the past through experimentation of word fragments and word arrangement.

The speaker illuminates gender inequality by describing women using inanimate objects, like a “monument” (Chen 10) and “a girl bomb” (Chen 64), but one of the most powerful lines in the book is in the poem “composition,” when a woman says, “don’t look at my mouth…it doesn’t make my decisions” (Chen 50).

Chen hints at racial inequality in much the same way. While Chen writes in a way that depicts the dehumanization of the speaker, the lines connect to bigger social issues such as racial inequality. The purpose of Chen’s depictions are to categorize the ethnic group, as many others did due to the fear of yellow peril.

The experimental syntax and line structure contrasts the plot in a brilliant way. The poet uses a freeing style by writing in fragments, breaking apart words, and playing with the arrangement on the page. Though Recombinant is a book about eastern Asians being forced into slavery, the poet takes a refreshing and different approach in syntax purposely to write against the “enslavement” and “imprisonment” of traditional, grammatical, and syntactical norms.

Chen recombines a dark past through disjointed syntax, aggressive enjambment, and sharp figurative language. By the end of the book, you will understand and find yourself disturbed by the gruesome history that many indigenous people were forced to experience.

https://mailchi.mp/889a6fc71cee/summe...

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty challenging book, and I felt a big sigh of relief when I got to the end and realized many of the passages I couldn't make sense of were quotes of other works, offered, one assumes, as texts to be commented on rather than integrated into a whole.

This book as a whole seems to compose itself out of different sorts of fragments. There are loose narratives about immigration and assimilation, some of which might be autobiographical but which are probably more generalized than that? The poems take different shapes on the page, and there are, I'd guess, usually at least two of three separate voices or texts running alongside one another in any given poem. It's definitely evocative of some of the moments in Hayden's Middle Passage, but with a broadly Asian/ queer set of references. Again, I think the poems push away from the particularity of any one person's life, so I don't want to overstep here and tie it especially closely to Chen's own biography.

In other words, this was challenging. I didn't hate the challenge of it, but I didn't love it either, and didn't think it often transcended the sources it arranged to create something unified. I'm pretty sure the intention wasn't for a unified work, but well, I'm not sure it works.

[Lisa]

A fractal tour de force that demonstrates the frustration of compiling a complete, humanized portrait of early Chinese immigrant experience in America. Chen arranges, disarranges, and rearranges insufficient public record, but no combination or code can bridge the myriad lacunae. The collection serves as a sort of primal, if at times tedious, “I can’t even.” A sample:

“I obscure exits

procedure to ransack sentence
each sentence intimate with her chain of command

her hold onto book...”

—from [as a space to occupy] crossing the source

[Nikita Ladd · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems by Ching-In Chen are a challenge to read. This is a type of poetry – less narrative, more fragmented – that I am not as used to reading, and so it does force big gaps in my experience of it as I read through the collection. Beautiful syntax, and powerful historical references that I only wished I understood a little better.

[Mills College Library]

811.6 C5181r 2017