How to Not Be Afraid of Everything

by Jane Wong

Explores the vulnerable ways we articulate and reckon with fear: fear of intergenerational trauma and the silent, hidden histories of families. What does it mean to grow up in a take-out restaurant, surrounded by food, just a generation after the Great Leap Forward famine in 1958-62? Full of elegy and resilient joy, these poems speak across generations of survival.

2019 Alice James Books Award Editor’s Choice

Genres: Poetry, Asian American

100 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 2021

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wong is an assistant professor of creative writing at Western Washington University. The centerpiece of her second collection is “When You Died,” a 20-page epic about her grandparents’ experience during China’s “Great Leap Forward,” a 1950s–60s Maoist campaign of agricultural reform that led to severe famine. Her grandfather survived it and her mother was born at the tail end of it. Wong was born to immigrant parents in New Jersey and the atmosphere and imagery she uses to describe her living situation there reminded me of Qian Julie Wang’s in her memoir Beautiful Country.

Foodstuffs provide the figurative palette, with decay never far behind. I most enjoyed the multi-part poem “The Frontier” (“The frontier arranges itself / around me like a moat. / The frontier drops fruit / upon my head. I break open, / hot cantaloupe in winter. / I wobble around, spilling fruit / everywhere. All day, fruit flies / pay their respects.”) and “The Cactus,” about her spiky self-preservation instincts. This is the theme of the title poem as well:

How to not punch everyone in the face.
How to not protect everyone’s eyes from
my own punch. I have been practicing
my punch for years, loosening my limbs.
My jaw unhinged creates a felony I refuse
to go to court for.

There are many unusual metaphors and word choices, and a lot of the alliteration I love. Opening poem “Mad” is playfully set up like a Mad Libs game with all the key words as blanks. But at the same time, there are loads of prose poems – never my favourite thing to come across in a collection – and some long ones that I kept getting lost in.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[naviya · Rating 5 out of 5]

- i saw her read at open books in 2019 and have liked her since and was v excited for her new book
- v angry, v lonely, abt complex relationships with family and immigration
- food imagery, rot imagery, lots of bees, lovely details, i very much enjoyed the imagery in the book

- fav poems: everything, frontier, a cosmology, dream of a lopsided crown, what is love if not rot, how to not be afraid of everything, unkindly kind

- "i break open, hot cantaloupe in winter, i wobble around, spilling fruit everywhere"

- i love the cover!!
- ordered from open books in seattle, wa

[Melissa Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book of poems was an adventure. At first, I was blown away by the weight of the imagery. Then I was a little lost. I was asking things like what is the point of this poem? Where is this going? Is this just a random meandering of thoughts, stream of consciousness style kind of poetry? And then, over time the meaning began to become apparent, not through one poem, but through many. The poems in this book are like the threads of a tapestry and the imagery in each poem creates a story that’s only revealed over time. I admire the author’s ability to slowly punch you in the gut. This book reached into my body and stuck to my ribs.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a poetry collection that revolves around the authors life and family. As it is said in the opening, they dedicate the poems to their family members who are missing and were perished during the Great Leap Forward. You can feel the pain that has gone on in their family, and the things that have happened in the author's personal life.

I loved the way some of the poems were written, and the words that were used to describe certain situations. I just think it got a little harder to read at the end, with the no breaks in the poems. This could also be something that is unfinished?

I hate rating poetry, because I feel like it is not mine to rate. It is not my feelings, or what I have been through. I will give it a 3, just for my own personal liking.

Please give this collection a read, and continue supporting poets.

"The dull prongs of a fork still count as a weapon."

Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for the ARC copy.

[Rin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a lot of anger in this collection of poems

[Nat King · Rating 4 out of 5]

GORGEOUS GORGEOUS GORGEOUS

[Matthew Eck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems encompassing familial legacy, plus cutting imagery that invoke a Studio Ghibli film - what’s not to like

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't work.

Half of these evoked beautiful kaleidoscopic mental tapestries and the other half were just words.

[Potassium · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa. The writing is exquisite, creative and heartbreaking. These poems are an experience. Especially “When you died.”

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel a lot of rage in these poems. And guilt at times, too. And a reaching, toward times, places, people, memories. And how the words are so often interrupted by punctuation—dash, colon, period—or caesura or stanza or line, but also how often the interruption is simultaneously a bridge. And how much in the body these poems are. It’s really quite something.

[Nina Av · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kundiman fellow and Fulbright finalist Jane Wong recently released her second collection of poetry, which is a riveting example of literature from this free-verse subgenre. This work explores Chinese history, the intense emotions of diasporic identification, and a range of culinary references related to the poet’s personal history and family restaurant. Readers will feel cathartic rage, a strong sense of maternal connection, and ancestral revelation throughout the work.

With poem titles such as “What is Love if Not Rot'' and “What I Tell Myself After Waking up with Fists,” Wong catches her readers with a sharp hook. Such visceral feelings are also masterfully articulated in the language on each page following these biting titles. Part of what is so captivating is how Wong demonstrates an adept use of imagery in order to create a cutting experience for readers; through the stimulation of the reader’s senses, Wong reveals herself as the creator of a vivid, foreign world. For example, in the poem titled “Notes for the Interior,” Wong writes, “I lunge forward, rage blooming in my bones./ Magnolia and marrow,/ A fire burns in the rain, miles away./ The embers swim about like bees in the back of our throat” (65). The alliteration and nature imagery simultaneously evoke the majestic character of rich poetry and a sense of anger. This combination expresses both a beautiful and intimate sentiment, which leaves readers both provoked and amazed as Wong transmits a flurry of emotions eloquently.

The mechanics of her punctuation, spacing, and line breaks also reveal another layer of the complexity of Wong’s style. Some poems span multiple pages with spaced-out lines that flow like waves down the page; other poems are dense, square paragraphs that are peppered with dashes. One poem in particular, “Mad”, replicates a “Mad Libs” format. This example of Wong’s experimental layout makes the audience’s experience of Wong’s work all the more personal.

Readers of the genre will find themselves enraptured by Wong’s poetic prowess and perhaps inspired to consider literary forms anew. Furthermore, anyone who has found themselves far from home can find remnants of themselves in this work. Whether a reader studied abroad for a semester or left their home forever with little choice; whether they moved to a neighboring nation or halfway across the world; whether they can ever return to visit or they left a regime that doesn’t exist anymore; this chapbook is for them.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

As one reviewer aptly put it, "this should have been my jam, but wasn't." Wong is a gorgeous writer with loads of inventive, visceral imagery, but I found the poems took all my energy to decipher. "When You Died" was by far the standout work in the collection and worth reading more than once.

[Ash Awbrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The middle section that's dedicated to talking of her great grandmother she never met is so deeply touching and talks beautifully of generational trauma.

[Brian Shevory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so excited to find Jane Wong’s collection of poems How to Not Be Afraid of Everything in my local library. A few years ago, I read Wong’s excellent memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City. Her memoir details her early years growing up as a daughter of Chinese immigrants who owned a restaurant in Atlantic City, and continues focusing on her education and scholarship, which have all influenced her art and writing. I was also excited to read this collection since I don’t get to read poetry as much as I used to. I’ve read a few collections over the past few years, but sadly, I don’t encounter poetry as much as I once did as an English major. I was intermittently feasting on Wong’s words over the course of a few weeks and was satisfied by this collection. I noticed many recurring themes in these poems and in Wong’s memoir. I think that my favorite element of Wong’s poems in this collection is her ability to recognize the beauty in ordinary items and daily activities. Maybe it was growing up in a restaurant and playing around the food, the appliances, and the leftovers, but some of the poems detail life in the restaurant kitchen and outback, finding joy and adventure in what many adults would overlook. It’s this ability to take a childlike eye and transform the everyday that makes these poems transcendent and enjoyable. It’s also a reminder for me that poetry has the ability to closely examine an object or event and transform it to something exquisite or extraordinary. I really enjoyed this aspect of her writing. Other poems reflect and honor her family, especially her relatives from China, focusing on both the foods that nourished them as well as the tragedies and hardships that eventually brought them to America. At the center of Wong’s collection is the longer poem “When You Died,” which examines both the Great Leap Forward, when China tried to revolutionize agriculture, which resulted in over 35 million dead, and Wong’s own relatives that she never met. Like the art installation she created, her poem seeks to nourish her family’s hungry ghosts, and she uses food imagery throughout to both honor and forge her own connection with her ancestors. It’s a striking, powerful poem that I will need to revisit to further understand. Another theme is the autobiographical nature of her poems where Wong explores both her vulnerability and her desire to “Put on My Fur Coat”, which was one of my favorite poems. It was kind of like the opposite of the poems that deal with the sadness and loss; or at least, it was more like a more determined response to the setbacks and sadness that life sometimes offers. I could see this poem being almost anthemic, like Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”, offering readers reassurance and support in facing life’s challenges. Other poems around this one, like "The Cactus” and “What I Tell Myself After Waking Up With Fists” also deal with sadness, regret, fear, loneliness, and were poems that I could also relate to. In addition, Wong’s parents feature in both her memoir and her poetry, and the poems that deal with her father’s gambling and transient ways, and her mother’s persistence and determination to make a new life. After reading her memoir, I appreciated these poems as well, and they deal with the complicated emotions of having a parent with addictions. Although I need to return Wong’s collection of poems soon, I’m excited to find more of her work, both in print and online.

[Erin Al-Mehairi · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are some deeply layered and thought-provoking poems from the daughter of immigrants from China, a daughter who grew up in her family’s restaurant. This collection of poetry should not be read in one sitting or at one time. These poems should be read and slowly savored either one or two poems at a time or one section at a time for full understanding and effect. I had to read many of them repeatedly and I had to turn back to some after processing and reading others while progressing through.

Food references aplenty here, whether from growing up surrounded by food, hearing stories of the famine in China, as well as the use of food in luck and prosperity and such in Asian culture. It was delightful, but sometimes searingly sad as well.

The word and image repetition and the tucking of eggs and oranges and the color purple spread across all poems stood out to me but I need to research and think on that more. The use and experimentation with punctuation for affect left me feeling off-kilter and non-conforming, very much as I’m sure was a point. Her style was unique. Her prose poems, of which there was plenty, like one big anxious panic attack they were so heavy with trauma.

A full serving of lessons in the immigrant life, the Asian life, the racism in America toward Asians, the Great Leap Forward (which I knew nothing about) and its damage and death, the heart of a resilient people.

The middle section, “When You Died,” was an 18 page set of linked poems or one large poem set up like individual poems but with no titles or classic epic structure and it was about her grandparents and living through the Great Leap Forward or otherwise known as the Great Famine and death it caused, as well as the life directly after during the Cultural Revolution. It was my favorite part of the collection and I can see why an excerpt of it received the Pushcart Prize. It should be used in classrooms everywhere. She created a lasting legacy and memorial not only to her family but those that perished during this.

The last line from her last poem, “Are you hungry, awake, astonished enough,” really hit me at the end. And yes, yes I am. A beautiful collection that was equal parts kaleidoscope-like imagery, confusing, and eye-opening.

This is my initial reaction upon finishing. I’m going to have to read some of the poems again and give it more thought in order to complete my review.

[姗姗 (JH) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharing her story as a Chinese immigrant, Wong tells her story through a collection of poetry retelling her hardships and painting a picture of her struggles with moving to America. She me captured me in her honesty and genuineness.

Reading her story and retelling of hardships she and her family have lived through struck a chord as we have shared experiences. It was refreshing and comforting to know that someone could verbalize exact how I felt/are feeling as I navigate the intersexuality of my identities that we share.

Grappling with living in America and constantly feeling “othered.” Wong retells her families experiences through the eyes of a child and her present self reflecting on what she couldn’t understand before.

Some of my favorite lines
• “I am a good daughter and I can repeat this indefinitely without taking a breath”
• “Often, I call out to myself just to hear an echo.”
• “Sometimes I dream in Cantonese and I have no idea what is being said.”
• “To be a good daughter means to carry everything with you at all times, the luggage of the past lifted to the mouth.”
• “ My brother and I hid under tables when someone knocked on the door. Strangers: another kind of earthquake.
• “To love a country that refused to look you in the eye. To love what keeps moving even when it shouldn’t.”
“What I want to tell you: I am a good daughter. I repeat this until my lungs puncture little star-like holes. Constellations of my devotion. I’m trying. A daughter, breathing. Of you collapsing in the kitchen, of my grandmother finding you, holding my infant mother. Of mucus pouring out of your mouth like so many slugs. I am trying hard not to place my cold hand on your forehead, to ease something devouring you, inside out.”
• “ I have a strange feeling. I’ve written this before. I’ve always been writing to you, even before I was born. Everything reminds me of you, and I don’t even know what your face looks like.”

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Jane Wong’s second full length collection of poetry, she circles themes of family and of food. Confronting her family’s past in China during the Great Leap Forward and growing up as a “restaurant baby” in New Jersey, she links food, ghosts, memory, and belonging.

I was always going to pick up this collection, but after reading several interviews (links in comments and also clickable in stories) realized that this would work as a “food memoir” for the Read Harder challenge. There are food themes throughout, but the strongest is in the poem “When You Died” which starts out with: “I went to the library to find you/I stain a book on Maoist-era politics/With the tomato soup I had microwaved earlier.” The author researching her family history during the Great Leap Forward epidemic of starvation while spilling soup on the book juxtaposes the American food culture of plenty with the dearth of food from mid-century China.

I will probably always struggle with reviewing poetry, especially poetry like this, written on such a personal level, with the poet exposing the rawness of her own existence. Wong’s style varies from poem to poem, with words and sounds evoking feeling and making you feel present in the poetry with her ghosts. It’s strong and loud, and sometimes softer and quieter. It’s a collection I’ll revisit, and one you should pick up, too.

[Trini · Rating 5 out of 5]

what is love if not rot?

i read most of this earlier this year and then skimmed it tonight in order to remind myself of why this chapbook mattered so much to me. and i think the answer is just that i so strongly relate to a lot of what jane wong is writing about. jane wong writes in the abstract, using food as stand-ins for her mental state or family history, but somehow i relate. i don't understand exactly what she is saying on a direct level but i understand, on an implicit level. it is such a tricky topic that can never be perfectly expressed in words and jane wong nails that feeling of "i know what i'm writing about and it's that I Don't Know".

there's a lot in this chapbook about family legacy and heritage, how the immigrant experience hardens us and renders us oblivious to our family history and also separates us from the "american dream". and a lot about food, love, rot, hardships, animals, toughness. and jane wong has incredibly heartbreaking standalone lines and incredibly intriguing forms to encapsulate these lines in. it is a bit of a dense read but a powerful one. the way wong captures the intersectionality of personal identity + family dynamics + cultural contrasts w/ immigrating + tradition is perfecttttt

[Irene Feng · Rating 5 out of 5]

this collection of poems, or rather, story told in freeform verse, reminded me how important it is to care, and it does not have to be so complicated.
i felt like i could relate to all of the the author's emotions - the guilt of gluttony, the anger from injustice, the despair of loneliness, the pride from the strength of family...
after a day's worth of reading, i had to think a lot about what i wanted to remember from this work. of course, there was the scale of the devastation of the great leap forward and mao's china. but the poems didn't give a full history of what exactly happened; it was told from the personal perspective, how one individual family passed down starvation and struggle through multiple generations. at the same time, existing is resistance. eating is resistance. even upon immigration and losing language, culture, food, and family members themselves, Chinese families show strength simply by living.
i guess, it is easy to be nice to someone. but it is even easier to be proud of yourself. we are products of a fight that we are still fighting.

and that gives me hope...

[Thurston Hunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Food and family, nourishment and rot. Rats vs owls, I feel a bit more connected to the latter, but she is a Year of the former. The loss (and reflection upon that loss) of her grandmother definitely struck deeply for me. The title is an eye-catcher, mind-snagger....that poem nestled in closer to the heart of the fruitstone/egg/center of the book physically than poetically surprised me by more focused on coiled anger than fear.

Of course anger and fear are siblings....

My son enjoyed hearing the poet read her works as part of his Freshman seminar series, so I'm glad both to have read Jane Wong, and also that she helped inspire him (and it seems others, as she has moved from a Jersey shore restaurant to providing academic entrees in the Pacific Northwest).

One other note - the publishing house, Alice James Books, had a brief description that impressed, perhaps more prosaic in composition but a lift for the soul in their mission.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delicious in detail and want. The unique forms and frontier poems repeated throughout wind together as the past is pulled from the dirt, hauled from the bay by Jane Wong. Repeated images noted: egg yolk sun, ear hairs, eyes, eating the air, mud in stomach, bees, ants, slugs, pigeon, pinkening, the slick in the shining dark.

Favorite lines:
From “When You Died”:
“Was I a pigeon in this city in your dream?”

“What I want to tell you: I am a good daughter. I repeat this until my lungs puncture little star-like holes.

Constellations of my devotion.”

From “Notes for the Interior”:
“Maybe I want nice things: napkins instead of toilet paper.
A rat after a soak in a mountain spring.
A glass of honey water in full health.
I lurch forward, rage blooming in my bones.
Magnolia and marrow.
A fire burns in the rain, miles away.
The embers swim about like bees in the back of our throats.”

[jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathe in this window for me. Let me draw flowers on it.
soft little gift from noreen. i think i haven't felt surprised by asian american poetry in a long time and this was intense and visceral in a really welcome way. i think the work isn't shy to texture our love and want and empty and desire and family and fragility and care in really ugly, gut splaying words,, had many of its own honesties and own tenderness in that. super distinct voice in what dominant publishing wants us to think is a saturated genre (!) and i found this to be brilliant little firework against the posture of self-cannibalization in minoritized art. 3 am me read it all in one go, would love to return with company and in my futured selves <3
all that we waste but want. Daughter, I have this dream where I say what I mean, first.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wong's collection shows this deep investment in the domestic. Home. Life at home. Loneliness in a home. Layers of familiarity and intimacy among a family while living at home. And it's the poems' translation of everything into a concatenation of images that, for me, is the energy to reckon with in the poems. Love compared to a time-lapse video of a rotting orange. Predatory men cast as "fog following any hot breath." I am in a constant surge while reading. Image. Next declared image. All informing the poet's present time and space, along with the generational times and spaces she can feel through her family, through American culture as a collective watching her. I admired Wong's first book, Overpour. I admire this second book just as much!

[Ann (Inky Labyrinth)]

After reading Wong's memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City I was curious to read her poetry and I'm not disappointed.

The way she uses food as metaphor is really great, especially in the poem about the rotting orange. The strongest poems are the one where she is speaking to her grandparents who survived the forced famine in China.

Based off of the cover I was maybe expecting more Chinese mythology references but overall this was a solid collection.

[Ivan Zhao · Rating 4 out of 5]

so so so delicious and adding this to my long list of being in love with jane wong.

how to not be afraid of everything is a collection that feels like a love letter to generations. jane wong is such a master at writing these beautiful long noodle-y slippery poems that glide across your tongue and suckles in your throat. it's actually so impressive and awe-inspiring how much is HAPPENING in these long poems, and her use of emdashes to create space. will be coming back to this again but so so so yummy

[julie | eggmama]

Mother daughter lineage, rage and rot, food/consuming (rot as a form of consumption), insects, the past announces the present, the present wades through murky past.

Favorites:
- I put on my fur coat
- When you died
- The cactus
- What I tell myself before I sleep

"I have this strange feeling.

I've written this before. I've always been writing to you, even before I was born.

Everything reminds me of you and I don't even know what your face looks like."

[Lauren Hegedus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought this collection of poetry last year and finally got around to actually reading it. The writing is very strong and there were a few moments where I felt emotionally stunned. That being said, the form of the poems in this collection were pretty hit or miss for me so I personally could not give a full five stars.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wong’s poetry is so wonderfully playful in both diction and form, with surprises around every space and line break. One might think the next page can do more, that the permutations must have run dry, but no, the next page and the next set another universe to explore.

[maybee · Rating 4 out of 5]

man i really liked this one! rife with imagery and character (and history) to sink into, and wong’s poetic sense of place goes crazy 👍 got my copy from a thrift store and the previous owner had annotated it to hell and back, so that was fun too

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad I read Wong's memoir before this, as the two books complement each other beautifully. One is a memoir that reads like poetry, and one is a poetry collection that frequently reads like memoir. Both are great.