Upend

by Claire Meuschke

The book loosely navigates the archived immigration trial of Hong On, a biracial Alaska Native-Chinese man, in 1912 on Angel Island, CA during the Chinese Exclusion Act. Hong On was born in San Francisco, CA in 1895 and was orphaned shortly after. The concepts of U.S. government-designated recreational spaces, genocide, and intergenerational trauma are examined by Hong On’s granddaughter, the author, who sees imperialistic residue in product, place, and color naming. At the core of this book is the speaker’s Alaska Native great grandmother who is named “Unknown: Indian” on Hong On’s birth certificate.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2020

About the author

Claire Meuschke lives in Tucson where she teaches at the University of Arizona. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and has lived in New York City and New Mexico.

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book by way of Poets & Writers Mag and because I’m working on writing stories about my great grandma as a Mexican immigrant & her life in LA and SF... and wow. There are so many similarities, so many eerie coincidences between the author’s stories and mine (and my mom/grandma/great-grandma’s). Themes of identity, knowing and not knowing, erasure, absent or abusive fathers, images of hawks and carbon copies and Angel Island and eucalyptus, great-grandmothers buried in Colma. I feel in good company.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meuschke excavates the past in this breathtaking debut collection. For anyone interested in history, and the way it has negatively impacted marginalized communities--and continues to do so--this is a must read!

[R. L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book attempts to navigate multiple spaces, moving between the archived 1912 immigration trial of Hong On, an Alaska Native/Chinese man held on Angel Island, CA, during the Chinese Exclusion Act and the reflections of his granddaughter, the speaker, who seeks to reconcile state violence, family loss, and the distortions of settler-colonial language. Drifting throughout the book is the figure of Speaker’s Alaska Native great-grandmother, listed only as “Unknown: Indian” on the birth certificate of Hong On, and colors. The collection engages themes of family loss, state violence, colonialism, and environmental concerns, but the poems themselves often fail to fully realize this potential. The text gestures toward Hong On’s unnamed Alaska Native great-grandmother and seems to lean on “Alaska” as a mythic space rather than a lived reality. Ultimately, the collection is thoughtfully structured and thematically ambitious, but to me, it falls short of becoming a truly successful book. There were several individual poems which I enjoyed, Possession (pg 68), Plasticity Meditation (pg 87), Restrained Gold 6129 (pg 102), and No Name (pg 103). 

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I mostly found this book prohibitively (to my reading experience) challenging, but towards the end of the collection the poems were much less abstract and I appreciated the last few poems. I think Meuschke went a little too conceptual with most of these poems. At times it almost felt like the poems were poetry's version of stream of consciousness writing. It just didn't work for me.

[bookcookery]

Meuschke’s use of historical documents to explore her grandfather’s life and how it echoes into her own drew me in. The other sections were less focused and, for me, less effective.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good. The archive is alive in Claire Hong's work. The mundane is reanimated with meaning. This work is urgent and brilliant.

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Claire follows her Indigenous Alaskan great grandmother and Chinese great grandfather down their divergent archival paths. In one: her great grandmother, eclipsed from the archive, leaves behind only scraps which name her as "unknown Alaska Native". In the other: her great grandfather, made infamous by his racially-motivated murder, proliferates the archives yet must be remade beyond its anti-Asian first telling.

[Farron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was reread.

I read this first in undergrad in 2020 or 2021, and it's amazing how timeless the complex feelings evoked by this book continue to be. Meuschke weaves history, legacy, and observations of colonialism and family into a multi-layered and self-referential story.It brings to light the way that colonial language influences everything from relationships to paint colors. Meuschke's style is sometimes brutally confessional, sometimes entering a detached and almost dreamlike imagined past. I'm also surprised at how the brutality of the state and US immigration office plays a part in the stories told here, which somehow feels even more relevant than it did when I first read it. I'm so glad I was assigned to read this book early in my journey of becoming reacquainted with poetry.