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My Name Is Immigrant
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Women's Studies.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
First published May 4, 2020
64 people want to read
About the author
Wang Ping
250 books81 followersBorn in Shanghai and grew up in the East China Sea. Love the body of water, its sound and smell, love the touch of the muddy beach and golden sand.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 8, 2020
Elegaic, sweeping, and fierce, Wang Ping's new collection channels the voices of immigrants, lost and found, from shore to shore around the world. She returns again and again to the Morecambe Bay drowning deaths, in 2004, of at least 21 undocumented Chinese cockle pickers, calling them by name, bringing their ghosts to life, memorializing them to their families and the world. Chinese immigrants are the refrain to the book but many other migrants are also at its core, their stories woven into a fabric that eventually becomes a prayer flag linking them all in a song of love and longing and loss.
This is a book of poetry, memoir, essay, both evocation and incantation, and it choked me up to read. Wang's own long struggle as immigrant, from a small island off the coast of China to New York City, accompanied by nothing but her own fierce will, to a Ph.D. in English, to two decades teaching poetry in her second language, to a doctorate in Chinese medicine, the founding of a worldwide environmental art movement called Kinship of Rivers, would be impossible to write as fiction, so unbelievable is it. But such is the power of Wang Ping, who, by giving voice to the voiceless in everything she does and writes, continually achieves the impossible.
This is a book of poetry, memoir, essay, both evocation and incantation, and it choked me up to read. Wang's own long struggle as immigrant, from a small island off the coast of China to New York City, accompanied by nothing but her own fierce will, to a Ph.D. in English, to two decades teaching poetry in her second language, to a doctorate in Chinese medicine, the founding of a worldwide environmental art movement called Kinship of Rivers, would be impossible to write as fiction, so unbelievable is it. But such is the power of Wang Ping, who, by giving voice to the voiceless in everything she does and writes, continually achieves the impossible.
September 28, 2022
A quest for centering lies at the heart of this epic collection. The persona of a cockle harvester at "Morecambe Bay," acts as a refrain in which the author pays homage to her ancestral roots. A sweeping grasp of traditional Chinese poetics informs all of the work which arcs from past connections and lands in a new country with a new language.
In longer poems, Wang Ping's informative, poetic peregrinations resolve into mandala-like epiphanies. She weaves formal elegance into contemporary cadences and concerns like in "Letter from Aleppo."
Chagrin at humanity's lack of humanity, beauty at the grace we nevertheless find, gratitude for culture and kindness, and compelling personal determination—all make these pages turn.
"Oh, highroads of the bitter sea
Please send our bones home
Under the knotted dragon-eye tree."
The ghosts are rebelling! Rejoice for having this collection.
In longer poems, Wang Ping's informative, poetic peregrinations resolve into mandala-like epiphanies. She weaves formal elegance into contemporary cadences and concerns like in "Letter from Aleppo."
Chagrin at humanity's lack of humanity, beauty at the grace we nevertheless find, gratitude for culture and kindness, and compelling personal determination—all make these pages turn.
"Oh, highroads of the bitter sea
Please send our bones home
Under the knotted dragon-eye tree."
The ghosts are rebelling! Rejoice for having this collection.
February 26, 2022
love Wang Ping.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews