100 Chinese Silences

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Date

2024-10-05

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Publisher

punctum books

Abstract

There are one hundred kinds of Chinese silence: the silence of unknown grandfathers; the silence of borrowed Buddha and rebranded Confucius; the silence of alluring stereotypes and exotic reticence. These poems make those silences heard. Writing back to an “orientalist” tradition that has defined modern American poetry, these 100 Chinese silences unmask the imagined Asias of American literature, revealing the spectral Asian presence that haunts our most eloquent lyrics and self-satisfied wisdom. Rewriting poets from Ezra Pound and Marianne Moore to Gary Snyder and Billy Collins, this book is a sharply critical and wickedly humorous travesty of the modern canon, excavating the Asian (American) bones buried in our poetic language.

Keywords

POE005010, POE009000, 1FPC, 5PB-US-D, 6NE, DCC, DCF, JBCC7, American literature, Asian American culture, China, cultural appropriation, orientalism, poetry, racial stereotypes

Citation

ISBN

9781685712228
9781685712235

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