Read From From: Poems By Monica Youn Full Books Online in HD Quality

A major achievement by Monica Youn, “one of the most consistently innovative poets working today” (NPR).

“Where are you from . . . ? No―where are you from from?” It’s a question every Asian American gets asked as part of an incessant chorus saying you’ll never belong here, you’re a perpetual foreigner, you’ll always be seen as an alien, an object, or a threat.

Monica Youn’s From From brilliantly evokes the conflicted consciousness of deracination. If you have no core of “authenticity,” no experience of your so-called homeland, how do you piece together an Asian American identity out of Westerners’ ideas about Asians? Your sense of yourself is part stereotype, part aspiration, part guilt. In this dazzling collection, one sequence deconstructs the sounds and letters of the word “deracinations” to create a sonic landscape of micro- and macroaggressions, assimilation, and self-doubt. A kaleidoscopic personal essay explores the racial positioning of Asian Americans and the epidemic of anti-Asian hate. Several poems titled “Study of Two Figures” anatomize and dissect the Asian Midas the striving, nouveau-riche father; Dr. Seuss and the imaginary daughter Chrysanthemum-Pearl he invented while authoring his anti-Japanese propaganda campaign; Pasiphaë, mother of the minotaur, and Sado, the eighteenth-century Korean prince, both condemned to containers allegorical and actual.

From From is an extraordinary collection by a poet whose daring and inventive works are among the most vital in contemporary literature.

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

From From: Poems

From From: Poems

More Books

Bluff: Poems

Danez Smith

Modern Poetry: Poems

Diane Seuss

The Moon That Turns You Back: Poems

Hala Alyan

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

Ada Limon

Tripas: Poems

Brandon Som

Trace Evidence: Poems

Charif Shanahan

suddenly we

Evie Shockley

[...]: Poems

Fady Joudah

From Unincorporated Territory [åmot]

Craig Santos Pérez

A Film in Which I Play Everyone: Poems

Mary Jo Bang

frank: sonnets

Diane Seuss

Forest of Noise: Poems

Mosab Abu Toha