학술논문

100 Chinese Silences
Document Type
book
Author
Source
Subject
poetry
Asian American culture
racial stereotypes
orientalism
cultural appropriation
China
American literature
Poetry by individual poets
Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards)
Orientalism
Cross-cultural / Intercultural studies and topics
Language
English
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.