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Title details for From From by Monica Youn - Available

From From

Poems

by Monica Youn
Monica Youn
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
"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 other: 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    December 19, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696613217
      • File size: 78640 KB
      • Duration: 02:43:49

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 23, 2023
      Youn deconstructs in her piercing fourth collection (after Blackacre) Asian American identity to examine its many fragments. “Revealing a racial marker in a poem is like revealing a gun in a story or like/ revealing a nipple in a dance,” Youn writes in the opening poem, “Study of Two Figures (Pasiphaë / Sado),” establishing the tone of the inquiring and powerful pages that follow. In “Deracinations: Eight Sonigrams,” Youn dissects her childhood and young adulthood, recalling the encoded colonialism in Curious George books, being subjected to racial slurs by a bully, and searching fruitlessly for other Asian poets to emulate, “seeking/ a racial exemplar, an icon.” Youn demonstrates a mastery of the existential, declaring perceptively in “Study of Two Figures (Midas / Marigold)” that “Death is a wish to improve one’s surroundings./ Which is to say to be dissatisfied with one’s surroundings is a form of death.” The long prose poem, “In the Passive Voice,” is a virtuosic performance addressing, among other subjects, the challenges of maintaining racial solidarity under capitalism. Intimate yet expansive, Youn’s poems bring remarkable depth, candor, and intensity to personal and social history.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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