Thus Spoke the Heretic: Poetry from the liminal state
Format
Oral Presentation
Faculty Mentor Name
Amy Smith
Faculty Mentor Department
English
Abstract/Artist Statement
Saturated by my experiences as a second-generation Chinese American woman, the works in this ongoing collection are unified by the thematic underpinnings of “otherness,” displacement, liminality, generational trauma, power(lessness), and filial piety. The disorientation that comes from feeling not quite at home anywhere is a distinct part of diasporic identity that is nested within the core of my poetry. Additionally, ambiguous grief and embodied mourning, derived from inheriting the historical trauma of “Chinese American-ness” (e.g., the 1875 Page Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act), act as the sites at which art and countermemory collide in this collection. Thus Spoke the Heretic represents an important addition to the explosive contemporary literary movement that is being spearheaded by queer, BIPOC writers and thinkers. It calls attention to the intersection of womanhood and race—in the context of growing up Chinese American in a predominantly white environment—with an authentically strained voice shaped by my lived experiences.
Location
Yosemite Learning Lab, William Knox Holt Memorial Library and Learning Center
Start Date
30-4-2022 1:00 PM
End Date
30-4-2022 1:19 PM
Thus Spoke the Heretic: Poetry from the liminal state
Yosemite Learning Lab, William Knox Holt Memorial Library and Learning Center
Saturated by my experiences as a second-generation Chinese American woman, the works in this ongoing collection are unified by the thematic underpinnings of “otherness,” displacement, liminality, generational trauma, power(lessness), and filial piety. The disorientation that comes from feeling not quite at home anywhere is a distinct part of diasporic identity that is nested within the core of my poetry. Additionally, ambiguous grief and embodied mourning, derived from inheriting the historical trauma of “Chinese American-ness” (e.g., the 1875 Page Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act), act as the sites at which art and countermemory collide in this collection. Thus Spoke the Heretic represents an important addition to the explosive contemporary literary movement that is being spearheaded by queer, BIPOC writers and thinkers. It calls attention to the intersection of womanhood and race—in the context of growing up Chinese American in a predominantly white environment—with an authentically strained voice shaped by my lived experiences.