Go Home!
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An anthology of Asian diasporic writers musing on the notion of "home." "Bold and devastating . . . the very definition of reclamation." —The International Examiner
Asian diasporic writers imagine "home" in the twenty-first century through an array of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Both urgent and meditative, this anthology moves beyond the model-minority myth and showcases the singular intimacies of individuals figuring out what it means to belong.
"The notion of home has always been elusive. But as evidenced in these stories, poems, and testaments, perhaps home is not so much a place, but a feeling one embodies. I read this book and see my people—see us—and feel, in our collective outsiderhood, at home." —Ocean Vuong, New York Times-bestselling author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
"To be from nowhere is the state of Asian diaspora, but there is also a wild humor and imagination that comes from being underestimated, rarely counted, hardly seen. Here, we begin to draw the hopeful outlines of a collective history for those so disparate yet often lumped together." —Jenny Zhang, author of My Baby First Birthday
"Language allows for many homes, and perhaps the writers—and readers of the anthology too—will succeed in returning home, or finding a home, through these words." —NPR.org
"Effectively dismantling all sorts of stereotypes, Buchanan's anthology gives voice to notions of identity, belonging and displacement that are much more vast, complex and textually rich than mere geography." —Shelf Awareness
"Revolutionary for all the iterations of 'home' it shows through fiction, poetry, and memoir, sure to provoke a full range of emotions to swoon and clutch in my chest." —Literary Hub
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the introduction, editor Buchanan points to the xenophobic political rhetoric of recent years as motivation for this anthology of Asian-American writers who "complicate and expand the idea of home." Contributors include Alexander Chee, Kimiko Hahn, Chang-Rae Lee, Wo Chan, and Muhammad Amirul bin Muhamad. The fiction writers and poets largely do better with the prompt than the nonfiction writers, whose work can be either didactic or sentimental. Standouts include Alice Sola Kim's story "Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying," about three Korean adoptee girls who summon a mother through a spell, and Chaya Babu's "Cul-de-Sac," a sprawling essay that expertly weaves together landscape, class, and race to explain the context for the author's girlhood. Marilyn Chin's poem "For Mitsuye Yamada on Her 90th Birthday," is an ecstatic romp through decades of cultural and political history, including lines like "I binged on duck noodles on Clement Street after sucking down a bong/ Wrote ten-thousand letters for Amnesty International high on shrooms." This powerful collection will push readers to do as Buchanan recommends in her introduction: to seek out the "ever-increasing ways in which we can be homed and un-homed."
