{"product_id":"motherlands-weijia-pan-9781639551132","title":"Motherlands: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, this engrossing debut interrogates history, identity, and the power of poetry to elucidate both.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMotherlands \u003c\/i\u003eopens with a child drawn early to poetry. \"In summer I write. Two lines at a time, two vying souls \/ running up the wall.\" The collection follows this speaker-poet through a childhood in post-Maoist China and an eventual move to the United States, laying bare cultural and linguistic tensions in both historical and modern settings. He cites Chinese laborers toiling in American factories--an echo of the brutalities endured by those who constructed the Transatlantic Railroad--and speaks to anxieties around belonging, assimilation, and identity. \"If I forget one character a day,\" he writes. \"I will have forgotten Chinese \/ by the end of 2042.\"\u003c\/p\u003eIn these attentive, imaginative poems, Weijia Pan questions the artist's duty--his duty--as a chronicler of truth, especially through issues of displacement and global injustice. What can the poet do but observe? And yet, in unpacking ancestral traumas connected to Maoist China and modern-day bigotry exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, he still finds himself turning to art as a way to understand both the self and the world at large. Through elegant juxtapositions, Pan crafts an emotional world that is at once regional and universal--Li Bai and Du Fu sit alongside Glenn Gould and Sviatoslav Richter, pepper used to bless new roads is repurposed in the mace used against protesters, two languages compete on a single tongue. Lyrical and visionary, this collection embodies poetry's capacity to ground us, teach us, and change us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Weijia Pan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1639551131\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781639551132\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Milkweed Editions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/17\/2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 96\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover","brand":"Weijia Pan","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":45898510467327,"sku":"9781639551132","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_5678385b-6202-4084-9132-b77aafefdaed.jpg?v=1721376478","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/motherlands-weijia-pan-9781639551132","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}