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Overview
--Eden Torres, Assistant Professor Women's Studies, Chicano Studies, University of Minnesota "It's been a long time since I've been treated to a voice so full of honesty about one's struggle to come to terms with her identity. Through elegant poetry, full of exquisite imagery and detail, Quan Lee takes the reader on her personal, transformative journey in which she explores how race, class, gender and sexual identity inform who she is. Along the way, she encounters rocks and boulders that would have stopped many of us. Instead, she turns them over and examines the creatures hiding in the darkness underneath, leaving no stone on her path unturned. Quan Lee is a courageous woman. She is one of my sheroes."
--Carolyn Holbrook, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Founder and past Artistic/Executive Director of SASE: The Write Place "In Chinese Blackbird, Sherry Quan Lee renders stories of her complex cultural heritage with the lyrical touch of a poet coming into self-possession. Through the generative power of language, Lee creates an inspirational and a multifarious self. This self blows breath unto the page and into the reader, who may have felt quiescent or invisible, often feeling forced to choose among various enriching worlds, until she experiences the truth that only good literature can unveil about the joys and struggles of defining oneself on one's terms."
--Pamela R. Fletcher, Associate Professor of English Co-Director of Critical Studies in Race and Ethnicity, College of St. Catherine Learn more about the author at www.SherryQuanLee.com Book #3 in the Reflections of History Series from Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com Modern History Press is an imprint of Loving Healing Press
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781932690682 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Modern History Press |
| Publication date: | 06/25/2008 |
| Series: | Reflections of America |
| Pages: | 100 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.21(d) |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Not Hiding Not White
Chinese/Black/Woman
I am pregnant with myself gestation: fifty years.
Wintergreen
Minnesota is not compatible to my growth, it is too cold.
The Ice Age made it clear
My ancestors oppose the heat.
Civil wars and death — or just a robin traveling against the season —
Here I am, a Minnesota mutant.
Like a magnolia, I am not white. It is only light
Like a magnolia
my life is disparate
He who chops down Magnolia trees is not a horticulturist historian or healer.
I am almost ripe.
Flower
Hocus-Pocus
Mother cooked a white rabbit in a black pot
abracadabra
mixed it with white rice ate it with chopsticks
abracadabra
I put it in the garbage disposal waved my hand
abracadabra
now you see me, now you don't, in the nursing home I feed mother black-eyed peas she still can't swallow, even with a stainless steel fork I couldn't eat white
Black Beauty Blues
Who knew Mother curled thick hair thin.
Magnolia Café
We ate red beans and rice, blackened catfish with hot pepper sauce, and drank lemon water. The conversation flip-flopped — graduate school, marijuana, poetry. She said Vanessa Williams didn't become Black until she lost the Miss America title and she is still only Black when she needs to be; and, of course, O.J. has never been Black. I had been questioning my own Blackness all weekend at the Celebration of Black Writing Conference — what is Black? Skin? Attitude? Language? Hair? The Black manager at our local specializes in ethnic hair salon said I don't have Black hair, who told me that I did? Mama, I tried to say, but before I could my Black friend, her hair in dreadlocks, screamed, who are you to say my friend isn't Black? She has hair just like my mom's. Are you saying my mom isn't Black? All those Minnesota ladies in-and-out of the tanning booth gettin' in earful. Her hair might be Mixed, but it certainly isn't Black — were they talking about hair or the color of my skin? What is Black? Are there membership dues and don'ts? My culture is White — Mama had a passin' jones. My ethnicity is multi-complex. People assume I am Italian, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Native American, etc. I speak the truth, Black, but I lack credibility. Perhaps I should only eat at Asian restaurants, or better yet, Ole and Lena's Pancake House.
Yesterday I braided my mama's hair. Lenore, who works at Mama's nursing home, asked Mama, you look Indian, what are you? I knew Mama wasn't going to respond, so after a long pause I said, she's Black.
I had to undo the braid before Mama would go down to the cafeteria for watermelon. What is Black? One drop or a gallon? A popularity contest? A poor me contest? Can you have money and still be Black? Be educated and still be Black? Have a Chinese father and still be Black? Have an Irish great-grandfather son of a plantation owner and still be Black? Black or not, can I still eat red beans and rice?
Dear M.F.A. Faculty
Thank you for correcting typos on my M.F.A. final project and my twenty-book essay examination. By the way,
You are correct, however, I had no apparent sense that I
I'm glad you like my phrase: well,
(Incidentally, the comma goes inside the quotation mark, and quotation marks look like this: ".")
Thank you for judging
Should I have known this was a popularity contest?
Thank you for respecting my unsuccessful attempt
Actually, I didn't know I was writing a non-linear essay —
I'm sorry my conscious attempt to use academic vernacular did not terminate the incredulous mistake which caused you to lose patience.
Of the three anonymous critiques two were condenscending and the other so patronizing I framed it.
Don't you think it's amazing that you passed me on the M.F.A. Essay Exam and accepted my final M.F.A. Project as proof of earning a graduate degree?
Did you know my final g.p.a.
And do you know I am Black/Chinese?
Theory
1.
At universities scientists and artists argue — fiction or non-fiction? Historians lie. Truth is only one professor's assumption based on another professor's assumption, based on a dead professor's assumption.
Not too much is new.
But for every colorful woman, there is a first time. First kiss, first rape, first home, first homelessness, (first husband), (first son), (first woman), first love, first death — Mother's death.
Each woman's story wrapped in someone else's words, typed according to MLA or APA guidelines, and hung from holiday trees, symmetrically balanced, pretty decorations. Shiny, reflective, glorious.
Safe.
2.
I took the silver ornaments off my tree before my fiftieth birthday. Holidays tarnish like mirrors.
I avoid mirrors. Stay away from bathrooms, dressing rooms, cosmetic counters.
3.
Death. Finally, Mom no longer has to look in mirrors. Begotten of children begotten of children begotten of plantation lust and demand. Sometimes it's about rape. Sometimes it's about rape.
When will our resurrection come?
4.
I have always been blessed with chancre sores. My mouth repels my voice.
My mouth says stop.
I hold in too much history. My lungs are coated. My stomach fat.
The sores disappear after breathing in, breathing out. After a couple of good weeks of untying lies, my body and soul are clean for the length of a woman's cycle.
I will not rust.
5.
I have tried to write my experience based on someone else's theory. It keeps coming out poetry.
6.
I saw my mother grow large. Larger than her fetal position.
Larger than her broken bones. Larger than her black and blue bruises.
Covered with white hospital sheets, not hiding, not white.
Incarnation
Father escaped mother with his chow mein and the flaming red-haired woman who
served it to him. Mother remained starched white rice steaming in a black
kettle. Jesus was at the Lutheran church across the street — I had access
to him this white light of mine; I'm gonna let it shine let it shine 'til Jesus comes; this white light
of mine No one knew, Jesus and I weren't white each of us conceived — immaculately.
Hungry for sweet potato pie and string bean chop suey,
At a monastery in New York I confess to a priest,
and they, the Cave Canem poets, respond, Amen.
no one says: you're not Asian.
Sapphire, Ndegeocello. I am a Buddhist nun, burn the chapters of my memoir
CHAPTER 2
Chinese Blackbird
Parthenogenesis
1.
2.
3.
a friend asked, If your dad isn't your father, how can you be Chinese?
4.
5.
In spite of mythology, Virgin births will always be
daughters, but couldn't I be the son Father almost waited for
if only he had used his imagination instead of his magic
Abracadabra
Chokecherry
I am a yellow-bellied blackbird churning chokecherries.
Shit white. Spring ripe.
Mama who is Black danced an Irish jig.
The plantation owner's son courted great-grandma with a pig.
Bye-bye black bird
Mama's siblings dodged Mama's neighbors Mama's fears;
The Mississippi river flows South.
Black bird, black bird fly away home?
Grandma wouldn't eat ham. Mama won't eat chitlins.
Yellow-bellied blackbird chokes.
Needles and Pins
Mom has not slimmed down she carries the weight of five white children
at seventy her skin hangs loose unattached to any black heritage
Father left after 18 years of marriage gambled on the white, red-haired woman
he met at work, abandoned all things Chinese the plastic-tiled mah jong set,
the newly conceived son
Mom taught four girls to build walls, bet on white dragons,
her ivory wall trespassed only at night black relatives out of sight
of Scandinavian neighbors,
questions / we never questioned white dolls in pink dresses
our dresses red taffeta with white lace collars mother bound four girls with silk thread
how could she make us exotic, desired?
not held taut with patterns and pins
he owned thirteen cars the year he turned sixteen sped down dirt roads, transgressed white
picket fences. Girls: we could not stray, locked
in a house on a hill we were fed ginseng — ripened for the right man
Mother had faith with God all things are possible and the planchette moved across our Ouija board
in agreement. She watched as we danced on the living room carpet
muttered holy petitions, but there were no future husbands in our neighborhood. She doesn't believe
that Elvis is dead, or that some of the men we married spit nails at us.
she taught us to wear pale pink make-up — hide puncture wounds, camouflage pain, and keep
Mother is immune — virgin, goddess. In her one room high-rise she reads Harlequin romance novels.
My sisters and I rip out the tight stitches, laugh about the alcohol, the men. Our brother experiments with needles
Theun Wing
Father was a model minority
he earned straight As. Stopped speaking
to a Chinese Bride married my mother
I saw him five times
I sent flowers. Sympathy
Glossolalia
She discarded Martin Luther,
Her nightmares stopped,
Father's obituary read, survived by wife and children. The wife wasn't her mother. The children weren't her siblings.
The brass Buddha can't be resurrected.
There are no prophets, just plump men and dead fathers with tarnished bellies.
Winter Solstice
December there was no snow to blanket us in whiteness, no cold to freeze the truth.
Apparitions of past holidays sauntered nostalgically, siblings wandered bumping into each other.
Death of our father was more relief than sorrow, he had been dead since the divorce.
we were surprised at how much she wanted to live. For the first time, she told us we were beautiful.
We let go of our secrets, pausing from the chaos of colored lines,
Memories escaped from the house we lived in as naive children
It wasn't the yin and the yang of balance that I felt, but better,
Chinese Blackbird
This woman has wings.
The wings of this woman.
Winged. This woman.
Woman! Wings! Chinese /
bird. Chinese.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Chinese Blackbird"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Sherry Quan Lee.
Excerpted by permission of Loving Healing Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
NOT HIDING NOT WHITE,
Chinese/Black/Woman,
Wintergreen,
Hocus-Pocus,
Black Beauty Blues,
Magnolia Café,
Dear M.F.A. Faculty,
Job Interview Number One After Earning An M.F.A.,
Theory,
Incarnation,
CHINESE BLACKBIRD,
Parthenogenesis,
Chokecherry,
Needles and Pins,
Theun Wing,
Glossolalia,
Winter Solstice,
Chinese Blackbird,
Since I Was Born,
ANXIETY WHERE ARE YOU? OH WELL, GOODBYE,
Mother's and Mine,
Reunion,
Sixteen-Year-Old Vampire,
Mazatlan, Spring Break,
A Love Poem,
Early Retirement,
Wishing Well,
This Breast Belongs to Me,
Death, Divorce, Resurrection,
DIVA BREAKIN' THE BLUES,
China Doll,
I Will Divorce You,
Diva Breakin' the Blues,
Women Who Run,
It Is Not Good,
Naming,
Insomnia,
What Song is She Singing?,
I Asked My Husband If He Thought I Was A Lesbian And He Said, Yes,
Marathon,
I Am the Snake I Feared,