Thousand Star Hotel

by Bao Phi

Overview

Thousand Star Hotel confronts the silence around racism, police brutality, and the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor.

From "with thanks to Sahra Nguyen for the refugee style slogan":

They give the kids candy to bet.

My daughter loses the first four rounds,
she's a quiet wire as they take her candy away, piece by piece.
When she finally wins, I ask if she wants to play again.
No! she shouts, grabbing her candy, I want to go home!
True refugee style:
take everything you got and run with it.

Bao Phi is a National Poetry Slam finalist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566894708
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	07/04/2017
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	1,199,235
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Bao Phi is a multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry champ and National Poetry Slam finalist who has been on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and whose work was included in the Best American Poetry anthology of 2006. He is the author of Sông I Sing and is currently the Program Director of the Loft Literary Center.

Table of Contents

Say What 1

I.

Vocabulary 5

Cookies 7

Shell 8

Go to Where the Love Is 9

Lead 11

The Reveal 14

Kids 16

Want to Want 19

When My Daughter Asks Me to Check and Make Sure Racists Can't Come In and Kill Us 21

Our Minnesota 22

Peeking through the Back Door of the Commodore 25

Refugees from the Prom Center, the Eighties 27

The Why 28

To Combust 29

Knockoff 31

The Measure 34

Poem for Ahmed Al-Jumaili 36

List of Notable Asian American Poets 38

467 / 500 39

Frank's Nursery and Crafts 40

"Allies" Who Think They're the Chosen Ones 41

Are People of Color as Bad or Who's Bad or Bad Meaning Good 42

Bad Driver, or Asian American Activists Who Talk about Their Own People Like They Are "Other" 43

It Was Flame 45

Oriental Flavor 46

Token Exceptional Asian in Liberal Multiculturalism 47

At Dinner 48

April 30, 2014 50

Apple-Red Pathfinder 52

No Question 54

Villain/elle: Shimomura Cross Over in the Flat of the Night 56

Rolling through a Four-Way 57

Bau Cua Cá Cop 58

II.

Future Letter to Daughter Apologizing for When I Caved to Her Request and Brought Her to Barbie's Dreamhouse at Mall of America 61

Broken Things 62

Document 65

Lights 68

In the Dark 69

Careful What You Wish For 70

Tourist with Daughter 71

Contour 72

Full Contact 74

Geek Triptych 75

Balsa Wood Free Association 77

For All Heartbroken Pizza Delivery Boys 78

Theresa, I Think 80

Incomplete / Abridged 81

Therapist 4 86

Chess Pride, Waverly Style 88

Night of the Living 89

Mouse 93

For Brandon Lacy Campos 94

Well Then 95

In Harbor 96

III.

Ego-Tripping as Self-Defense Mechanism for Refugee Kids Who Got Their Names Clowned On 101

Not a Silverfish 102

Being Asian in America 104

Untitled / Fathers 105

Thousand Star Hotel 106

Refugerequiem 107

Acknowledgments 109

Editorial Reviews

This rangy and lacerating second collection from Phi, a Vietnamese-American spoken-word artist, aims to confront what his publisher describes as "the silence around racism, police brutality and the invisibility of the Asian-American urban poor." A tall task, to be sure, but Phi is more than up to it…Phi's references are wide-ranging…and his irreverent profundity shines in prose poems and fixed forms alike.

The New York Times Book Review - Kathleen Rooney

06/26/2017
Phi (Sông I Sing), National Poetry Slam finalist and multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry winner, deconstructs the nature of Americanness from his perspective as a first-generation Vietnamese-American. It’s a timely collection full of stunning images and language. Exploring what it means to be American, who gets to be American, and why, Phi acknowledges the painful family history that has shaped him. In “Cookies,” a familial memory of war functions as an example of generational trauma: “I want to say I am made of war and that means so are you. I want to say I was born inside a halo of gunpowder.” In “Kids,” Phi shows that the demonization of the other is taught at an early age, realizing that his “daughter is not yet five when she learns to be scared of racists.” Phi’s poems illuminate how white privilege encourages complicity in white supremacy and how white supremacy dehumanizes and demonizes its victims: “you infesting this place.” With equal parts quiet reflection and hip-hop prowess, Phi’s collection showcases the melding of the deeply personal and the fiercely political. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Much more than a set of poems, [Thousand Star Hotel] is its own history: a chronicle of Phi's family, present, past and future. Spinning this history together from fragments of memory and reflection, the collection provides a critical thread in the fabric of Asian American literature, history, and activism—past and present." —Kartika Review, "The Stories Bao Phi Tells"

“Written with immense empathy and honesty, Thousand Star Hotel is a moving, heartbreakingly beautiful portrait of the lives of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S.” —Buzzfeed

"... Thousand Star Hotel skillfully weaves a range of topics — police brutality, Asian American representation, masculinity, fatherhood, and his immigrant experience growing up in Minnesota, to name just a few." —Angry Asian Man, "Trust the Process: An Interview with Poet Bao Phi"

"The many fans of Bao Phi will be thrilled by this book. New readers will be seduced by his trademark blend of passion, politics, and poetry. His poems alternate between the profane and the provocative as they deal with war and history, love and heartbreak, the inner city and the inner self. A powerful read, a gutsy writer."— Viet Thanh Nguyen


" [Thousand Star Hotel] is bold in its language for experiences that oscillate between existence and erasure, and it is moving in its mission to challenge the boundaries of solidarity and to refuse neat conceptions of past, present and future." —The Writers' Block Blog, interview

“These poems are significant and weighty, but in an instant they go from somber to full of swagger, and I can’t emphasize enough how thrilling they felt to read.” —Asian American Writer's Workshop

“Thousand Star Hotel feels bracing and true. Phi’s voice is as electric in print as on the stage, coupling precise imagery with a surprising frankness.” —The Rumpus

"Bao Phi's Thousand Star Hotel is a vividly inward look at an Asian American experience that never flinches from the hard realizations of humanity. Bao ties generations together at his personal crossroad of fatherhood and lets the reader see, feel, and hear the electricity of his renowned stage performance blossoming on the page. Bao's poems haunt our collective American psyche until a 'new region of the tongue is discovered' that lets us know what 'tastes like the middle of the crosshairs of a drone bomber / tastes like science concocting survival.'" —Tyehimba Jess, author of Olio

"Bao Phi's Thousand Star Hotel echoes the fire in his earlier work, which skewers racism and class with the precision of a skilled chef. Yet, when Phi splits open the vulnerable and humbling moments of love, childhood, and fatherhood, he creates a body of satisfying, poignant poems that create moments of quiet introspection like diners hushed by the first bites of an anticipated meal. Bao Phi carries an honest, powerful voice, and he is not afraid to look into the boiling pots of his past or the roiling violence in America and abroad." —Tara Betts, author of Break the Habit

"Thousand Star Hotel is equal parts heartbreaking and bitingly funny... This volume is a must-read for readers seeking a greater understanding of race, but also for any reader who has children or parents, experienced heartbreak, or just loves the sound of finely wrought lines." —Star Tribune

From the Publisher

08/01/2017
Phi (Sông I Sing) is a multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry champion and National Poetry Slam finalist seen on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and it shows in his forthright, declamatory style, as if he were in direct conversation with his readers. It's a style that fits his heritage, for as the opening poem says, "Vietnamese people have always been spoken word poets." Yet throughout he worries about his ability to voice what really matters ("And I wonder/ if I ever will find a language/ to speak of the things/ that haunt me the most?"). How will he tell his daughter about the war or challenge the racism he has encountered in this country? Still, he does so, with simple eloquence: "How much blood and history can one last name hold./ …The opposite of history is erasure." Phi speaks broadly of social abuses while focusing on the Asian and particularly the refugee experience in America, disclosing fraught, tender scenes of family life (as when he regrets buying his daughter a Barbie Dreamhouse). And as the title poem shows, his fluid, open writing is frequently shot through with moments of lyricism. VERDICT Accessible, accomplished, and troubling, this should intrigue many readers.

Library Journal