Writing

Stuff I have written divided into the following sections: My current Death Star project about colonialism and the underworld A Few More Ambitious EssaysEssays & Cultural CriticismPoem-like objectsInterviews & Comments.


FROM THE DEATH STAR / MIGRATED ARCHIVE PROJECT In which I travel to the underworld to rescue my father and find there those who where killed by colonialism.

Start here: “I Was Ostensibly Searching for My Father, But.” in Harriet (Poetry Foundation) (2016).

Hades Baedeker: Places of Interest” in Granta (2023).

Locate” in Poetry, winner of the Bess Hokin Prize from the Poetry Foundation (January 2019)

The Irony of Bartolomé de las Casas” in The Believer (Oct. 2019)

Pre-credit Sequence for the Film About the Camp” in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day (2019)

What I Saw in Hell” in P-Queue (2019) Warning: link to pdf!

You May Visit the Cosmos but You May Not Speak of It” in Poetry (October 2016)

Time is Polyphonic” in Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish (2013)

Cruel Cogito” in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day (2013)


A FEW MORE AMBITIOUS ESSAYS

In the Zone of Non-Being,” The Nation, June 2024 issue – On reading Frantz Fanon during the annihilation of Gaza.

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing,” N+1, 2023.

The Stakes of Dictee: An introduction to a famously difficult work,” The Yale Review, 2022.

Friends and Strangers: John Keene’s poetry of others,” The Nation, 5/2/22.

Symposium on Twenty-First Century American Poetry: Against Loneliness,” Lana Turner, 2021. Link opens a pdf!

Ethnicity as Counterculture” published by N+1 Paper Monument in “As Radical, As Mother, As Salad, As Shelter: What Should Art Institutions Do Now?” (2018)

What’s The Matter With Poetry?” on Ben Lerner’s Hatred of Poetry in The New Republic (2016).

Authenticity Obsession: Or Conceptualism as Minstrel Show” in AAWW’s The Margins (2015)

The Devil You Know: On Jamie Delano’s Hellblazer in The New Inquiry (2013)

The Lovely Smallness of Doctor Who” in Film International (2013). Warning: opens a pdf from a Doctor Who fan page!

Essay on filmmaker Eugene Green, Film International (2011)

Walt & I: What’s American About American Poetry?,” Poetry Society of America (2010)

City Out of Breath” in Manoa (2006), republished in Best American Essays 2006. Link opens a pdf!

On Tsai Ming Liang’s The River in Reverse Shot (2004)


MORE ESSAYS & CULTURAL CRITICISM

For So Many Years When I Close My Eyes,” Aperture, Spring 2024 – Essay on the photography of Yu Lai Wai-ling and Billy H.C. Kwok.

Toyo Miyatake’s Indelible Record of Life inside the Manzanar Internment Camp,” Aperture, 8/17/23.

Between Shame, Desire, and Destiny: On the Genius of Annie Ernaux,” Lithub, 12/12/22.

Capsule reviews of Double Trio by Nathan Mackey and she said dialogues by Akilah Oliver, National Public Radio, 2/4/21.

Capsule reviews of The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser and A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by Hoa Nguyen, National Public Radio, 1/21/21.

Capsule review of SHO by Douglas Kearney, National Public Radio, 1/11/21.

Short essay on reading the oaths of the Kenyan freedom fighters for the Provision series in Jewish Currents (2020).

Precarity Screwball: Why ‘Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens’ Is the Sitcom for Our Times” published by Frieze (April 2020).

Interview with Cathy Park Hong, published in Bomb (Jan. 2020).

We Must Imagine Better” – on nationalism and the election in Creative Time Reports (December 2016)

The Perils of Being Normal: The Asian American Yuppie” in Film International (2016)

Why A White Poet Posed As Asian To Get Published, And What’s Wrong With That” in NPR’s All Things Considered (2015)

Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro in AAWW’s The Margins (2015)

On Johannes Goransson’s Haute Surveillance in CultureStrike (2013)

Post Sandy, Day 4: Hester Street in Lower Manhattan” for Open City in AAWW’s The Margins (2012).

A Brief History of Nostalgia” in Drunken Boat (2012)

On ‘Tiger Moms’ and other clichés” on CNN.com (2011)  

“Us, Necro-nationalists” in Tehelka (2011)

One Should Not Sleep Anymore: Poet Wing-Tek Lum and the Virtues of Unpleasantness” in NYFA Current (2010)

On Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s Doom Patrol in Rain Taxi (2008)

On Tom McCarthy’s Remainder in Rain Taxi (2008)

On Veronique Tanaka’s Metronome in Rain Taxi (2008)

Drawing an Audience,” Review of Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics and Ivan Brunetti’s An Anthology of Graphic Fictions, Cartoons and True Stories in The Wilson Quarterly (2007).

“Four Essays on Luck,” Pleiades (2006), “Notable Essay,” Best American Essays 2007.

Of Of,” Winner of the MeThree Literary Criticism contest (2005).

Review of Manoa Journal’s New Taiwanese Poetry issue for Kyoto Journal 59 (Spring 2005).

Civilization and its Disk Contents” in Radical Society (2004).

On Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in Reverse Shot (2004)

Interview with Ishmael Reed in Satellite (2001).

Interview with musician Jon Jang in Satellite (2001).

Numerous poems, book reviews, essays, and film criticism for The Margins, The Millions, Bomb, CultureStrike, Quarterly Conversation, Film International, Reverse Shot, H2S04, Kyoto Journal, Palimpsest, Five Fingers Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Field, Wilson Quarterly, Barrow Street, Flaunt, IndieWire, Diner, Bridge, Radical Society, Satellite, C-Theory, Montevidayo, Art Asia Pacific, and Rain Taxi.


MORE POEM-LIKE OBJECTS

Fingernails,” a pandemic poem in the Academy of American Poets’s Shelter in Place project (May 2020).

Is Pedantry the Mother of the Essay?” in LitHub (March 2017)

We Ennui” in Bomb (2013)

Category Sex” and “Intimate Democracy” in Agni (2013)

“Essay on Suppression” in Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, No. 9 (2012)

Yes, No, Yes, The Future, Gone, Happy, Yes, No, Yes, Cut, You” in Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation

Brief Lives” in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day (2011)

“City of Habits” in Fence (2010)

“City You See Through Water” in Jubilat 18 (2010)

Nine translations of Chinese poets: Ma Chih-yüan (1260-1324), Li Hou Zhu (937-978?), Xu Zhimo (Hsü Chih-mo) (1897-1931), Tao Qian (Tao Yuan-Ming, 365-427), and Han Dynasty ballads in Fascicle (2007).

“Looking South to the River (II)” (Li Hou Zhu translation) in Boston Review of Books (2004)

My Father and My Mother Decide My Future and How Could We Forget Wang Wei?” in Palimpsest: Yale Literary and Arts Magazine, No. 1 (2003).

Yes, A Conversation Between Car and Confucius” in Kyoto Journal, No. 55 (2003).

Regards” in Diner journal.

Old Song” – translation of Chinese poetry in Five Fingers Review (2002).

Echo” in Berkeley Poetry Review (2002).


INTERVIEWS & COMMENTS

Home is Where the Art Is” roundtable on Asian American writing in Bookforum (April 2018)

Contributor to “DACA Rescinded & Poets Respond” in Poetry Foundation website (Sep. 2017)

Contributor to “Dear President: A Message for the Next Commander in Chief From Fifty American Poets and Writers” in Poets & Writers (September 2016)

Contributor to “What Is Literary Activism?” in Poetry Foundation website (Aug. 2015)

Interview with Aura Bogado in Colorlines (2013)

On Poems of the Black Object by Ronaldo Wilson in On the Seawall (2013)

Spring Books Preview” in Bomb (2013)

Art Talk with NEA Literature Fellow Ken Chen,” National Endowment for the Arts (2012)

Photographs of Thinking: A Conversation with Ken Chen” by Eric Higgins in Agni

Interview with Ben Pease on Scattered Rhymes (2011)

Interview by Sara Goudarzi in One Journal (2010).

A Year in Reading” in The Millions (2009)