Magnolia, 木蘭
Nina Mingya Powles
Nine Arches Press: 2020
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hengyu chinoiserie
Leung Rachel Ka Yin
The Hedgehog Poetry Press: 2020
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The Soviet formalist Vladimir Propp’s morphology of Russian folk tales claimed they were based on a determinate set of core narratives. Something similar is discernible in the poetry of the Asian diaspora, which has taken on the status of a subgenre with its own preoccupations and story lines.

This literature has become extensive and varied enough to have its own 600-page anthology, To Gather Your Leaving, featuring poetry of the Asian diaspora in the United States, Australia and Europe. The core of the subgenre is an ensemble of binary elements, one facet in an uneasy tension with the other. The culture of the homeland left behind is at odds with the culture of the new-found land. Homeland history and international conflict intersect. The poet’s early life is remembered, memorialised even, as a contrast with her new social situation and lifestyle, a subsequent sense of a clash of values, traditional community contrasting with the fabric of the society where the poet has ‘ended up’ and the tightrope between nostalgia and tough-mindedness, identity politics in the politics of cultures.

• Tags: China, Issue 22, Leung Rachel Ka Yin, Malaysia, Michael Freeman, Nina Mingya Powles