Lydia Chang‘s poems bravely scale the emotional registers of a Chinese American woman finding her way: from the pain of loss, longing, and leaving an abusive relationship, to the power of reclaiming a self, to wryly uncovering the humor of daily tasks. Combining simple wisdom with searing images of childbearing, immigration, and love, Chang navigates the violence of war and its reverberations in the body of a survivor. Here’s a feminist voice born of a full life, extraordinarily young and playful at heart.
–Nancy Agabian, Author of Me as Her Again.
In the series of poems in Silk Dress, Lydia Chang takes us on a fascinating journey from her life in China to her life in Queens, NY, from the Sino/Japanese War to Flushing. It’s a story of cultural and personal struggle and also about finding love and contentment, vividly told by a poet who has seen much, in a distinct voice all her own. By turns defiant and sharp, warm and humorous, Chang’s spirited poems evoke a world, one flowing like a silk dress around the everyday and reaching across time and memory.
–Pui Ying Wong, author of An Emigrant’s Winter
Lydia Chang invites us to explore with her what it means for an immigrant woman to live life, for this immigrant woman to live her life, on her own terms. In lines that embody rage, grief, laughter, love, and determination, the reader accompanies Chang on the journey from her childhood in China, through a difficult and abusive marriage, to the meaningful and fulfilled life, personal and professional, that she found here in the United States. There is in these poems a wisdom and truth-telling that we need more of, especially in our current cultural and political climate.
–Richard Jeffrey Newman, author of Words for What Those Men Have Done.
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