An Asian American Poetry Companion: Mesmerizing Reads for APA Heritage Month (May 2022)

Header image. An Asian American Poetry Companion: May 2022. Cover images of Time Regime by Jhani Randhawa, Becoming AppalAsian by Lisa Kwong, Wanna Peek into My Notebook? by Barbara Jane Reyes, Spooks by Stella Wong, Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong, Girl 2.0 by Nora Hikari, The Convert's Heart Is Good to Eat by Melody S. Gee, Dear God, Dear Bones, Dear Yellow by Noor Hindi, The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang, You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair Is in Braids by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, That Blue Trickster Time by Amy Uyematsu, As She Appears by Shelley Wong.
New and Notable Books by Asian American Poets for May 2022

Our Asian American Poetry Companion series is back, bringing you new titles that you won’t want to miss this May! Get ready to celebrate APA Heritage Month with a deep dive into some mesmerizing new books from Asian American poets. 

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FROM THE LR COMMUNITY

Melody S. Gee, The Convert’s Heart Is Good to Eat, (Driftwood, May 2022) 

Melody S. Gee returns with her latest collection, The Convert’s Heart Is Good to Eat. If you enjoyed her poem “And So More” in Issue 7.3, The Convert’s Heart Is Good to Eat may be the perfect thing for you to pick up this month. Out now from Driftwood Press. 

Barbara Jane Reyes, Wanna Peek into My Notebook? Notes on Pinay Liminality, (Paloma, March 2022)

Issue 1 contributor Barbara Jane Reyes reclaims Pinay spaces through her exploration of diasporic Pinay poetics in this collection of lyric essays. If you enjoyed her two most recent collections, Letters to a Young Brown Girl and Invocation to Daughters, you’ll definitely want to pick this new volume up as well. Out now from Paloma Press. 

Amy Uyematsu, That Blue Trickster Time, (Bateau, March 2022)

Amy Uyematsu’s newest collection affirms Asian American identity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching back into her own family’s experience of incarceration during World War II and lifting up strong female elders from across time. If you enjoyed her poems “Thriftstore Haiku” in Issue 5 or “The Bachi-Bachi Buddhahead Blues” in Issue 7.2, be sure to put this collection down on your reading list for the spring. Out now with What Books Press. 

Ocean Vuong, Time Is A Mother, (Penguin Random House, April 2022) 

Ocean Vuong’s much-anticipated second collection, Time Is A Mother, is finally out from Penguin Random House! LR readers have been enjoying Vuong’s work since Issue 1, long before his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, catapulted him into the national spotlight. If you enjoyed his previous collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, you’ll be sure to enjoy diving into his powerful return to poetry this spring.

Shelley Wong, As She Appears, (YesYes, May 2022) 

If you enjoyed Shelley Wong’s poem “Rivets and Cables” in Issue 6, get ready for her debut collection, As She Appears. Wong writes for queer women of color, rethinking the many different ways in which women take up space, and inviting them to appear as they are. As She Appears is available now from YesYes Books.

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MORE NEW & NOTEWORTHY PICKS

Victoria Chang, The Trees Witness Everything, (Copper Canyon, April 2022)

Nora Hikari, Girl 2.0, (Seven Kitchens, March 2022)

Noor Hindi, Dear God, Dear Bones, Dear Yellow, (Haymarket, May 2022)

Lisa Kwong, Becoming AppalAsian, (Glass Lyre, April 2022)

Jhani Randhawa, Time Regime, (Gaudy Boy, April 2022)

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, You Cannot Resist Me When My Hair Is in Braids, (Wayne State UP, March 2022)

Stella Wong, Spooks, (Saturnalia, March 2022)

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What titles are you putting on your reading list for APA Heritage Month? We’d love to hear more about what you’re starting the summer off with! Share your recommendations with us in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@lanternreview).

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Cover image of Broken Halves of a Milky Sun by Aaiun Nin

Broken Halves of a Milky Sun by Aaiún Nin (Astra House, 2022)

Please consider supporting a small press or independent bookstore with your purchase.

As an Asian American–focused publication, Lantern Review stands for diversity within the literary world. In solidarity with other communities of color and in an effort to connect our readers with a wider range of voices, we recommend a different collection by a non-Asian-American-identified BIPOC poet in each blog post.

An August APA Poetry Companion: Books to Celebrate the End of Summer

Header Image: An APA Poetry Companion, August 2020 (Cover images of the following books: W. Todd Kaneko, THIS IS HOW THE BONE SINGS; Sumita Chakraborty, ARROW; Jihyun Yun, SOME ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY; Kimberly Alidio, : ONCE TEETH BONES CORAL :, Barbara Jane Reyes, LETTERS TO A YOUNG BROWN GIRL; Aimee Nezhukumatathil, WORLD OF WONDERS; Sachiko Murakami, RENDER; Angie Sijun Lou, ALL WE ASK IS YOU TO BE HAPPY)
New and Notable APA Poetry Reads for August & September 2020

As the summer winds down and the academic year ramps up, here are just a few August and September books by APA poets that we’re excited to crack into.

FEATURED PICKS

Kimberly Alidio, : once teeth bones coral : (Belladonna*, Aug 2020)

We were delighted to learn that Issue 2 contributor Kimberly Alidio’s new book, : once teeth bones coral :, is out this month from Belladonna*. Alidio’s deft syntactical and structural play appears to be in full force in this new collection, about which Cheena Marie Lo writes, “Alidio’s poems reveal the ‘luminous familiar,’ traces of the interior that make visible the simultaneity of histories and futures, the possibilities inherent in queer connection, kinship, and refusal. These fragments are precise and expansive, and will resonate for a very long time.”

W. Todd Kaneko, This Is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence, Aug 2020)

Another book that we’re excited to see hit shelves this month is two-time contributor W. Todd Kaneko’s This Is How the Bone Sings. Kaneko’s second collection, This Is How the Bone Sings interrogates ancestry and fatherhood through myth, legend, and history, including the poet’s family’s experience in the Minidoka concentration camp during WWII. We’ve long admired the striking imagery and music of Kaneko’s work, and this new book promises to be no exception. (As a bonus, Kaneko’s poem “The Birds Know What They Mean,” which we published in Issue 7.2, appears in the book. If you enjoyed that piece as much as we did, we hope you’ll check out the collection, too!)

Barbara Jane Reyes, Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA, Sept 2020)

We’ve been looking forward to Issue 1 contributor Barbara Jane Reyes’s latest collection, a series of epistles addressed to young (especially Filipina/x) women of color, for months now. At a time when mentorship and the importance of literary lineages (especially feminist, WOC lineages) have been top of our minds, Reyes’s book seems especially timely. Writes Asa Drake in her review of the book for Entropy, “These are poems about what we give ourselves, rendered in language to assure the young brown girl writing in America that she is not alone. What is a mixtape if not a love letter that confirms we have all existed in the world, and we have been listening, perhaps together?” This is one love letter that we can’t wait to read.

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MORE NEW AND NOTEWORTHY TITLES

Sumita Chakraborty, Arrow (Alice James, Sep 2020)

Angie Sijun Lou, All We Ask Is You To Be Happy [Chapbook] (Gold Line Press, Aug 2020)

Sachiko Murakami, Render (Arsenal Pulp, Sep 2020)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments [Essays] (Milkweed, Aug 2020)

Jihyun Yun, Some Are Always Hungry (U of Nebraska, Sep 2020)

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What new and notable books are on your reading list this month? Share your recommendations with us in the comments or on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@LanternReview).

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ALSO RECOMMENDED

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine  (Graywolf, Sep 2020)
Please consider supporting a Black-owned bookstore with your purchase.

As an Asian American–focused publication, Lantern Review is committed to promoting diverse voices within the literary world. In solidarity with the Black community and in an effort to amplify Black voices in poetry, we’re sharing a different book by a Black poet in each of our blog posts this summer.

Guest Post at the American Bookbinders Museum Blog

ABM Guest Post Screenshot

We’re excited to announce that we have a guest post up on the American Bookbinders Museum’s blog this afternoon. LR editor Iris writes about the history of the chapbook and its importance to the modern poetry scene and describes four chapbooks by some of the poets who are featured in our ongoing collaboration with the museum for National Poetry Month:

“Four Beautiful Chapbooks by Asian American Poets to Read for National Poetry Month”

Click on over to read about Monica Mody’s Travel and Risk, Barbara Jane Reyes’s For the City that Nearly Broke Me, Candy Shue’s You Know Where You’ve Been By Where You End Up, and Debbie Yee’s Handmade Rabbit Society, and please don’t forget to stop by the museum tomorrow night (Thursday, April 21st), where we’ll be taking over their Third Thursday event series with more work by Monica, Barbara, Candy, Debbie, Jason Bayani, and Brynn Saito.  You’ll get the chance to view pieces that each poet read last Saturday, to respond in writing, and to construct and bind a mini chapbook of your own to take home.

For more information, please see the Facebook page for the event as well as our previous blog post that describes our collaboration with the museum in more detail. And if you’re enjoying our focus on the chapbook, stay tuned for a dual interview about the chapbook with poets Margaret Rhee and Chen Chen next week. There’s plenty of goodness still to come before National Poetry Month is up!

Curated Prompt: Barbara Jane Reyes – “Minding the ‘Ethnic Artifact'”

Barbara Jane Reyes
Barbara Jane Reyes

In celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we’re continuing our annual tradition of asking respected teachers and writers of Asian American poetry to share favorite writing exercises with us on successive Fridays during May. This week’s installment was contributed by Barbara Jane Reyes.

First, get that “I am APIA” identity poem, that “Yellow Power,” “Brown Power,” “Brown and Proud” poem out of your system. I wholeheartedly believe that we all need to write one (or two, or a few) of these at some point in our development as writers, especially in this American context, where we are described as “minority,” or “alien,” or worse things. Such mis-labelings are assaults upon our humanness. Now, oftentimes, as an initial phase of our political education, to defend ourselves against what we can rightfully view as attack—i.e. “what are you,” “you’re not from here,” “you don’t belong here”—we assume a defensive posture. We respond in defiance; we unleash the righteous anger.

Do not let go of that anger. Do not let anyone tell you that anger is not valid, not useful, not civilized, that it has no place in Poetry.

Salman Rushdie once said, “We are described into corners and then we must describe ourselves out of corners,” this little snippet of a quote that’s stayed with me for a long time.

Being described into corners is surely reason to be angry. And so how can we describe our way out of corners?

Minding the “Ethnic” “Artifact” in Our Work

“Artifact,” may not be the best word, because it implies stasis, but let’s go with this for now.

I am interested in the ways we describe ourselves into our own corners.

Something I recently blogged:

It’s not about the presence of the ethnic artifact in our work. It’s never been about the presence of the ethnic artifact in our work. It’s always been about what we are doing with the ethnic artifact, why and how we are doing what we are doing with the ethnic artifact.

What is the ethnic artifact in our work—not just objects (the Balul, the barrel man, and hanging on the wall of your parents’ home, above the Santo Niño on the altar, the gigantic narra wood spoon and fork, the gigantic narra wood tinikling dancers), but also language, food, customs, rituals.

Are you writing a grandmother/Lola poem because you feel like you have to? Why do you feel like you have to? What are you writing about your grandmother? How? Why? And are you handling her voice and narratives properly? Are you doing her voice and narratives justice? Are you exploring the complex layers of her voice and narratives, are you moving towards some insights you hadn’t previously considered, about her as a woman, a mother, a wife, her attitudes, her awareness, her agency? Her ambivalences? Her faith, her sadness, her will? Her humanity? Her testimony?

Is she telling the “truth”? Is she “lying”? Is she “omitting”? What and why?

And as you are engaged in this hard work, are you minding the borders of sentimentality? How close are you? Or are you rehashing everyone else’s Lola story, not digging deep enough, or are you going full maudlin, effectively turning her into a stereotype? Or are you sticking to the expected abstracts, Lolas as martyr, Lola as survivor (Of what? How? What are some ethical and moral questions we can employ here, as we discuss her agency?), Lola as symbol of strength, Lola as embodiment of tradition, Lola as symbol of generosity, love for Lola as expression of cultural pride?

You are not doing your Lola justice by resorting to the sentimental, generic, the hackneyed, overused trope. Your writing is objectifying your Lola.

So then, it has to do with the kind of hard work we are willing and able to do as writers, crafting narratives that flesh out the humanity of a character or persona in all its awesome contradiction and intricacy, versus churning out a fast, cheap, and easy McStory or McPoem … as a way of placating our constituents. The hard work is in the language—precision, specificity, and it is in how deep you dig into your own imagination (yes, imagine that, using our imagination), how much you can challenge and push your own imagination, as you listen to her tell her own story, or challenge and push your own memory. What other hard questions are we asking ourselves to push these narratives further, into something well considered, carefully crafted, original, interesting, specific?

What is at stake? What are the larger implications of the narrative?

So then, this is not a strict “prompt,” but rather, some lines of questioning I hope are helpful in unraveling the “ethnic” space we occupy, in many cases, with ambivalence. By all means, write about your families. Write your family histories. Write your family recipes. But be mindful of your lenses. Home in, scale back, position yourself at different angles. How are you looking?

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Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), winner of the Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry and a finalist for the California Book Award. She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. She is also the author of the chapbooks Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press, 2008) Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2008), and For the City that Nearly Broke Me (Aztlan Libre Press, 2012).

An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, she received her B.A. in Ethnic Studies at U.C. Berkeley and her M.F.A. at San Francisco State University. She is an adjunct professor at University of San Francisco’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program, where she teaches Filipino/a Literature in Diaspora, and Filipina Lives and Voices in Literature. She has also taught Filipino American Literature at San Francisco State University, and graduate poetry workshop at Mills College, and currently serves on the board of Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA). She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, where she is co-editor of Doveglion Press.

Editors’ Corner: On Waiting

PERIODICITY Postcards
Thank you postcards for my chapbook.

These days, my life is very full. Of work, of editing, of coding, of teaching, of conversing and community-building, and—for the first time—of writing and thinking and speaking about not just about my work as an editor, but also about my own poetry, its context in the world, how I see it in conversation with broader discourses.

My first chapbook, Periodicity, is being published in February. I’ve been living in a bit of a fugue state since July, when my publisher first relayed the good news to me.  Everything has been heady and surreal; suddenly, a wealth opportunities have been given to me to talk about my work, my writing, my personal literary interests. My evenings have been filled with logistics and correspondence: I’ve been gathering addresses for mailing lists, maintaining a Facebook page, conversing with friends and family about what a chapbook is, negotiating shipping refunds, designing promotional materials, scheduling interviews and reviews, and writing reams and reams of heartfelt thank-you notes. But in the midst of it all, I’ve found, somewhat disconcertingly, that I have had very little time, opportunity (or even physical energy) to write new poems.

I’m going to be honest here: I haven’t completed a full first draft of a poem in more than three months. I’ve written a few sketches here and there, most of which I’ve later thrown away. I’ve tried, with varying degrees of success, to make inroads on revising drafts from this summer. But since finishing the final revision of my chapbook manuscript in early August, I haven’t been able to write so much as a stanza. Every time someone congratulates me on the chap, I brace myself for the usual follow-up question: so what are you working on now?

Continue reading “Editors’ Corner: On Waiting” →

Two Reviews: Barbara Jane Reyes’s FOR THE CITY THAT NEARLY BROKE ME and Timothy Yu’s 15 CHINESE SILENCES

For The City That Nearly Broke Me by Barbara Jane Reyes | Aztlan Libre Press 2012 | $13

In my California, we know how to party. We Black Panther Party. We 2PAC and Dre. We Dime a Day, we Dollar a Dance. We Fillmore jazz. We Summer of Love. We Barbary Coast. We I-Hotel. We Chinatown. We North Beach howl.

In my California, we no Baywatch babe. We East Los, we South Central LA. We Rodney King video. We campesino. We mighty Sacramento River. Rooted deep sequoia giants, we lovin’ the wind, we kissin’ the sky.

(from “My California” 34)

FOR THE CITY THAT NEARLY BROKE ME

I met up with Barbara Jane Reyes at Shooting Star Cafe in Oakland Chinatown to chat about her new chapbook For The City That Nearly Broke Me. The project started with a writing prompt: write about a city that saved you, then write about a city that broke you. As Barbara began to think about what it would mean “to be broken by a city,” she decided to approach it by writing about places that “were the most emotionally complicated for me.” The chapbook hovers over and between Manila (“my birthplace but not necessarily my home”) and Oakland, where she has been living for the past decade but is not sure she can claim as her own.

I resonated with what Barbara had to say regarding the internal conflict inherent in claiming place and claiming home. Many immigrants and children of immigrants struggle with a similar tension; our birthplaces (or our parents’ birthplaces), with their histories of colonization, are now tourist destinations, and both the industry of tourism and the good intentions of our families make it difficult for us to “forge a connection” with these places. In Barbara’s case, her “attempts to go deeper are thwarted” by the gaze of the tourist as well as by her own family, who implies that there are things about Manila she might not be able to handle, that “there is only so much we want you to see.”

The title poem of the chapbook has 17 parts, #3 of which, “Junto al Pasig,” references a José Rizal poem and talks about the Pasig River. Barbara spoke about the Pasig as a river that gives its name to the Filipino people, but a river that is also environmentally dead. Many squatter communities now make their homes around this dead river. Barbara’s “Junto al Pasig” illustrates the sacred decay of the river with a juxtaposition of two “streams,” in a sense; one of “giardia,” “DDT” and “blooming cholera” and another of divine incantation and “divina aurora” (5).

Continue reading “Two Reviews: Barbara Jane Reyes’s FOR THE CITY THAT NEARLY BROKE ME and Timothy Yu’s 15 CHINESE SILENCES” →

Friday Prompt: Working With Hybrid Language

LR Issue 5: "The Hybridity Issue" - Call for Submissions
Click to Submit to LR Issue 5

This month, in preparation for Issue 5: “The Hybridity Issue,” we’ve dedicated our Friday Prompts to exploring how collage, mixing and hybridization can be meaningful (and generative) practices for poets interested in exploring the narratives and critical concerns of the Asian American community..  Thus far, we’ve looked at hybrid form and mixed media; today we’ll be talking about hybridized language.

In contemporary poetry, quirky mixtures of the high and low, archaic and contemporary, and the scientific and colloquial are so common that we’re no longer surprised when a writer quotes a religious text–the Bible, for instance–and then, without skipping a beat, relays the one-liner they heard while waiting for an oil change.  This kind of modulation, frequently used for ironic or comedic effect, can also be deployed for more serious purposes–and, I suspect, is a mode we’ve come to embrace because miscegenated language reflects our cultural moment in a way that elegant, seamlessly constructed prose does not.  Just Google “best place to get tacos” or “Jeremy Lin is awesome” and see what comes up.

For many Asian American poets, however, linguistic hybridity is more than just an intellectual exercise.  Many of us are multilingual, or come from families whose histories are told in multiple tongues (two, at least, and sometimes more–I’m thinking here of Korean-Brazilian writer Larissa Min, who writes in the linguistic spaces between Portuguese, English and Korean).  And even if our tongues aren’t split by language, the idea of linguistic difference–our grandparents’ English versus our own, our professors’ English versus our aunties’–is important for more than theoretical reasons.  It’s freighted with cultural, and thus, emotional weight.  Our split tongues matter–even if, as is the case for me, a fourth-generation Japanese American, our “mother tongue” is little more than a myth, a conspicuous silence that, in its marked absence, tells us something about our history. Continue reading “Friday Prompt: Working With Hybrid Language” →

Editors’ Picks: Further Reading on the State of Asian American Poetry

In his review of Bao Phi’s book, which we posted yesterday, guest contributor Greg Choy made some particularly intriguing observations about shifting trends in Asian American poetry, especially with regards to its relationship with community-based activism.  The discussion about how best to engage with politics (and specifically, about whether to engage with identitarian politics) in our work is broad and ongoing, and in light of that, I thought I would follow up on Prof. Choy’s thoughts by pointing you towards a few insightful write-ups that provide additional perspectives on the matter.

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Julia Kuo's illustration of HYPHEN's Roundtable on Asian American Poetry
Julia Kuo's illustration of HYPHEN's Roundtable on Asian American Poetry

1. “CON-VERSE-SATIONS”
(Hyphen Magazine Roundtable with Timothy Yu, Victoria Chang, and Nick Carbo)

I appreciate the thoughtful dialogue to be had in this article with regard to Asian American poetry’s stylistic diversity, its audiences, its status both inside and outside of academia, and its current relationship to its activist roots. In particular, I think Tim Yu makes a spot-on observation that while, in the wave that immediately followed the 70’s, poets were more interested in the confessional mode than in political rhetoric, poets are now coming back towards the political, some through the overt expression of activist “creeds,” as is true in the spoken word scene, and others more quietly, by infusing their approaches to craft and subject matter with strong political undertones (Yu points to Ken Chen as an example of one such poet). “We’ve had two decades of Li-Young Lee and Marilyn Chin and these writers who really risk prominence writing about their own personal experience,” he says, but “that’s not where we are anymore.”  His claim is exemplified by the list of recommended titles the editors provide at the end of the article: from Cathy Park Hong to Barbara Jane Reyes to Ronaldo V. Wilson, the body of contemporary Asian American poets who are again engaging with the political (particularly through experimental forms) is strong, and seems to be growing.

Continue reading “Editors’ Picks: Further Reading on the State of Asian American Poetry” →

Friends & Neighbors: Recent Releases

When the AAWW announced the winners of its 2011 Asian American Literary Awards last month, we were thrilled to hear that Issue 3 contributor Oliver de la Paz’s Requiem for the Orchard had been named 1st finalist in the poetry category (after Kimiko Hahn, who won for Toxic Flora, and before Molly Gaudry, who was named 2nd finalist  for We Take Me Apart).  But Oliver is not the only one of our friends and contributors who has had exciting news this season.  Here some recent publications and releases that have shown up on our radar these past few months:

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Marc Vincenz’s The Propaganda Factory (Argotist EBooks 2011)

Marc Vincenz's THE PROPAGANDA FACTORY
Marc Vincenz's THE PROPAGANDA FACTORY

Contributor Marc Vincenz’s new e-book The Propaganda Factory was released by Argotist EBooks this past August.  In this short collection (which includes “Taishan Mountain,” a poem that first appeared in LR issue 2), Marc weaves together layers of history and geography through an ever-shifting range of lenses that take us from the level of the microscopic to the realm of the galactic at a moment’s notice.  It is available for download here.

Kim Koga’s ligature strain (TinFish Press 2011)

Kim Koga's LIGATURE STRAIN
Kim Koga's LIGATURE STRAIN

Issue 3 contributor Kim Koga now has a chapbook (ligature strain) out with TinFish.  In this linked sequence, which was published as #6 in TinFish’s current retro chap series, Kim floods the page and the mind’s eye with feverish, liquidly intense imagery that involves birth, echolocation, pink and white flesh, and lots of fetal beavers (yes, the actual animal).  Be on the lookout for more about ligature strain later this month.

Continue reading “Friends & Neighbors: Recent Releases” →

Process Profile: Barbara Jane Reyes Discusses “13. Black Jesus” [from “The City That Nearly Broke Me”]

Barbara Jane Reyes

Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), recently noted as a finalist for the California Book Award. She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. She is co-editor with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, of Doveglion Press, and an adjunct professor in Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco.

For APIA Heritage Month 2011, we are revisiting our Process Profile series, in which contemporary Asian American poets discuss their craft, focusing on their process for a single poem from inception to publication. This year, we’ve been asking several Lantern Review contributors whose work gestures back toward history or legacy to discuss their process for composing a poem of theirs that we’ve published. In this installment, Barbara Jane Reyes discusses her piece “13. Black Jesus” [an excerpt of her longer project “The City That Nearly Broke Me”], which appeared in Issue 1 of Lantern Review.

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I love my Black Jesus persona.

He emerged in my “For the City That Nearly Broke Me” series, which I started writing after this prompt: “Write about the city that saved you. Write about one that nearly broke you.” Rachelle Cruz posted this prompt on her blog while she was a PEN Emerging Voices fellow.

I’ve never excavated Manila, my birthplace; it eludes my understanding, it’s always spitting me out. That’s how I see it, and so I wanted to find a thwart-proof way in.

I’ve spoken on Black Jesus and the galleon trade at Jacket2, in an interview conducted by Craig Santos Perez.

There is a general disdain Filipinos have for dark skin; we claim those precious few drops of Spanish blood. In this desire for whiteness, it’s ignored that much Spanish blood entered the Filipino via colonial rape.

The term “Buffalo Solider” has been around since the 1860’s, and refers to US cavalry and infantry regiments of African American soldiers. There are legends about the term’s origin, but I can’t get over the historical significance of African American men as animals. Moreover, these Buffalo Soldiers fought against Native Americans in the “Indian Wars,” and against the Filipinos in the Philippine American War. People of color pitted against one another in America’s formative wars of conquest.  Some defected from the US military, became Katipunan/Philippine freedom fighters, as “posters and leaflets addressed to ‘The Colored American Soldier’ described the lynching and discrimination against Blacks in the US and discouraged them from being the instrument of their white masters’ ambitions to oppress another ‘people of color’.”

And of course, “Buffalo Soldier” is a Bob Marley song, whose form the poem borrows. It’s a narrative of transnational displacement, an anthem of survival and resistance:

And he was taken from Africa,
brought to America.
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.
Say it was a buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta.
Buffalo soldier, in the heart of America.

It’s all of these displacements and reorientations that have allowed me to start the excavation.

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Excerpt from “13. Black Jesus”

After Bob Marley

The indio who carved me   knew the drum and the heart are one.
He knew the song for hunting,   the waiting song, the calling song.
He knew the song for planting,   the song of earth’s open hand.
He knew the song for walking,   the river water song.

Buffalo Soldier,   Carabao Brother,
Stolen from the Americas,   brought to the islands,
Sharpening machete,   crouching in the jungle,
Born into slavery,   son of revolution.

From “13. Black Jesus” | Barbara Jane Reyes | Issue 1, Lantern Review | p 65.
Click here to read the poem in its entirety.