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4.0 

From From

By Monica Youn
From From by Monica Youn digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

“Where are you from . . . ? No—where are you from from?” It’s a question every Asian American gets asked as part of an incessant chorus saying you’ll never belong here, you’re a perpetual foreigner, you’ll always be seen as an alien, an object, or a threat.

Monica Youn’s From From brilliantly evokes the conflicted consciousness of deracination. If you have no core of “authenticity,” no experience of your so-called homeland, how do you piece together an Asian American identity out of Westerners’ ideas about Asians? Your sense of yourself is part stereotype, part aspiration, part guilt. In this dazzling collection, one sequence deconstructs the sounds and letters of the word “deracinations” to create a sonic landscape of micro- and macroaggressions, assimilation, and self-doubt. A kaleidoscopic personal essay explores the racial positioning of Asian Americans and the epidemic of anti-Asian hate. Several poems titled “Study of Two Figures” anatomize and dissect the Asian other: Midas the striving, nouveau-riche father; Dr. Seuss and the imaginary daughter Chrysanthemum-Pearl he invented while authoring his anti-Japanese propaganda campaign; Pasiphaë, mother of the minotaur, and Sado, the eighteenth-century Korean prince, both condemned to containers allegorical and actual.

From From is an extraordinary collection by a poet whose daring and inventive works are among the most vital in contemporary literature.

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16 Reviews

4.0
“Aku tertarik membaca Monica Youn karena gerakan #BoycottPenAmerica karena tidak mendukung penulis yang support #FreePalestine Jadi ketika @transit pengumuman bahwa dia punya stock bukunya #MonicaYoun aku langsung ikut pesan. Aku akan mendeklarasikan bahwa aku sangat menyukai buku ini dan bisa jadi aku sudah bias terhadap penulisnya sejak awal. Monica Youn membahas isu rasisme yang sangat penting. Dia menggunakan pendekatan mitologi Yunani dan cerita leluhurnya di Korea untuk memberikan gambaran bahwa kita nggak bisa memandang sebelah mata kepercayaan orang lain. Dengan demikian penghargaan pada manusia harus sama. Ini terdengar sangat aktivisa karena mungkin Monica sebelumnya adalah seorang advokat. Namun jika membaca buku ini kalian akan terkejut sebab puisinya masih terasa sangat puisi. Puisinya juga bercerita dan punya banyak informasi sebagai refleksi. Lebih dari sekedar pergolakan batin, Monica menyusuri fakta dan waktu untuk mengajak kita memikirkan ulang siapa kita dan bagaimana kita seharusnya melihat dunia. Bagus banget.”
“I am not a poem person, I don’t read poems or ever really seek them out. The great thing about doing lists is that I can go out of my comfort zone and I read books I’d never read otherwise. I really enjoyed working my way through this book even if I was enjoying it from a superficial level. I most enjoyed the more narrative driven poems like “In the Passive Voice”. I think this is because it’s closer to what normally would seek out. Some of the references did go over my head like the poems that centred around Greek mythology. I really liked how Youn would write which made it worthwhile when I didn’t really understand what was being said. It gave me a lot to think about, maybe I’ll come back to this one when I have more experience reading poems.”

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