WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: August 2, 2023

Sally Wen Mao’s The Kingdom of Surfaces was published yesterday by Graywolf Press. The book interrogates the Western gaze, the eroticizing/exoticizing of Chinese people, women in particular.

Each poem is a knockout that builds and complicates the theme. The poems often center on objects—jade, poppies, silk and silkworms, pearls and porcelain. In fact, three of the poems are shaped like vases. But hidden in those beautiful shapes are difficult realities of Chinese-Americans, then and now:

“In Atlanta,// a white man shoots/ Kills eight people//Most were Asian women/ He regards//not as ‘people’ but “temptations’”

and

“My century of humiliation began with my body”

The poet brings the historical up to our very moment, engaging with the crude, discriminatory remarks by the former president during the pandemic and the violence and fear his rhetoric caused. Sally Wen Mao was born in Wuhan.

At the center of the book is the ambitious title poem based on the 2015 MoMA exhibit “China: through the Looking Glass” and the Met Gala where the theme was China. The speaker situates herself in the exhibit—“When someone’s fantasy comes true, my nightmare begins.” She roams through the exhibit, where surreal, sometimes frightening, encounters ensue. At the “real” Met Gala, celebrities confused cultures—some wearing (Japanese) kimonos. Rihanna was the only celebrity to wear a gown by a Chinese designer.

There is so much to admire in this book—the glorious poetic forms, the precise diction and image-making, and the social/political chutzpah, just to start. Sally Wen Mao’s subject may sometimes be objects, but she refuses objectification as she becomes the subject in these poems.

This was my first book by Mao that I've read. (I have her other two poetry books bookmarked for later!) This poetry collection was marvelous in its language, juxtaposing past and present in poems about the Chinese-American diaspora and social injustices. Reading this collection once through, I now want to read it again. There's so much layered in each poem that deserves many more reads.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

Love Sally Wen Mao and I’ve been highly anticipating this book! I love how visceral her poems feel. There were some really topical poems about COVID and hate crimes in here that I enjoyed a lot. My favorite poems in this collection are the ones in which she discusses Chinese artwork! This was a stunning collection and I know I’ll be reading it again and again.

The Kingdom of Surfaces is a solid third poetry collection by two-time Pushcart Prize-winning poet Sally Wen Mao. Following her previous collections Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019) and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014.)

Surfaces is a collection that dwells on the relationships between art and identity. Artworks from China trafficked into American museum collections, immigrants traveling across borders, the COVID pandemic that made many of us rethink our relationships to art and one another. Sinophobia and anti-Asian prejudice are common themes, approached from many different angles with sharpness and elegance. The poetry style is flexible, everything from concrete poems to free verse, and it makes for a lively collection that is a pleasure to read. For those interested in reading poetry, particularly poetry about art, this is a worthwhile collection to enjoy.

Favorite poems: Wet Market, Heist, Chimera

Thabk you Graywolf Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available August 1st 2023.

Evocative and endlessly imaginative, Sally Wen Mao's The Kingdom of Surfaces crosses time and space to bridge together the migration story of East Asian American women and femmes. Using fashion and art as her portals to the past, Mao effortlessly crosses through different eras of Chinese and American history. By juxtaposing past and present, she creates a "looking glass" distortion, showing how the distant past is very much still alive today. I was constantly looking up the artwork she was referring to, which made for a fun scavenger hunt type of reading experience. Somewhere between poetry and prose, between art history lessons and fiction, Mao's women demand to be seen, heard, and respected.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher of Graywolf Press, and the author Sally Wen Mao for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I highly anticipated this poetry collection; if you're a fan of Oculus, you're bound to like it. This collection is an improvement in Mao's poetry with her focus on Chinese history, the Chinese American diaspora, and social injustice. I always loved her fixation on Anna May Wong. No one is devoted to Anna May Wong like Mao is. I'm excited to see Mao's writing in the form of prose.

I enjoyed the way Sally Wen Mao tied art, film, and culture into these poems. It was interesting to later read about the specific things referenced and connect to why they impacted the author. For example, I had never heard of Kokichi Mikimoto before reading this, nor had I heard of One Thousand Boats by Yayoi Kusama.

A couple of poems were difficult for me to read. Not due to subject matter, but rather their formatting. Which is a totally personal issue as I understand they were written that way for artistic and stylistic purposes. My autism had a difficult time with those, so I don't feel like I got as much from those as I would have otherwise.

These poems are vivid and visceral, with a fascinating use of the line, of sentence, of image. The voice lingers and resonates strongly.

"Thank you Netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review."


"The Kingdom of Surfaces" by Sally Wen Mao is, a collection of poems that examines history and art.


I would give "The Kingdom of Surfaces" by Sally Wen Mao a 2-star review because, the poems were written beautiful but this isn't really my kind of read.

I absolutely loved reading this book. I was completely drawn into the topic and could not stop reading it.