The Kingdom of Surfaces
Poems
by Sally Wen Mao
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Pub Date Aug 01 2023 | Archive Date Jul 31 2023
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Description
*FINALIST FOR THE 2023 MAYA ANGELOU BOOK AWARD *
A virtuosic new poetry collection from Sally Wen Mao, “a consistently inspiring and exciting voice” (Morgan Parker)
In The Kingdom of Surfaces, award-winning poet Sally Wen Mao examines art and history—especially the provenance of objects such as porcelain, silk, and pearls—to frame an important conversation on beauty, empire, commodification, and violence. In lyric poems and wide-ranging sequences, Mao interrogates gendered expressions such as the contemporary “leftover women,” which denotes unmarried women, and the historical “castle-toppler,” a term used to describe a concubine whose beauty ruins an emperor and his empire. These poems also explore the permeability of object and subject through the history of Chinese women in America, labor practices around the silk loom, and the ongoing violence against Asian people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At its heart, The Kingdom of Surfaces imagines the poet wandering into a Western fantasy, which covets, imitates, and appropriates Chinese aesthetics via Chinamania and the nineteenth-century Aesthetic movement, while perpetuating state violence upon actual lives. The title poem is a speculative recasting of “Through the Looking-Glass,” set in a surreal topsy-turvy version of the China-themed 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala. The Kingdom of Surfaces is a brilliantly conceived call for those who recognize the horrors of American exceptionalism to topple the empire that values capital over lives and power over liberation.
Marketing Plan
National publicity campaign
Bookseller outreach campaign
Multi-city US tour
Targeted digital and social media advertising
National publicity campaign
Bookseller outreach campaign
Multi-city US tour
Targeted digital and social media advertising
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781644452370 |
| PRICE | $16.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 112 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Lynn B, Media/Journalist
I absolutely loved reading this book. I was completely drawn into the topic and could not stop reading it.
Freya S, Educator
These poems are vivid and visceral, with a fascinating use of the line, of sentence, of image. The voice lingers and resonates strongly.
Nuha F, Reviewer
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.
Minh N, Reviewer
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.
They Slash T, Reviewer
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.
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