Muscle Memory Liou Jenny
Muscle Memory Liou Jenny Jenny Liou's debut poetry collection conjoins the world of cage fighting and the traumas of immigrationIn Muscle Memory, Washington-based poet Jenny Liou grapples with…
Specifikacia Muscle Memory Liou Jenny
Muscle Memory Liou Jenny
Jenny Liou's debut poetry collection conjoins the world of cage fighting and the traumas of immigrationIn Muscle Memory, Washington-based poet Jenny Liou grapples with violence and identity, beginning with the chain-link enclosure of the prizefighter's cage and radiating outward into the diasporic sweep of Chinese American history. Liou places the physical manifestation of violence in her sport alongside the deeper traumas of immigration and her own complicated search for identity, exploring what she inherited from her Chinese immigrant father--who was also obsessed with poetry and Liou writes with spare, stunning lyricism about how cage fighting offered relief from the trauma inflicted by diaspora's vanishing ghosts; how, in the cage, an elbow splits an eyebrow, or an armbar snaps a limb, and, even when you lose a fight, you've won something: pain.