This is a review for Go Home! a new anthology out from Asian American Writers Workshop and Feminist Press, edited by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, with a foreword by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Ok that was for the SEO. Now let’s begin this not-really review. Why not really? Because
1. I’m mostly stealing from the pages in this book with roman numerals
and
2. I’m not going to tell you hardly anything about the book or whether you’ll like it or not. I’m just going to tell you to read it.
Foreword. Viet Thanh Nguyen:
The existence of Go Home! testifies to the power of language as a home open to all, albeit one that we must often fight for. Against the racist demand that we go back to where we came from, we say that we are already at home, not just in the United States, but in English.
Reading this collection, I visited all of these writers’ home and experienced their homelessness filtered through their stories and poems. All of their works were gifts to me, and I thought about how homes can be gifts too.
Editor’s Note. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan:
But this one book can’t contain all the vital voices. After you close the last page behind you, please open many more. Consider this book a doorway. The world presents ever-increasing ways in which we can be homed and unhomed. You may not see your own definition of home in theses pages, but we hope you find resonances and use them as a starting point for your own writing and thinking.
There. That’s the argument.
Read Alexander Chee and Karissa Chen. Read Mia Alvar and Chaya Babu. Read Marilyn Chin and Muna Gurung. Read the acknowledgements (always read the acknowledgements).
Go home, whatever, whoever, however, wherever that might be, and take this book with you.
