Writing like an Asian: Five Questions with Monica

Recently, Jee Yoon Lee interviewed me about Silent Anatomies for her blog Writing like an Asian:

(Q1) Your debut collection of poetry, Silent Anatomies, opens with "The Glass Larynx." How did you come to choose this poem to be the first one in the book?
"The Glass Larynx" is a contrapuntal poem between Medica, the narrator, and the philosopher Chuang Tzu. She is challenging the idea of silence as the Way. Chuang Tzu's lines are from "Action and Non-Action," where he posits silence and stillness as the "root of all things." Perhaps that is nice if one lives alone on a mountain. Yet we live in an age where "our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter," as Dr. Martin Luther King said.

What if attaining the Way is not silence but in our refusal to be silenced? "The Glass Larynx" is Medica's invitation to the reader.

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