Oculus
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“Provenance: A Vivisection” stems from the controversies surrounding the Bodies World Exhibitions, concerning the origins of the plastinated bodies on display and the implications that they belong to Chinese dissidents from corpse factories in China.
“The Toll of the Sea” rewrites the 1922 silent film starring Anna May Wong of the same name, directed by Chester Franklin. It is one of the first Technicolor films ever made, and the first successful Hollywood two-color Technicolor film—black and white with shades of red and green. The italicized lines quote directly from the film’s lines.
“Anna May Wong Has Breakfast at Tiffany’s” centers on the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), directed by Blake Edwards, based on the Truman Capote novel. The film features a racist caricature, Mr. Yunioshi, played by Mickey Rooney in yellowface. Roland Winters, Sidney Toler, and Warner Oland were all white actors who made lifelong careers out of playing Asian characters in yellowface. The role they all had in common was Charlie Chan.
“Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles” centers on the film Sixteen Candles (1984), directed by John Hughes. The biographical details are found in a biography of Anna May Wong, Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend by Graham Russell Hodges (Hong Kong University Press, 2012).
“Electronic Motherland” refers to the Foxconn Riots in Taiyuan Province, China, in September 2012, when 2,000 workers rioted, shutting down the factory that manufactured electronics for computer companies like Apple and Dell. After a string of employee suicides in 2010, the company installed netting to catch the jumpers.
“The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Voice Girl” is based on the hugely popular television show in China, broadcasted by Hunan Satellite Television between 2004 and 2006, of the same name. In the show, young women compete to become the next singer and idol of China. Winners were chosen based on an audience-voting process broadcasted across the country.
“Electronic Necropolis” is set in Guiyu Village, a village that specializes in mining and recycling electronic waste, such as computers and motherboards.
“The Diary of Afong Moy” is based on the history of Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to travel to the United States in 1834. At nineteen, she was exhibited and displayed among various Chinese curiosities and objects, and spectators paid admission to see her. The exhibition was meant to sell Asian products to the American white middle class. She went on a tour through the United States, and visited Andrew Jackson’s White House. In later years, Afong Moy is said to have been employed by P. T. Barnum. The Barnum Years section references a P. T. Barnum enterprise where Barnum brought over a family of six Chinese people from Canton to promote his new museum. In the description Barnum wrote of the new Chinese lady, he discredited Afong Moy: “the only other female ever known to have left the ‘Central Flowery Nation’ in order to visit the ‘outside barbarians’ [is] one of apocryphal reputation and position in her own country.” This quote comes from Ten Thousand Things on China and the Chinese (1850). I also used the article by John Haddad, “The Chinese Lady and China for the Ladies: Race, Gender, and Public Exhibition in Jacksonian America,” Chinese America: History & Perspectives—The Journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America with UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2011: 5–19).
“Anna May Wong Meets Josephine Baker” imagines a meeting between Wong and Baker, who both moved to Europe in the 1920s to escape racial stereotyping in the United States.
“Anna May Wong Makes Cameos” references various films from the 2000s that contain Asian themes: Romeo Must Die, directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak; Kill Bill, directed by Quentin Tarantino; The Last Samurai, directed by Edward Zwick; “Hollaback Girl,” a music video by Gwen Stefani; and Memoirs of a Geisha, directed by Rob Marshall.
“Anna May Wong Dreams of Wong Kar-Wai” refers to the plots of several films by Wong Kar-Wai, an iconic Hong Kong filmmaker, director of In the Mood for Love, 2046, Chungking Express, Happy Together, Fallen Angels, and Days of Being Wild. Wong Kar-Wai’s heroines are often heartbroken. “California Dreamin”’ by The Mamas & the Papas is repeated throughout the film Chungking Express.
“Anna May Wong Stars as Cyborg #86” takes details from the film Cloud Atlas (2012), which employed Korean actresses as cyborgs in a future dystopic Asian city. Two white actors in Cloud Atlas wear yellowface with slanted eyes.
“Ghost in the Shell” refers to a 1989 manga by Masamune Shirow and 1995 futuristic Japanese anime directed by Mamoru Oshii whose story was adapted into a 2017 film by Paramount, which cast white actress Scarlett Johansson as Major, a Japanese character, to much public outcry.
“Dirge with Cutlery and Furs” is about the South Korean fashion model Daul Kim (1989–2009) who regularly kept a blog before she committed suicide in her Paris apartment in 2009. In her blog “I Like to Fork Myself,” she chronicled life as a fashion model, beginning each post with “say hi to.” In many posts, she was candid about her depression and loneliness. The last blog post was titled, “say hi to forever.”
“Yume Miru Kikai [The Dreaming Machine]” is the title of the film that master animator Satoshi Kon never completed before his death, and the film that Madhouse Animation Studio has not yet finished due to budget issues. The borrowed lines are from Makiko Itoh’s translation of Kon’s last letter before he died of cancer in 2010, written on his blog, to his fans.
“The Five Faces of Faye Valentine” examines a character from Cowboy Bebop, an anime series directed by Shinichirō Watanabe. Faye Valentine is a fictional character, a poker player with a bounty on her head.
“Lavender Town” is a town in Pokémon where dead Pokémon are buried. There are multiple urban legends and myths surrounding this town, including a myth that tells of children driven to commit suicide after reaching this level on the Pokémon game.
“The Death of Ruan Lingyu” refers to the famous Chinese film actress Ruan Lingyu, whose suicide at the age of twenty-four rocked China and the world in 1935, following the release of her movie New Women, wherein she plays a writer who suffers a similar fate.
“After Nam June Paik” takes its subtitles from various pieces by Nam June Paik in the exhibition Becoming Robot at the Asia Society’s 2014 exhibition in New York City. It also references a Paik piece on display at the Smithsonian National Art Museum, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii. The section Li Tai Po takes its cento lines from poems by Li Po and lines from Janelle Monáe’s songs “Oh, Maker” from her album The ArchAndroid (2011) and “Electric Lady” from her album The Electric Lady (2013). The section Mall of the Electronic Superhighway takes its James Baldwin quote from a Henry Louis Gates, Jr. interview with Baldwin and Josephine Baker in 1987, anthologized in the book James Baldwin: The Legacy, edited by Quincy Troupe (Simon and Schuster/Touchstone: New York, 1989: 172).
“Oculus” in the last section documents my experience at a performance, “An Ode To,” by Solange Knowles at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on May 18, 2017. The Guggenheim Museum is the world’s most photographed place, according to the Washington Post and Google satellites, and the oculus on the top of the museum is an iconic window envisioned by Frank Lloyd Wright. In a 1955 letter to the then-director of the museum, Wright asks, “Isn’t a picture (like sculpture and like a building) a circumstance in nature; sharing light and dark—warm and cold—changing with every subtle change: seen now in one light; now in another?”
“Resurrection” refers to a 2014 exhibition Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion at the New-York Historical Society focusing on the history of Chinese immigration in America, which prominently displayed Anna May Wong’s face on its posters and advertisements around New York City.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the following publications and their editors, where versions of these poems have found homes:
Bat City Review: “The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Voice Girl”
Black Warrior Review: “Yume
Miru Kikai [The Dreaming Machine]”
BOMB: “Anna May Wong Goes Viral,” “The Death of Ruan Lingyu”
Crazyhorse: “Occidentalism”
Four Way Review: “Oculus,” “Mutant Odalisque”
Harvard Review Online: “Provenance: A Vivisection”
Hyphen: “Anna May Wong on Silent Films,” “Anna May Wong Has Breakfast at Tiffany’s”
jubilat: “After Nam June Paik”: Opera Sextronique, Li Tai Po, and Mall of the Electronic Superhighway
Kenyon Review Online: “Close Encounters of the Liminal Kind”
Linebreak: “Dirge with Cutlery and Furs”
The Margins: “Anna May Wong Goes Home with Bruce Lee,” “Lavender Town,” “After Nam June Paik”: Good Morning Mr. Orwell
The Missouri Review: “Anna May Wong Fans Her Time Machine,” “Anna May Wong Meets Josephine Baker,” “Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles,” “Anna May Wong Makes Cameos,” “Anna May Wong Rates the Runway”
Poetry: “The Toll of the Sea”
Poets.org Poem-a-Day: “Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles,” “Resurrection”
A Public Space: “Ghost Story”
Puerto del Sol: “Antipode Essay”
Salt Hill: “Anna May Wong Stars as Cyborg #86”
Third Coast: “Electronic Necropolis”
Tin House: “Teledildonics”
Washington Square Review: “Live Feed,” “Anna May Wong Dreams of Wong Kar-Wai”
“Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles” was selected for a Pushcart Prize in the 2017 Pushcart Prize XLI: Best of the Small Presses anthology.
I would like to sincerely thank the following organizations, residencies, fellowships, and institutions for their generous resources, valuable time, and community, without which the writing of this book would not be possible: the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington program at the George Washington University, the Singapore Creative Writing Residency, the National University of Singapore, the Singapore Arts House, the Saltonstall Foundation, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, the Jerome Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Cornell University English Department.
I harbor the deepest gratitude to my teachers, mentors, and community, whose steadfast support moves me to believe in what’s possible. Thank you to my teachers and mentors: Terrance Hayes, Alice Fulton, Lyrae Van-Clief Stefanon, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Kenneth McClane, and Yona Harvey. This manuscript began while I was at Cornell. Thank you to the incredible friends and fellow writers who have supported me and conversed with me as I worked on this manuscript—thank you for being true when I am down, up, and everything in between. Ocean Vuong for the late-night conversations, endless cups of tea, and frolicking in the snow, Cathy Linh Che for your eyes on this manuscript and for the international adventures, Jane Wong for the conversations about our ghosts and discovering wild girl poetics together, Jennifer Chang for being my mentor-sister and champion. Thank you to Jen Lue, Emily Jungmin Yoon, Madeleine Barnes, Soham Patel, Thora Siemson, Jenny Xie, Dan Lau, and so many others in my community for the vast amounts of love and support. Thank you Lisa Page for the wonderful welcome to GWU and tarot card readings. Thank you to my colleagues and friends at the Cullman Center, especially Jean Strouse, Lauren Goldenberg, Angela Flournoy, Nicole Fleetwood, and Saidiya Hartman: you are my role models, and it was a privilege to be at the Cullman Center with you. To my community at Kundiman: if it were not so. Thank you to Joseph Legaspi and Sarah Gambito for first bringing me into this poetry family. Thank you to my family—my father, Ming Mao, and my mother, Hong Li, my grandmother, aunts and uncles, who have crossed so many borders to get here.
I am also indebted to the long line of writers and artists, living and departed, who have come before me. I find this book in conversation with many of my heroes and artistic influences—Ai, June Jordan, Federico Garcia Lorca, Bei Dao, Shu Ting, Qiu Miaojing, Nam June Paik, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Satoshi Kon, Yayoi Kusama, Ana Mendieta, Frida Kahlo, Wong Kar-Wai, Maxine Hong Kingston, Marilyn Chin, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, Claudia Rankine, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and many others. Also cheers to my icons and muses who have appeared in this book: Anna May Wong, Josephine Baker, Rihanna, Janelle Monáe, and Solange.
Thank you to Jeff Shotts for your brilliance, vision, and patience, and to Fiona McCrae and the whole staff and team at Graywolf Press who have given this book the ultimate chance to live. Thank you to Karen Gu, who always sends me books and the best cards and notes and has been a champion of the project in a way I never imagined possible.
I wrote this book for women of color. Without you, the world isn’t possible. Because of you, I keep going. I have learned this the hard way: you matter, and don’t let anyone or anything convince you otherwise.
SALLY WEN MAO was born in Wuhan, China, and raised in northern California. She is the author of a previous collection of poems, Mad Honey Symposium, a Poets & Writers Top Ten Debut Poetry Collection of 2014. She was a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library and a Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington at the George Washington University. Her work has won a Pushcart Prize, a Jerome Foundation grant, an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, and has appeared in Poetry, A Public Space, Tin House, The Best of the Net 2014, and The Best American Poetry 2013, among others. She holds an M.F.A. from Cornell University and has taught writing and poetry at Cornell University, Hunter College, the National University of Singapore, the George Washington University, and other spaces. The first poem she wrote in second grade was about summer.
www.sallywenmao.com
@sallywenmao
This book is made possible through a partnership with the College of Saint Benedict, and honors the legacy of S. Mariella Gable, a distinguished teacher at the College.
Previous titles in this series include:
Loverboy by Victoria Redel
The House on Eccles Road by Judith Kitchen
One Vacant Chair by Joe Coomer
The Weatherman by Clint McCown
Collected Poems by Jane Kenyon
Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship by Nuruddin Farah:
Sweet and Sour Milk
Sardines
Close Sesame
Duende by Tracy K. Smith
All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems by Linda Gregg
The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song by Ellen Bryant Voigt
How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique
One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism by Deborah Baker
On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
Cinder: New and Selected Poems by Susan Stewart
The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat
A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley
Support for this series has been provided by the Manitou Fund as part of the Warner Reading Program.
The text of Oculus is set in Adobe Garamond Pro.
Book design by Rachel Holscher.
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