Women on the Moon

Debora Kuan interrogates what it means to be a woman of color who is both a captive of and captivated by the gravitational pull of a man's world. Deploying the figure of the moon goddess Chang-E of Chinese legend as a proxy, Kuan explores the experiences of internalized racism, misogyny, and invisibility that arise from a decentered, alien status. In this third and most intimate collection yet, through rewritten fairy tales, word finds, Mad Libs, chess matches, magic lessons, rhyming tercets and quatrains, prose poems, and still lifes--cultural artifacts of an American childhood and the white hegemony--Kuan charts her journey from girlhood to motherhood, each stage marked by a phase of the moon. These are breathtaking poems you'll return to again and again, as they reveal not only the compromises of a life lived in a liminal space, but also the power, grace, and beauty it takes to thrive there.