Poetry / American / Asian American

Celebrating the Pleasure of International Food in Atlanta and the Asian American Experience in the South

Winner, 2016 George Ellenbogen Poetry Award from the Arab American National Museum

“The Republics is a massively brilliant new work, a leap in literature we have not seen. It’s gripping, harrowing, and at times horrific while its form paradoxically is fresh, luscious, and original. Bypassing pity and transforming pain into language Handal stars. She has recorded like Alice Walker, Paul Celan, John Hershey, and Carolyn Forche some of the worst civilization has offered humankind and somehow made it art.”—Sapphire

The debut collection of Agnes Lynch Starrett winner Shao Wei, a Chinese-American poet, blends fairy tales, New York images, family stories, and the universal rites of passage associated with growing up to paint a vibrant canvas of passion and imagination. She captures the struggle of many immigrants as she describes her efforts to balance the influences of her childhood along the Yangtze river and her adulthood in New York City.