Description
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Women's Studies. Rejecting the purely lyrical mode and its attendant melancholia, the poems in Lunch Portraits attempt to beat back existential dread by reveling in the delightfully banal totems of mass American culture—hot dogs, cinema, cats, money, youth, selfies. They eat their way through exuberance and fear, richness and emptiness, belonging and alienation, locating in the everyday what is human and hopelessly hungry. Yet in this search for satiation, they also stumble upon the vexing paradoxes inherent in this desire, where no insecurity is entirely innocuous. These poems are alive with appetite and yearning, always hopeful to discover, as Kuan writes, "the 'help' button of the burning telephone."
Author Bio
Debora Kuan is the author of the poetry collection XING. Her writing has appeared in The Awl, The Baffler, Brooklyn Rail, Fence, The Iowa Review, Art in America, Artforum, Modern Painters, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the CUNY Writers' Institute, she has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Macdowell, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. She is currently Director of English Language Arts assessment design and development at the College Board and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA