Come out for a Dim Sum and Tea Party celebration for the launch of The Kingdom of Surfaces, the new book of poetry by Sally Wen Mao. Various readings along with Sally Wen Mao are accompanied by refreshing tea and dim sum.
The Kingdom of Surfaces by Sally Wen Mao is a book of poems from Graywolf Press out August 1st that examines the histories of objects and art, exploring the permeability of object and subject through the history of Chinese women in America, labor practices around the silk loom, and the ongoing violence against Asian people during the COVID-19 pandemic. At its heart, The Kingdom of Surfaces imagines the poet wandering into a Western fantasy, which covets, imitates, and appropriates Chinese aesthetics via Chinamania and the nineteenth-century Aesthetic Movement, while perpetuating state violence upon lives. The Kingdom of Surfaces is a call for those who recognize the horrors of American exceptionalism to topple the empire that values capital over lives and power over liberation.