Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry

Dorothy Wang, Associate Professor of American Studies. Stanford University Press. 2013. This book focuses on close textual analysis of poems of five contemporary Asian American poets and argues that more attention should be paid to the literary properties of minority writing. It also makes the broad claim that aesthetic forms are inseparable from social, political, and historical contexts in all poetry—by minority and white poets alike. Wang argues for a rethinking of how poetry is read and discussed and how our unconscious racial views and assumptions guide our reception of poetry.