A couple of months ago – back when we worked in offices and people strolled by to chat without fear of infection – a coworker of mine noticed a slim volume of poems on my desk. It was “Bodega” – the debut collection of poems by Su Hwang.
“Hwang – isn’t that a Korean name?” he asked. “Why is she writing about a bodega? Aren’t those Mexican?”
His question was problematic, albeit well intentioned. It implied neat little boxes into which we all should fit and barriers we should not cross.
Hwang’s poems inhabit a world that defies stereotype at every turn. They break down cultural silos with the ease of a customer swinging open the door of a corner grocery. She vividly renders images from her youth as an immigrant child of poor parents who celebrate grand occasions with trips to Red Lobster or Sizzler. In deft strokes she outlines the tense yet sometimes beautiful interactions between people of different ethnicities, all struggling to get by.
To read Hwang’s poems is to be invited into a world that is nothing like the “exceptional Asian” narrative that permeates white dominant culture. Her parents fight, her relationship with her mother is troubled, and as a girl she wanted nothing more than to assimilate, Barbie style. But Hwang’s images reveal a plastic, pre-fab blandness in the long sought-after American dream, and a richly layered realness that thrives in the neighborhoods and corner markets we too often ignore.
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