Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Thousand Star Hotel
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1975
WEBSITE: http://www.baophi.com/
CITY:
STATE: MN
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Vietnamese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bao_Phi * https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/bao-phi get@baophi.com
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1975, in Saigon, Vietnam; children: one daughter.
EDUCATION:Macalester College, graduated.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis, MN, program director, creator of Equilibrium program. Previously, worked as a supermarket maintenance worker, a pizza delivery person, and in restaurants. Performs at poetry slams throughout the country; released a live poetry CD, Refugeography.
AWARDS:Winner (twice), Minnesota Grand Poetry Slam; winner (twice), Nuyorican Poets Café poetry slam; artist of the year, City Pages; producer of the year, Griots; Charlotte Zolotow Award, 2018, for A Different Pond. Recipient of grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board.
WRITINGS
Also, author of the chapbook, Surviving the Translation. Contributor to anthologies, journals, and literary magazines, including The Best American Poetry, Def Poetry Jam Anthology, Screaming Monkeys, From Both Sides Now, Legacy to Liberation, and the Michigan Quarterly Review.
SIDELIGHTS
Born in Vietnam, Bao Phi is a writer based in Minnesota. He moved to Minneapolis as a child and attended school in that city. Phi holds a degree from Macalester College. He has become known for his prowess in poetry slam competitions, having won multiple awards from organizations and venues, including the Minnesota Grand Poetry Slam and the Nuyorican Poets Café. Phi is a program director at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.
Thousand Star Hotel
Thousand Star Hotel is a poetry collection by Phi. The works in the book find Phi discussing his experience as an immigrant in America. Phi recalls the violence he and his family endured during Phi’s early years in Vietnam. He also comments on his hopes and fears for his young daughter and criticizes the xenophobia that he sees among children and adults in the U.S. In the same interview with Chow, the contributor to the National Public Radio website, Phi explained the meaning of book’s title, stating: “‘Thousand star hotel’ is actually a saying by Vietnamese folks. It’s kind of a play on the idea of a four star hotel, and Vietnamese folks say that you don’t need to have a four star hotel—you have a thousand star hotel every night. Everyone has the right to a thousand star hotel, just by looking at the sky.”
A critic offered a favorable assessment of Thousand Star Hotel in Publishers Weekly. The critic commented: “Phi’s collection showcases the melding of the deeply personal and the fiercely political.” Writing on the Rumpus website, Karthik Purushothaman suggested: “Thousand Star Hotel is a collection that offers a balanced critique of contemporary American society through Phi’s personal run-ins with the crises of poverty, racism, and identity. The book is a bittersweet ode to being a badass refugee who has slept without a roof overhead many nights. It is a semi-optimistic take on immigrant life in America—every bit as charming, and as hopeless, as a night of stargazing. And it is a compendium of the hopes and fears of a protective father, who has a star he must shield from a society that’s keen to dim her shine.”
A Different Pond
Phi collaborated with the Vietnamese illustrator, Thi Bui, on his 2017 children’s book, A Different Pond. In an interview with Kat Chow, contributor to the National Public Radio website, Phi stated: “A Different Pond is my first children’s book. It’s gonna be published by Capstone, it comes out in August, and it’s really a very simple story based on—it’s loosely based on fishing trips my father would take me on when I was very young. We would fish for food, we wouldn’t usually fish for fun. In fact, I’m pretty sure—I can talk about this now, I hope—a lot of the fishing we did was probably illegal.” Phi continued: “We didn’t have licenses, I’m pretty sure we were fishing in some places we weren’t supposed to be at—but we were fishing for food to help put food on the table. Both my parents worked two jobs a piece for as long as I can remember and fishing was another way to cut costs a little bit, you know?” Phi discussed his collaboration with Bui in an interview with Sarah Hunter, writer in Booklist. Phi remarked: “I’m a fan of Thi, so I was thrilled when she said yes. I was happy to be able to work with such a talented Vietnamese American who would, in many ways, ‘get it.’ We have different experiences, but there are commonalities in the Viet refugee experience. We exchanged a lot of emails, and I dug through old family photos. I tried taking pictures of places that reminded me of the old fishing spots, but it was so long ago that those places are either gone or I don’t know where they are.” Bui added: “A Different Pond, is a struggle to both confront and critique and celebrate certain moments in my life. It’s a lot of pressure, because you want to do justice to these complicated stories while not exploiting them. But I think that’s a good pressure.”
Minh Le offered a favorable assessment of A Different Pond in the Horn Book Magazine. Le described the book as a “powerfully understated picture book” and highlighted its “evocative detail and a keen ear for metaphor.” “Phi’s gentle, melodic prose and Bui’s evocative art, presented in brushy and vividly colored panels … rise above the melancholy to tell a powerful, multilayered story,” asserted a Kirkus Reviews critic. Hunter, the Booklist writer, remarked: “This wistful, beautifully illustrated story will resonate not only with immigrant families but any family that has faced struggle.” Reviewing the book in School Library Journal, Anna Haase Krueger suggested: “This gentle coming-of-age story is filled with loving, important aspects of the immigrant experience and is a first purchase for all libraries.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2017, Sarah Hunter, review of A Different Pond, p. 66; Jan. 1, 2018, Sarah Hunter, author interview, p. S37.
Horn Book, September-October, 2017, Minh Le, review of A Different Pond, p. 74.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2017, review of A Different Pond.
Publishers Weekly, June 12, 2017, review of A Different Pond, p. 65; June 26, 2017, review of Thousand Star Hotel, p. 154.
School Library Journal, August, 2017, Anna Haase Krueger, review of A Different Pond, p. 75.
ONLINE
Bao Phi Website, http://www.baophi.com (April 13, 2018).
Chicago Review of Books, https://chireviewofbooks.com/ (July 19, 2017), Sarah Huener, review of Thousand Star Hotel.
Kenyon Review Online, https://www.kenyonreview.org/ (March 24, 2018), Christopher R. Vaughan, review of Thousand Star Hotel.
National Public Radio Online, https://www.npr.org/ (July 20, 2017), Kat Chow, author interview.
Poetry Foundation Website, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ (April 13, 2018), author biography.
Rumpus, http://therumpus.net/ (October 27, 2017), Karthik Purushothaman, review of Thousand Star Hotel.
Bao Phi
Phi Bao
Thaiphy Media
Bao Phi is the author of Thousand Star Hotel (2017) and Sông I Sing (2011), both from Coffee House Press, as well as the children’s book A Different Pond (Capstone Young Readers, 2017).
Bao Phi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Bao Phi is a Vietnamese American spoken word artist,[1][2] writer and community activist living in Minnesota.
Contents
1 Early life and education
2 Poetry, activism and literature
3 The Loft Literary Center
4 Awards and honors
5 Published Works
5.1 Poetry
5.2 Children's Literature
6 Personal life
7 References
8 External links
Early life and education
Bao Phi was born Thien-bao in Saigon, Vietnam, the youngest son of a mostly Vietnamese mother and a Chinese Vietnamese father. He grew up in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis near the Little Earth housing projects.[3] Phi attended South High School and began performing his poetry when competing on the South High speech team in the Creative Expression category in the early 1990s. He attended and graduated from Macalester College, where he was encouraged to pursue creative writing by Native American Literature professor Diane Glancy.[4] He worked as a pizza delivery boy, a maintenance worker in a supermarket and in the restaurant industry.
Poetry, activism and literature
Phi won the Minnesota Grand Poetry Slam twice. He also won two poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York. He is the first Vietnamese American man to have appeared on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and the National Poetry Slam Individual Finalists Stage, where he placed 6th overall out of over 250 national slam poets.[5] Phi has been a featured performer at numerous venues and schools locally and nationally, from the Nuyorican Poet's Café to the University of California, Berkeley.
In 2005, Phi released his CD, Refugeography,[6] and continues to tour around the country. Billy Collins selected one of Phi’s poems, "Race," for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2006 anthology. Phi is also published in various literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, including From Both Sides Now, the Def Poetry Jam anthology, Legacy to Liberation, Screaming Monkeys, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. His poetry is included in the EMC/Paradigm line of English textbooks for high school students, and he has done voice work for their educational materials. One of his poems was selected to appear in Minneapolis/Saint Paul city buses in the Poetry in Motion program. He is also the author of the chapbook Surviving the Translation.
Phi's vision is to offer an alternative perspective on Asian American community building through the arts. He has been a featured artist in many community events, rallies and functions. He was involved with the Justice for Fong Lee committee and all three protests against Miss Saigon produced by the Ordway Theater.[7]
Bao Phi's collection of poems, Sông I Sing, was published In 2011 by Coffeehouse Press. It focused on modern Vietnamese-Asian American life with each poem capable of being read for spoken word. The book received a favorable review in The New York Times.[8]
Phi has taught workshops and performed for youth for organizations from the W.O.C. in Minneapolis to the Chinatown Community Development Center in San Francisco. He was an advisory panel member, workshop moderator, and performer for Intimacy and Geography, the Asian American Writers' Workshop national poetry festival in New York, and a faculty at Kundiman at Fordham University in 2015. That year he was also a performer in the diasporic Vietnamese blockbuster variety show Paris By Night.
The Loft Literary Center
Phi is currently the Program Director at The Loft Literary Center, a nonprofit literary organization in Minneapolis. He manages and operates several Loft programs, including Equilibrium, a successful spoken word series he created, which invites nationally recognized artists of color/indigenous artists to share the stage with local Minnesota artists of color/indigenous artists. Equilibrium was awarded the Anti-Racism Initiative award from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits in 2010.
Awards and honors
Phi has received numerous awards and honors, including multiple Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grants.[9][10] He was also a featured listener in the award-winning documentary film The Listening Project.[11]
Published Works
Poetry
Thousand Star Hotel, (Coffee House Press, 2017)
Sông I Sing, (Coffee House Press, 2011)
Children's Literature
A Different Pond, (Capstone Press, 2017; illustrated by Thi Bui) - won the Charlotte Zolotow Award 2018
Personal life
Bao has a daughter.[12][13]
About
Bao Phi by Charissa Uemura
photo courtesy of charissa uemura
Bao Phi has been a performance poet since 1991.
A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Paris By Night 114: Tôi Là Người Việt Nam, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology. His poems and essays are widely published in numerous publications including Screaming Monkeys and Spoken Word Revolution Redux. He has also released several CDs of his poetry, such as the recently sold-out Refugeography to his newest CD, The Nguyens EP. A short story of his, Revolution Shuffle, appeared in the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Stories from Social Justice Movements, AK Press, 2015, and an essay of his was included in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth, edited by Sun Yung Shin, Minnesota Historical Society Press.
He has performed in venues and schools across the country, from the Nuyorican Poets Café to the University of California, Berkeley. He was featured in the award-winning documentary feature film The Listening Project as an American listener who traveled the world to talk to every day people about global issues and politics. He also returned to acting in 2008 with a feature role in Theatre Mu’s production of Q & A. He was on poetry faculty at the Kundiman retreat at Fordham University in New York in 2015.
Bao Phi by Michael Tran
photo courtesy of michael tran
In addition to his creative work, he was nominated for a Facing Race Ambassador award in recognition for his community work, and has published essays in topics from Asians in hip hop to Asian representation in video games. He has been a guest speaker at numerous events and for various entities, such as Giant Steps and Bushconnect. Currently he continues to perform across the country, remains active as an Asian American community organizer, and is the Program Director of the Loft, where he manages various programs serving writers as well as creates and operates programs for artists and audiences of color. He was the Coordinating Chair of the National APIA Spoken Word Poetry Summit, 2011.
The spoken word series he created at the Loft Literary Center, Equilibrium, won the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Anti-Racism Initiative Award.
His first collection of poetry, Sông I Sing, published by Coffee House Press, was met with strong sales, is taught in classrooms across the United States, and enjoyed rave reviews, including the New York Times which stated “In this song of his very American self, every poem Mr. Phi writes rhymes with the truth.” In 2012, the Star Tribune’s inaugural Best of Minnesota issue named Bao Phi as Best Spoken Word Artist. He has also been named a City Pages and Urban Griots artist of the year and event producer of the year.
His second collection of poems, Thousand Star Hotel, will also be published by Coffee House Press on July 5, 2017, and his first children’s book, A Different Pond, illustrated by Thi Bui, will be published by Capstone Press in August of 2017.
QUOTED: "'Thousand star hotel' is actually a saying by Vietnamese folks. It's kind of a play on the idea of a four star hotel, and Vietnamese folks say that you don't need to have a four star hotel—you have a thousand star hotel every night. Everyone has the right to a thousand star hotel, just by looking at the sky."
"A Different Pond is my first children's book. It's gonna be published by Capstone, it comes out in August, and it's really a very simple story based on—it's loosely based on fishing trips my father would take me on when I was very young. We would fish for food, we wouldn't usually fish for fun. In fact, I'm pretty sure—I can talk about this now, I hope—a lot of the fishing we did was probably illegal."
"We didn't have licenses, I'm pretty sure we were fishing in some places we weren't supposed to be at—but we were fishing for food to help put food on the table. Both my parents worked two jobs a piece for as long as I can remember and fishing was another way to cut costs a little bit, you know?"
The Poet Bao Phi, On Creating A 'Guidebook' For Young Asian-Americans
July 20, 20177:00 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Kat Chow
KAT CHOW
Bao Phi hopes his poetry book Thousand Star Hotel and his children's book A Different Pond can fill the hole in Asian-American literature that he saw when he was a kid.
Anna Min/Courtesy of Capstone Publishing
When Bao Phi's family fled Vietnam in 1975 and settled in Minneapolis with other refugees, he was just a few months old. He was too young to understand the scene at the airport that day: Communist soldiers were firing rockets at planes filled with people trying to escape, incinerating them in the sky. Phi's parent's told him about their family history bit by bit, and he began to form a stronger sense of his own identity.
"You know, just as a man of color, as an Asian-American, like anything could happen to me. I could get hit by a car. I could get hit by lightning," he says. "You know, some racist cop could kill me, or some racist on the street could just decide he doesn't like the way I look and if that happens, what is my daughter going to have to know where I come from and where half of her comes from?"
Thousand Star Hotel
Thousand Star Hotel
by Bao Phi
Paperback, 110 pages purchase
His new book, Thousand Star Hotel, is a cutting collection of poems about growing up a refugee, becoming a father, feeling surrounded by police brutality and the invisibility of poor Asian-Americans. Phi says that when he was young, he never saw experiences like his taught in schools or talked about. He hopes that his new work might serve as a "guidebook" for his 7-year-old daughter Song and other Asian-Americans looking to see their own experiences reflected.
In his poem "Lead," Phi recounts a time when he was helping his father patch up vandalized property. His father insists he feels the flick of BB gun pellets — that someone is shooting at him. But Phi thinks they're mosquitoes, and that his dad might just be reliving a remnant of war:
"I am sure they are just mosquitoes
even when I see dull lead fragments sticking
into his brown skin.
I didn't want to believe him,
even as I helped him wash his wounds.
You need someone to care for your life,
or at least your dignity.
My dad had a son who believed in invisible mosquitoes
more than the evil of men."
Phi's first children's book, A Different Pond, comes out in August. He noticed, as he was looking for books for his daughter, that there was a dearth of children's literature about Asian-Americans. The books marketed as "Asian" in kid's literature tended to center on East Asia, he said. That left a big hole. And so he took it upon himself to write a book based on his own childhood, drawn from early-morning memories spent fishing with his father.
What's the meaning of the title Thousand Star Hotel?
"Thousand star hotel" is actually a saying by Vietnamese folks. It's kind of a play on the idea of a four star hotel, and Vietnamese folks say that you don't need to have a four star hotel — you have a thousand star hotel every night. Everyone has the right to a thousand star hotel, just by looking at the sky. That's a saying I've heard throughout my adult life — I've heard it from cyclo drivers when I went back to Vietnam. ...
I think that different races struggle against different types of racism. I think that, Asian-Americans, it's 'We're never from here,' and so our history is largely seen as irrelevant if it gets acknowledged at all.
But the reason that I named the book that, was that I was reminded of that phrase reading Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer where he brought that up. And when I was reading his book I thought, "That's it. That's the title of my book." And the reason is, I just think it's hella Vietnamese. ... It's sly, it's kind of smart-assed, but it's also about survival and making the best of it.
How do you describe what it's about?
The book has a lot of poems ranging in subject from police brutality to the invisibility of urban poor Asian-Americans to fatherhood and what it's like to raise a child as a refugee from war. [It's about] whether or not I pass on the trauma of war down to my daughter, the lack of Asian-American history in American public schools, and you know, love and relationships.
And basically in a way, I feel like the book is one, me writing in resistance against the erasure of Asian-Americans — Vietnamese-Americans in particular — but also as, I guess, a marker of the life of my parents, my family, people like me that often don't reach any type of visibility in this country.
Can you talk a little bit more about that — "the erasure of Asian-Americans"?
As a father, my child is not in all-white environments here in Minnesota. The majority of her peers are brown and black. At the same time, there is just no awareness of Asian-American history in her school at all.
She's learning about a lot of different people, a lot of different races, a lot of different genders all across the spectrum. But conspicuously, Asian-Americans are left out. And that's not a dig on her teachers. Teachers are hard-working people who get no pay and no recognition. It's more about curriculum, and I think, the larger issue of Asian-American history just being invisible in America.
There was no guidebook for a Southeast Asian from war growing up in the hood in America two blocks from the Native American housing projects.
You know, I think that different races struggle against different types of racism. I think that, Asian-Americans, it's "We're never from here," and so our history is largely seen as irrelevant if it gets acknowledged at all.
You've mentioned before that this work is, in a way, for your daughter.
Hopefully when she gets older she won't find my poetry so boring. [Laughs] You know, just as a man of color, as an Asian-American, like anything could happen to me. I could get hit by a car. I could get hit by lightning. You know, some racist cop could kill me, or some racist on the street could just decide he doesn't like the way I look and if that happens, what is my daughter going to have to know where I come from and where half of her comes from? . ...
I think that the idea of Asian and Asian-Americans is that we're all like valedictorians who get into Harvard and become engineers or dot com — and that's fine, that's part of who we are. But I think for the vast majority of us that's actually not our story. For the vast majority of us, the stories are not about success. ... And I gotta believe that there are people out there who both need to see that and maybe learn from it.
How'd you learn about your own family's story?
So I'm the youngest child. I was born in Vietnam in February [of 1975] and the tanks rolled into Saigon of April of that same year. So I was about three months old when we were forced to flee. ... My father was in the Southern Vietnamese military, which meant we were on the side of the United States. My mother worked in a gift shop in the university in Saigon. ... My dad planned to get an education, war broke out so he and his brother and many other Vietnamese enlisted in the military. We fled that April. ...
So I'm in this strange position where I was present for that but I have no memory of it. Fortunately, my family filled me in on the details as I was older. ... Basically we went from that to refugee camps to being raised in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis, which at the time was Minneapolis' largest, poorest and most racially diverse neighborhood. My parents still live there, I live nearby in the Powderhorn neighborhood now raising my daughter. ...
Obviously my family was traumatized by war, that was very apparent. ... I remember hearing these stories when I was pretty young. And so, I think to my parents' credit. I think they tried to tell me as much as they could, you know, not to fill me with fear but to let me know that I come from something, you know what I mean? That we come from struggle, and that we come from survival.
They told me bits and pieces throughout, but I still learned. For instance, just two years ago, it wasn't until a friend of mine who's a Vietnamese-American documentary filmmaker from the Bay came to visit us, and talked to my father that my father told me the part about how when we were trying to flee, he ... routinely saw plane loads of Vietnamese people getting killed when rockets would hit, you know, a plane that was trying to lift off, take off, and just incinerating every Vietnamese person on that plane.
He saw that again and again on the night that we were trying to escape. And he was sure that the same was going to happen to our family — he was just sure that we all would get killed. And somehow, when that plane lifted up and a rocket didn't hit us and we managed to escape, he felt like all the luck in his life had just been used up in that moment. And that was why he felt like he put up with all the struggle, the prejudice, the pain that he faced in the United States. Because from his perspective, we were just lucky to be alive. ...
I've been told those, many different stories, of those days throughout my life — beginning from when I was very young.
How'd you learn about your identity?
Growing up where I did, I had the fortune of getting involved in social justice movements early. I mean, I was an idiot, but I was involved — I was soaking up as much information as I could. You know, the American Indian Movement started in my neighborhood. ...
I had the fortune of having a African-American teacher in high school teach African-American studies ... he also happened to be the gym teacher. ... But I wasn't learning about Asian and Asian-American people. ... I was learning about these different movements, but I was like, so what does that make me? . ...
I think especially for Vietnamese people, we're talking about a time when the idea of the war was really raw. And I had learned after I had graduated that many teachers in our system, in our school system, didn't teach about the Vietnam War because it was too painful for them. So I was getting no education about me and my people, aside from things that I would learn from my parents from some community stuff. ... It's especially challenging for Vietnamese-Americans who have lefty politics, you know, a lot of us who are here in America are here because of fear of persecution from the Communist party, and a lot of Asian-American movements, as Viet Thanh Nguyen acknowledged, a lot of them come from a Marxist, third world organizing, socialist kind of brew, right? Of student organizing in the '60s, which is perfectly fine but then that can butt up directly against Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American experience, where we're fleeing from a lot of that ideology, you know what I mean? It was an added layer of complication for me.
A Different Pond
A Different Pond
by Bao Phi and Thi Bui
Hardcover, 32 pages purchase
I got a full scholarship to Macalester College. I was the first in my family to get a full ride to a private college. I didn't know what that meant when I was young, I was like, "Cool, free school." And there I happened to meet a chemistry teacher, Japanese-American chemistry teacher by the name of Janet Carlson who, [in] my sophomore year, started to teach an Asian-American studies class. ... It's funny, I learned African-American studies from a gym teacher and Asian-American studies from a chemistry teacher. That's basically my life, right?
Talk to me about your new kid's book, A Different Pond.
A Different Pond is my first children's book. It's gonna be published by Capstone, it comes out in August, and it's really a very simple story based on — it's loosely based on fishing trips my father would take me on when I was very young. We would fish for food, we wouldn't usually fish for fun. In fact, I'm pretty sure — I can talk about this now, I hope — a lot of the fishing we did was probably illegal. We didn't have licenses, I'm pretty sure we were fishing in some places we weren't supposed to be at — but we were fishing for food to help put food on the table. Both my parents worked two jobs a piece for as long as I can remember and fishing was another way to cut costs a little bit, you know?
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
QUOTED: "I'm a fan of Thi, so I was thrilled when she said yes. I was happy to be able to work with such a talented Vietnamese American who would, in many ways, 'get it.' We have different experiences, but there are commonalities in the Viet refugee experience. We
exchanged a lot of emails, and I dug through old family photos. I tried taking pictures of places that reminded me of the old fishing spots, but it was so long ago that those places are either gone or I don't know where they are."
"A Different Pond, is a struggle to both confront and critique and celebrate certain moments
in my life. It's a lot of pressure, because you want to do justice to these complicated stories while not exploiting them. But I think that's a good pressure."
Talking with Bao Phi and Thi Bui: The author and
illustrator behind the quiet, moving A Different
Pond discuss their shared heritage, the memories
that informed the picture book, and more
Sarah Hunter
Booklist.
114.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2018): pS37+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Picture books about immigrant families are certainly nothing new, but renewed attention to immigrant experiences has ushered in a
prodigious crop of new titles, and few are as evocative or heartening as Bao Phi and Thi Bui's A Different Pond.
It starts on a quiet, predawn Saturday morning, when a Vietnamese father wakes up his son for a fishing trip. They trundle out to the
car, stop to pick up bait, and head to their favorite spot, and while this time they're alone, they've often fished there with other people
from a variety of backgrounds. It's a routine experience for the boy and his father--and unlike casual fishing trips for sport, theirs is a
necessity to get food on the table in their new, expensive country. But with subtle emotional cues and expressive artwork, Phi and Bui
elevate their excursion into something deeply meaningful.
Beyond the mere fact of having more food to eat, their fishing trip becomes an opportunity for the boy to learn about his father's life
before coming to America. The word refugee never appears in Phi's poetic lines, but hints at the reasons the father leaves Vietnam are
weighty. Reminiscing about fishing in Vietnam, the father mentions a brother who died in the war. The image of that other pond carries
lots of meaning for the boy, who brims with pride over his own contribution to getting food on the table and contemplates how fishing
with his father connects him to the country of his origin.
Bui's distinctive artwork, full of brushy line work and rich color, beautifully illustrates Phi's lines, focusing intently on the expressive
faces of the boy and his father and the vivid environments they live in--cool, midnight blue by the river while they fish, surrounded by
leafy foliage and an understated yet still slightly ominous No Trespassing sign, and warm, sunshiny yellow when they're back in the
warmth of home and around the dinner table, enjoying the fruits of their labor.
Together, the words and pictures tell a thought-provoking story about the challenges many new Americans face, in a tone that is never
preachy or purposeful. And while Phi and Bui are telling a specific story about a Vietnamese American experience, there are many
touchstones to other cultural experiences in the narrative, which will resonate more widely with readers and, hopefully, generate some
much-needed empathy with others.
We recently spoke with Phi, an award-winning poet and community activist, and Bui, a graphic novelist who's won recent acclaim for
her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (2017), about their debut picture book, their collaboration, and how their own
experiences growing up as Vietnamese immigrants in America helped inform the book.
HUNTER: Can you tell me a little about your collaboration process?
BUI: I was dying for collaboration after working alone for so long on my graphic memoir, so I bugged Bao a lot for details about his
family, his parents' house, the old neighborhood, his early memories.
PHI: I m a fan of Thi, so I was thrilled when she said yes. I was happy to be able to work with such a talented Vietnamese American
who would, in many ways, "get it." We have different experiences, but there are commonalities in the Viet refugee experience. We
exchanged a lot of emails, and I dug through old family photos. I tried taking pictures of places that reminded me of the old fishing
spots, but it was so long ago that those places are either gone or I don't know where they are.
HUNTER: I'm very struck by your art style. What were some of your inspirations? How was working on a picture book different from
working on a graphic novel?
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 2/10
BUI: At this point, I sort of draw how I draw. That brushy line that tends toward dry brush is influenced by cartoonists like Jillian
Tamaki, Craig Thompson, Edmond Baudoin, and Aristophane. For content, I was inspired by Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen
(1970) and my own memories.
The size of the picture-book pages was a little intimidating. I'm used to drawing large and printing small for comics, which tightens up
the lines. I also hadn't worked in full color before A Different Pond. On the plus side, having drawn an epic graphic memoir that was
over 300 pages, I was happy with how quickly I could finish a 32-page picture book!
HUNTER: There are some harsh realities present in your story--particularly the mention of the war that killed the father's brother. How
do you approach addressing such topics for a young audience?
BUI: Having grown up in similar circumstances with a similar background, these realities don't seem particularly harsh to me--they just
are. If you decenter an easier life as what's normal, you can portray a less easy life more truthfully. I have always thought it was awful
to go through trauma as a child and then have to present it to people as though you are the odd one. It seems to me that those children
would very much have a desire to be seen and have their experiences counted--not paraded or overly emphasized as the cornerstone of
their identity, but just acknowledged as part of their lives and something they have to deal with on a regular basis.
PHI: I'm a father now, and I've been reading stories or telling stories to my daughter for years. As she's grown, she's become a part of
this world: the lack of Asian American history and issues both in classrooms and the Western consciousness; police brutality and Black
Lives Matter; deportation and xenophobia; the fact that we live on indigenous land; that there is a racist and sexist in the highest office
in this country. There is no fairy tale we can tell to shield her from all of this, and maybe we shouldn't. So the question is how are we
honest with her without scaring her. How do I tell her about these things that have happened to our family, and are therefore part of her
history? I don't know if I have a solid answer, but the best we can do is be intentional.
HUNTER: How did you land on fishing as the central activity of the story?
PHI: I wrote a poem about my father taking me fishing when I was young. The poem wasn't quite there, but I thought it was an
important story to tell. He and my mother worked so hard, faced so much discrimination, suffered so much loss, and we kids were not
easy to raise. I wanted to honor that struggle, and the fishing story was a window into it.
HUNTER: Both of you were born in Vietnam and came to America when you were very young; what was it like working on a project
so connected to your own experiences? Was your process any different from other projects you've worked on?
BUI: Having just finished a graphic memoir, this was kind of nice for me because it was a little less personal! It was a little trickier
because I have a desire to get things right with someone else's story, so I ended up doing a fair bit of visual research around Bao's
family and the Philips neighborhood in Minneapolis.
PHI: For many years, I didn't write many poems about my life--I wrote a lot of persona poems, polemics. As I grew older and became a
father, there was an urge to write down the things that formed who I am. They say trauma is passed down genetically. How else will my
daughter understand this part of her? How can I grow as a person if I don't examine my pain, my regrets, my shame, my complicity in
harm? So my new book of poems, as well as A Different Pond, is a struggle to both confront and critique and celebrate certain moments
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 3/10
in my life. It's a lot of pressure, because you want to do justice to these complicated stories while not exploiting them. But I think that's
a good pressure.
Sampling Phi and Bui
A Different Pond. 2017. Capstone, $15.95 (9781623708030). K-Gr. 3.
Sarah Hunter is the Books for Youth Senior Editor at Booklist.
Further Reading: Cultural Recollections
Below is a selection of books that explore the immigration experience and the balance between one's former and current homes.
Good-bye, Havana! Hola, New York! By Edie Colon. Illus. by Raul Colon. 2011. Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman, $16.99
(9781442406742). Gr. 1-3.
As a six-year-old, Gabriella isn't sure what revolution means, but when it begins to affect her family, her parents relocate to the U.S.,
where it seems like everything is different. A fictional story based on Edie Colon's own comingto-America experience from Castro's
Cuba.
I'm New Here. By Anne Sibley O'Brien. Illus. by the author. 2015. Charlesbridge, $16.95 (9781580896122). K-Gr. 3.
Three new American students navigate their first day of school. Guatemalan Maria struggles with English but loves soccer. Writing is
difficult for Jin, from South Korea, but he finds that sharing his language with another student helps. Meanwhile, Fatimah, from
Somalia, is having trouble fitting in and is afraid of making mistakes.
Their Great Gift: Courage, Sacrifice, and Hope in a New Land. By John Coy. Illus. by Win Young Huie. 2016. Carolrhoda, $19.99
(9781467780544). PreS-Gr. 2.
Moving photos capture immigrant families in a variety of contexts--attending school, lounging at home, performing backbreaking labor,
laughing with family, blending in with their new communities, and holding onto old traditions. Meanwhile, Coy's words link each
page's photos together, emphasizing common experiences of newcomers to this country.
A Thirst for Home: A Story of Water across the World. By Christine leronimo. Illus. by Eric Velasquez. 2014. Bloomsbury, $17.99
(9780802723079). Gr. 4-6.
Tears, rain, puddles: water keeps Eva Alemitu connected to Emaye, the mother she left behind in Ethiopia, as Eva adjusts to life in the
U.S. In this hauntingly bittersweet tale leronimo imagines the heartbreak of a mother and daughter forced apart by hunger and poverty.
Caption: On an early morning fishing trip, a father tells his son about their Vietnam homeland in Phi and Bui's A Different Pond.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hunter, Sarah. "Talking with Bao Phi and Thi Bui: The author and illustrator behind the quiet, moving A Different Pond discuss their
shared heritage, the memories that informed the picture book, and more." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2018, p. S37+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525185837/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ff1c387b. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525185837
QUOTED: "powerfully understated picture book."
"evocative detail and a keen ear for metaphor."
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 4/10
A Different Pond
Minh Le
The Horn Book Magazine.
93.5 (September-October 2017): p74+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 The Horn Book, Inc.. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Sources, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.hbook.com/magazine/default.asp
Full Text:
* A Different Pond
by Bao Phi; illus. by Thi Bui
Primary, Intermediate Capstone 32 pp. g
8/17 978-1-62370-803-0 $15.95
e-book ed. 978-1-62370-804-7 $9.95
Hours before sunrise, a father and son go fishing for that night's meal. So begins this powerfully understated picture book, which shifts
the focus of the refugee narrative from the harrowing journey to the reality awaiting the family members once they reach their
destination (in this case, the United States). With evocative detail and a keen ear for metaphor ("A kid at my school said my dad's
English sounds like a thick, dirty river. But to me his English sounds like gentle rain"; "I feel the bag of minnows move. They swim like
silver arrows in my hands"), Phi hints at the family's joys and struggles. And whether it's tentative discussion of "the war" and the
father's childhood in Vietnam or a calendar showing the year 1982, the book is filled with cultural specificity. Bui (whose illustrated
memoir for adults The Best We Could Do was also published this year) sets the mood with expressive brushwork and colors that
alternate between warm oranges and reds in the home and cool blues in the chilly pre-dawn air. By the end, it's clear that the small
struggles that make up everyday life are the very things that bind the family together. The father and son return home that morning with
a fish but, more importantly, a fond memory that will help make this new country feel like home. The ponds may be different here, but
the water reflects life just the same. MINH LE
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 5/10
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Le, Minh. "A Different Pond." The Horn Book Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 2017, p. 74+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A503641788/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=568140f8. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A503641788
QUOTED: "Phi's gentle, melodic prose and Bui's evocative art, presented in brushy and vividly colored panels ... rise above the melancholy to tell a powerful, multilayered story."
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 6/10
Phi, Bao: A DIFFERENT POND
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Phi, Bao A DIFFERENT POND Capstone Young Readers (Children's Fiction) $15.95 8, 1 ISBN: 978-1-62370-803-0
A fishing trip is not just a fishing trip in this poignant, semiautobiographical tale. As a young boy growing up in a Vietnamese refugee
family in Minneapolis, Phi would wake up "hours before the sun comes up" to go fishing with his dad. Right from the start, he hints at
his family's dire straits: "In the kitchen the bare bulb is burning." Readers learn they are up so early because his dad got a second job.
And Phi asks innocently, "If you got another job, why do we still have to fish for food?" At the pond, father and son share moments of
tenderness. A nod here--when Phi lights a fire with one strike of a match; a warning there--to avoid "the spicy stuff" in his bologna
sandwich. Father and son also bond through stories. "I used to fish by a pond like this one when I was a boy in Vietnam," says Dad.
"With your brother?" Phi asks. Dad nods and looks away, a clue to the unspeakable devastation of the war. When they catch enough fish
for dinner they head home, Phi dreaming about the landscape of Dad's home country. Together, Phi's gentle, melodic prose and Bui's
evocative art, presented in brushy and vividly colored panels and double-page spreads, rise above the melancholy to tell a powerful,
multilayered story about family, memory, and the costs of becoming a refugee. Spare and simple, a must-read for our times. (Picture
book. 5-9)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Phi, Bao: A DIFFERENT POND." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495427462/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9950a000. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495427462
QUOTED: "This wistful, beautifully illustrated story will resonate not only with immigrant families but any family that has faced struggle."
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 7/10
A Different Pond
Sarah Hunter
Booklist.
113.21 (July 1, 2017): p66.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* A Different Pond.
By Bao Phi. Illus. by Thi Bui.
Aug. 2017.32p. Capstone, $15.95 (9781623708030). K-Gr. 3.
Before dawn, a Vietnamese American man and his young son set out to fish for their supper in a nearby lake. As they travel the lamp-lit
streets, build a small fire, and drop their hook into the water, the little boy contemplates his parents' lives, the everyday task of fishing
for their supper, and the stories they've told him about living in Vietnam before coming to America as refugees. Phi's bittersweet story
of the resourcefulness of an immigrant family is lovingly illustrated in Bui's evocative artwork. Her expressive ink-black brushstrokes
stand out against a background of star-speckled, crepuscular blues, and at poignant moments in Phi's story, she movingly homes in on
the facial expressions of the boy and his father. While the story occasionally hints at painful things, the gravity of those events is
depicted in the emotional reactions of the characters in the present, rather than images of war in the past. The boy's father has fond
memories of Vietnam, heartbreak for the people he lost in the war, and gratitude for the opportunities afforded to him in the U.S., all of
which the boy silently internalizes into both appreciation for his life and curiosity about a place he's never been. This wistful,
beautifully illustrated story will resonate not only with immigrant families but any family that has faced struggle.--Sarah Hunter
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hunter, Sarah. "A Different Pond." Booklist, 1 July 2017, p. 66. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499862854/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c717641b. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499862854
QUOTED: "Phi's collection showcases the melding of the deeply personal and the fiercely political."
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 8/10
Thousand Star Hotel
Publishers Weekly.
264.26 (June 26, 2017): p154.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Thousand Star Hotel
Bao Phi. Coffee House, $16.95 trade paper (112p) ISBN 978-1-56689-470-8
Phi (Song I Sing), National Poetry Slam finalist and multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry winner, deconstructs the nature of
Americanness from his perspective as a first-generation Vietnamese-American. It's a timely collection full of stunning images and
language. Exploring what it means to be American, who gets to be American, and why, Phi acknowledges the painful family history
that has shaped him. In "Cookies," a familial memory of war functions as an example of generational trauma: "I want to say I am made
of war and that means so are you. I want to say I was born inside a halo of gunpowder." In "Kids," Phi shows that the demonization of
the other is taught at an early age, realizing that his "daughter is not yet five when she learns to be scared of racists." Phi's poems
illuminate how white privilege encourages complicity in white supremacy and how white supremacy dehumanizes and demonizes its
victims: "you infesting this place." With equal parts quiet reflection and hip-hop prowess, Phi's collection showcases the melding of the
deeply personal and the fiercely political. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Thousand Star Hotel." Publishers Weekly, 26 June 2017, p. 154. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497444241/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cc0938a6. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497444241
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 9/10
A Different Pond
Publishers Weekly.
264.24 (June 12, 2017): p65.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* A Different Pond
Bao Phi, illus. by Thi Bui. Capstone Young Readers, $15.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-62370-803-0
Phi, a poet whose parents were Vietnamese refugees, draws from childhood memories in this story about fishing with his father before
sunrise on the lakes of Minneapolis. They didn't do it for fun; it was a way to put food on the table. "Everything in America costs a lot
of money," his father tells him. Sometimes, they run into fishermen from other marginalized communities: a Hmong man "speaks
English like my dad and likes to talk about funny movies," and a black man "shows me his colorful lure collection." Though the
morning is an adventure for the boy, it's the start of a long day for his father, who heads to work afterward (as does the boy's mother).
Bui (The Best We Could Do) uses confident ink lines and watery washes of deep blue to evoke the predawn setting and tender familial
relationship. Graphic novel panels and strong figures give the pages the air of a documentary as Phi celebrates an unexpected
superhero: a father who endures a strange new culture, works to support his family, cherishes time with his son, and draws no attention
to the sacrifices he's made. Ages 6-8. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A Different Pond." Publishers Weekly, 12 June 2017, p. 65. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495720751/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1b3f36eb. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495720751
QUOTED: "This gentle coming-of-age story is filled with loving, important aspects of the immigrant experience and is a first purchase for all libraries."
3/24/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1521931232099 10/10
Phi, Bao. A Different Pond
Anna Haase Krueger
School Library Journal.
63.8 (Aug. 2017): p75.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* PHI, Bao. A Different Pond, illus. by Thi Bui. 32p. Capstone. Aug. 2017. Tr $15.95. ISBN 9781623708030.
K-Gr 2-This gorgeous tale about a father/son fishing trip shows the interconnectedness of family and the inexorable way that
generational history impacts the present. The story is told from the boy's perspective, as his father wakes him long before dawn to go
fishing. Although the child enjoys the outing as a special adventure with his dad, they are fishing for food, not sport, and they must be
home in time for the father to leave for work. The quiet time together provides opportunities for the man to talk about his past life
fishing with his brother in a different pond in Vietnam, long ago before the war and before coming to America. After they return home,
triumphant, with a bucket of fish, the boy contemplates his role as the youngest in the family--no longer a baby--and even though he is
sad that both his parents have to work, he knows there will be a happy, love-filled family dinner later that night. Bui's cinematic
illustrations make use of panels and weighted lines, evoking the perfect background or facial expression for each piece of text. The text
placement and composition of the illustrations allow each occurrence or observation to be its own distinct event, stringing together the
small, discrete moments that make up a life, a memory, and a history into a cohesive whole. VERDICT This gentle coming-of-age story
is filled with loving, important aspects of the immigrant experience and is a first purchase for all libraries.--Anna Haase Krueger,
Ramsey County Library, MN
KEY: * Excellent in relation to other titles on the same subject or In the same genre | Tr Hardcover trade binding | lib. ed. Publisher's
library binding | Board Board book | pap. Paperback | e eBook original | BL Bilingual | POP Popular Picks
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Krueger, Anna Haase. "Phi, Bao. A Different Pond." School Library Journal, Aug. 2017, p. 75. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499597786/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=aad424f4. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499597786
QUOTED: "Thousand Star Hotel is a collection that offers a balanced critique of contemporary American society through Phi’s personal run-ins with the crises of poverty, racism, and identity. The book is a bittersweet ode to being a badass refugee who has slept without a roof overhead many nights. It is a semi-optimistic take on immigrant life in America—every bit as charming, and as hopeless, as a night of stargazing. And it is a compendium of the hopes and fears of a protective father, who has a star he must shield from a society that’s keen to dim her shine."
BOTH OUTSIDER AND PARTICIPANT: THOUSAND STAR HOTEL BY BAO PHI
REVIEWED BY KARTHIK PURUSHOTHAMAN
October 27th, 2017
Vietnamese people have always been spoken word poets.
How you say it
is as important to the life of the word
as the word itself.
These are the opening lines of Thousand Star Hotel (Coffee House Press, 2017), Vietnamese-American poet Bao Phi’s second poetry collection. The lines bring to mind Junot Díaz’s prologue to Drown (1997): “the fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you” (a quote attributed to another bilingual Cuban-American, Gustavo Perez Firmat). In Thousand Star Hotel, the bilingual writer’s struggle with expressing himself in English becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s struggle with navigating the host nation’s hostile-yet-lucrative social terrain. While writing about his experience with racism on the streets of the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, and his encounters with a cultural mainstream in which he barely sees his people represented, Phi paints a sensitive portrait of his life as both an outsider to, and a participant in, mainstream American culture.
A spoken word poet who has won the Minnesota Grand Slam, performed at the Def Jam sessions, and been a finalist at the National Poetry Slam, Phi is tastefully unorthodox in the way he uses poetic form. From the beginning, the poems in Thousand Star Hotel alternate between being heard almost as a musical track—rhythmic and disciplined—, and breaking free from that track. We see how simultaneous respect for and irreverence toward poetic form demonstrates his ability to use form as a tool to guide the reader’s attention in these lines from “Vocabulary”:
One winter, a fellow cart pusher confided in me during a lull
as we stood near the weak warmth of the rattling heat vent in the cart corral.
Like me, he was a nonwhite boy from a poor family.
Like me, his face was limestone and granite pressed tight together.
After rich, rhythmic lines we can hear as spoken word, and after end-rhyming “lull” and “corral,” Phi goes on to shift his rhythms and abandon the anticipated rhyme scheme. This has the effect of sharpening the reader’s attention for a moment before the rest of the poem proceeds.
While the speaker recounts childhood in Phillips, narrates tales of the war told by his Vietnamese immigrant father, and details his encounters with racism, Phi’s spitfire lines and superior command of rhythm are reminiscent of another Asian-American poet who once dominated the slam poetry scene, Justin Chin. Until his untimely death in 2015, Chin was known for being as compelling on paper as he was on stage, and for being darkly humorous while denouncing the American dream, as in his poem, “A History of Geography”:
I let them take me,
do what they want with me
even if it hurts me bad/ makes me bleed/ makes me bruise/ sore/ &
sad/ satisfied/ & happy/ mad/ desolate,
let them do what they want with a slab of meat
because they’re giving me a place I cannot get to.
Phi pays homage to Chin in lines such as “Did we douse you in chemicals / that twisted your future generations / to flesh pretzels, / strip-mine your resources, / then fusion-fuck your family dinner?” Sporting forearm tattoos, close-cropped hair, and black-rimmed glasses, not only does Phi physically resemble Chin, but like the late Malaysian-American poet, Phi also writes of the stereotyped Asian body and de-weaponizes slurs such as “chink” and “gook” by using them himself (Chin called himself “ethnic fag”).
While Chin’s work commented on the stupefying quality of popular culture in the 1990s, Phi brings the conversation into the present day by engaging with issues of diversity (or lack thereof) and representation. “In all the books I love,” Phi writes in the prose poem “Document,” “none of the heroes look like me.” In several poems, such as “Lead,” “Night of the Living,” and “Our Minnesota,” Phi deploys a recurring image of his speaker as a little boy wielding a flashlight, pretending to be a Jedi. The boy’s inability to defend himself becomes a metaphor for the immigrant’s futile efforts to “fit in” in the white world. This outsider status persists into adulthood: “I walk where I don’t exist,” Phi’s speaker notes in a poem about taking his young daughter to the blonde world of Barbie and Ken at the Mall of America, an enormous destination shopping mall in the Minneapolis suburbs.
By repeating the many forms of “go back where you came from” he has heard in his lifetime, and by foregrounding his ex-soldier father’s PTSD against daily life (“Why does my dad / see the enemy hiding / everywhere?”), Phi skillfully evokes the migrant’s complicated relationship with “home.” The poet’s work is most compelling when he shares his fears as a father who knows that his daughter will likely also grow up feeling uncomfortable in her own skin, hating her own face, and staring “across a sea of bright things, a thousand blinking promises / never asked for, a thousand flashing neon signs telling her what she / doesn’t have.”
In a poem that begins with author David Mura’s quote, “I know there is a greater chance that someone will call my daughter a chink than she has a chance of finding true love,” Phi’s speaker heartbreakingly wonders:
will she be hated as
a gook first or
a woman first
or a dyke or
will there be new words
for her balled all into one
Phi ties together three of the book’s important threads—being a son, being a father, and being a Vietnamese-American in present-day America—in a poem called “Broken Things”: “I’ve realized that I yell the same things to my daughter / in the same way that my dad would yell at me /,” adding, “except I do it in English / … the official language of bad Asians.” While calling out the whitewashing of American culture, Phi also reprimands himself for giving in to it.
Thousand Star Hotel is a collection that offers a balanced critique of contemporary American society through Phi’s personal run-ins with the crises of poverty, racism, and identity. The book is a bittersweet ode to being a badass refugee who has slept without a roof overhead many nights. It is a semi-optimistic take on immigrant life in America—every bit as charming, and as hopeless, as a night of stargazing. And it is a compendium of the hopes and fears of a protective father, who has a star he must shield from a society that’s keen to dim her shine.
***
Author photograph © Anna Min.
‘Thousand Star Hotel’ Is A Fierce, Burning Indictment
BY SARAH HUENER
JULY 19, 2017
9781566894708_0d124Bao Phi has a survivor’s ear for danger. He is attuned; he writes with the adrenaline-filled attention of someone whose safety has depended on a particular tone of voice. He is also a champion slam poet and an advocate for the urban poor. In Thousand Star Hotel, his second book of poems, Phi explores both the complexities and the simplicities of human experience. As the first poem in the collection ends, “How you say it / is as important to the life of the word / as the word itself.”
With this invocation Phi invites each reader into his world—which is also our world. The strength of this book comes from the clear and forceful voice. The words leap off the pages, half alive already. Phi’s choices of form are apt; the prose poems feel natural, and the lineated poems use page space to breathe. The linebreak tends to be an indicator of a pause or specific phrasing. While this works well overall, the strong voice that unifies the book loses some subtlety amid its sheer momentum. When something’s meant to be clever, you can tell, and Phi’s short lines can be distractingly emphatic.
Much of this book has the feel of being notation, like a musical score. I mean this stylistically, not critically—though occasionally the 2-D approximation of the poem does fall short of its 3-D glory. Phi is a writer for whom poetry is an oral act. Just as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were born of a long oral tradition, Phi’s stories are also conveyed in real time and with real vocal chords as a part of the ongoing human history from which they’ve been historically excluded.
And the stories themselves are incredibly compelling. The characters and paradigm gain dimension organically, and the reader immediately recognizes a character they met twenty pages back. The speaker is smart, loving, fearful, and angry—sometimes all in one poem. It is true, though, that some poems feel like drafts of each other. It’s akin to having four slightly different versions of the same dish at a potluck—confusing, but still good to eat.
This book isn’t a journey as much as it is an immersion. Phi has tapped into an achingly tangible well of experience. Thousand Star Hotel is a fierce, burning indictment of racism and xenophobia. As Phi reminds us especially in poems about his daughter, we are created equal but born unequal. In his words, “The fortune is not the fortune, it’s the cookie. / Those who can eat will eat.”
These complex moments ring nonetheless with emotional certainty. At his best, Phi taps into an intimacy born of the bare narrative. He writes, “I didn’t watch football until my daughter was born, and now it’s too late to stop watching even though I know we’ll always lose.” From one of my favorite poems in the book:
Before the sun rose and before he took the long bus to work
my dad shook my shoulder; we’d amble to fish
from some mucky pond by the side of a crumbling highway,
the fire he let me make on the shore
really just twigs of daddy longleg thickness and toilet paper,
very little light and even less warmth but all the danger.
Some days I would wake up and drive moon boots into
blue-white snow blushed with the last dark of night to catch a bus
to a windowless school.
Thousand Star Hotel asks a question many of us recognize: how hopeful is it possible to be while remaining oneself, and honest, and sane? As Phi writes, “Love is not neutral. / Never.”
Eliot famously said that “genuine poetry communicates before it is understood.” This is a good figure for an idea, but I certainly don’t believe all genuine poetry communicates before comprehension. Perhaps Thousand Star Hotel is an instance of the exception; this is a different kind of poetry, a volume written by an experienced orator who understands how to tell a story. These poems don’t happen, they elapse. They add on to a story that isn’t yet over.
Thousand Star Hotel doesn’t end with a call to action, and it doesn’t end with optimism. This book can be understood—in Eliot’s sense—before its echoes begin to die away. Its staying power is not brought about by words that sound well together. Instead, it resurfaces in the mind again and again in precise images and sheer factual heft. In a time when everything new we learn about the world may seem terrible, this book is a reminder of the power and value of truth.
POETRY
Thousand Star Hotel by Bao Phi
Coffee House Press
Published July 4, 2017
Bao Phi is a National Poetry Slam finalist.
“TO SPEAK OF THE THINGS THAT HAUNT ME MOST”: REVIEW OF THOUSAND STAR HOTEL
Christopher R. Vaughan
Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2017. 110 pages. $16.95.
In his seminal Souls of Black Folk (1903), W.E.B. Du Bois defined the concept of “double-consciousness”:
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
In a different time and place, Du Bois’s construct fuels Bao Phi’s second collection of poems, Thousand Star Hotel. At once tender and taboo-busting, pithy and sprawling, effulgent and expository, Thousand Star Hotel is a compendium of “warring ideals” spoken through the voices and seen through the eyes of a refugee child turned poet adult, his embattled parents, neighborhood pals and bullies, past flames and would-be lovers, an exotifying culture—not to mention Phi’s young daughter, for whom the collection is a record with which she might one day construct her own consciousness. Yet Phi has brought Du Bois’s concept into new terrain, transfiguring double-consciousness into a powerful multi-consciousness.
Phi, a Vietnamese-American prize-winning slam poet born in Saigon and raised in Minneapolis, begins in childhood. In “Vocabulary” the poet’s big-box job (sketched with not a little slaughterhouse imagery) tasks him with corralling shopping carts. One day, a fellow worker, also a poor young man of color, opens up about his long-missed girlfriend and their previous night’s passionate reunion:
He said it like their love
saturated every atom of his being,
and shook him,
as if all his veins were laid bare
to weep at the memory of her,
as if his ache for her was a chasm
he could never hope to cross. . . .
While the virgin narrator makes a weak show of sympathy, the other boy stomps away sobbing, ashamed at his moment of vulnerability. “Now, over twenty years later,” Phi considers the chasms he must cross:
I make my living with words.
But all I can say about the bombs that sought my family
is: they missed us.
I still can’t reach out to my friends, especially my fellow straight boys,
Their eyes the size of stop signs.
He thinks of how that boy discovered “the vocabulary to overcome himself,” and wonders “if I will ever find a language / to speak of the things that haunt me the most.”
The hauntings cross generations. Phi thrusts us into childhood scenes alongside his parents then deftly takes us to the present, where he can reckon freshly with their meaning. In “Go to Where the Love Is,” the poet’s mother tends her urban garden against the incursions of neighborhood kids hurling slurs and drug-hunting police. A bitter fatalism sprouts:
The worst powerlessness
is when wicked men and boys
come for your family
and you can do nothing.
Now behind her high fence
she gives cucumbers to my daughter,
asks me to fix her Vietnamese cable channels.
I don’t know how.
She says she’ll die in Vietnam.
She has always said this.
“Lead” portrays the poet’s father, three decades back, with a sort of magic realism warped into reality. Patching vandals’ holes in their property’s fence, he swats away what he thinks are mosquitoes, then
hollers for me to look around
for a shooter
like it’s the dmz
claims someone is shooting a bb gun at his back.
Phi is unbelieving, “even when I see dull lead fragments sticking / into his brown skin.” Yet if “My dad had a son who believed in invisible mosquitoes / more than the evil of men,” such scenes are part of a growing consciousness of the racist violence no garden fence or patching could ward off.
A multiple-time National Poetry Slam finalist, Phi brings to his work a slam poet’s duty to expose, to flaunt taboo, to indict society’s depredations via ironic twist and jarring juxtaposition. There’s the scene of everyday police brutality in “Rolling through a Four-Way,” in which a fully and bitterly realized consciousness implicates another generation—his daughter, strapped in a car seat during a gun-tense pullover. The litany “Our Minnesota” reconstitutes boyhood haunts and city characters now ever more threatened by gentrification. “The Why” puts him back in his neighborhood in a different way. Spurred by a prison reading whose audience, it turns out, is mostly guys from his old Phillips neighborhood, the poet makes a commitment. He’ll get down, for his daughter’s sake,
some record of this man—
sashimi-thin when the world doesn’t want to see me,
fatty pork when they need to hate me. . . .
For the same society that will have Phi alternately be “sashimi-thin” or “fatty pork” knows Asian culture mainly as an exotic “Oriental Flavor,” as in that devastating prose-poem anaphora: “Oriental flavor must be a sidekick flavor / tastes like the margin not the center . . . tastes like a cop racially profiling Hmong / Cambodian / Pacific Islanders / Vietnamese / Chinese / Black / Indian / Latinx people.” In a twist on the age-old portrayal of the other, Phi continually adopts the voice of another gazing upon him, using this voice to expose the very assumptions themselves. Yet the deployment of a string of ethnicities seems to call for crossracial resistance. From double-consciousness to multi-consciousness, and from consciousness to action.
What constitutes action, exactly? In Du Bois’s formulation, “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.” For Phi, how to move forward is a dilemma he most wrestles with through poems (“Tourist with Daughter,” “Contour”) in which the writer refracts his consciousness through his young daughter’s eyes. To what extent must he share hard truths that might pierce her child’s bubble of “clouds” and “boats,” of “sour corn syrup sticky candy”? If he fears
I’m spoiling her.
Then I remember what family she comes from
and I think to myself,
let her have,
and throw away.
As a father the poet can better understand all that he carries, but as his own consciousness gains new layers it complicates the parts he wishes to pass on. Still, the collection’s final half dozen poems hint at a way forward. “Being Asian in America” (with its title echoing the epic Angels in America) is the rare short poem:
Survive long enough
and eventually
everything becomes
a revolution.
Revolution might denote the stubborn cycles of pain and plunder witnessed throughout Thousand Star Hotel. Or could it be resilience gathering a transformative momentum? In “Untitled / Fathers,” an earlier fatalism fades, at least momentarily, to something like hope. “Maybe the important thing,” Phi addresses his daughter, “is that you made me realize I just want a better world for you to be a part of. . . . Every moment after that is to be determined.”
Back to top ↑
Christopher Vaughan
CHRISTOPHER R. VAUGHAN is a teacher and poet based in the Twin Cities. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Off the Coast, Review Americana, and Connecticut River Review. His book reviews have appeared in Prick of the Spindle and Kenyon Review Online.