Praise for In the Tongue of Ghosts (First Word Press, 2016)
“Jade Cho finds poetry in nuance the same way a needle finds music in the grooves of a record. Both drawing out intense beauty, sorrow, and supreme wisdom from the complicated, the marginally tactile and in-between spaces. Let In The Tongue of Ghosts inspire you to hum and giggle, mourn and dance, raise a fist and call your grandmother.”
- Gabriel Cortez
“Love and loneliness. Connection and distance. Raw emotion and sage critique. Jade Cho invites us all to look deeply into the mirror and intimately examine the parts we are most afraid to see. She peels back every layer of herself and presents each unfolding as an offering. A radical debut of everything otherwise demanded to be hidden and silent, Jade’s writing is a persistent tension that never settles for less than the truth.“
- Natasha Huey
“I’ve been thinking of spirit, the brightness and invisibility of it. And I’ve been wondering what new voice might give bone and flesh to this thing that illumines breathe but cannot be caught. Clearly it is Jade Cho.
In the Tongues of Ghosts carries with it heartbreaking and hilarious eulogies for almost-boyfriends, epistles to Ye Ye and Ngin Ngin, trick questions from the playground about race and growing up Asian in Oakland, gentrification and yearning for home. Penned carefully, tenderly like prophecies of unborn children, Cho’s poems have long cried out for an audience within and beyond the ephemeral boundaries of Asian American, and now it will finally receive the hearing it deserves.”
- Michelle “Mush” Lee
“Jade Cho finds poetry in nuance the same way a needle finds music in the grooves of a record. Both drawing out intense beauty, sorrow, and supreme wisdom from the complicated, the marginally tactile and in-between spaces. Let In The Tongue of Ghosts inspire you to hum and giggle, mourn and dance, raise a fist and call your grandmother.”
- Gabriel Cortez
“Love and loneliness. Connection and distance. Raw emotion and sage critique. Jade Cho invites us all to look deeply into the mirror and intimately examine the parts we are most afraid to see. She peels back every layer of herself and presents each unfolding as an offering. A radical debut of everything otherwise demanded to be hidden and silent, Jade’s writing is a persistent tension that never settles for less than the truth.“
- Natasha Huey
“I’ve been thinking of spirit, the brightness and invisibility of it. And I’ve been wondering what new voice might give bone and flesh to this thing that illumines breathe but cannot be caught. Clearly it is Jade Cho.
In the Tongues of Ghosts carries with it heartbreaking and hilarious eulogies for almost-boyfriends, epistles to Ye Ye and Ngin Ngin, trick questions from the playground about race and growing up Asian in Oakland, gentrification and yearning for home. Penned carefully, tenderly like prophecies of unborn children, Cho’s poems have long cried out for an audience within and beyond the ephemeral boundaries of Asian American, and now it will finally receive the hearing it deserves.”
- Michelle “Mush” Lee