In a follow-up to his book of translations, Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, East Bay poet and writer Jeffrey Thomas Leong fully imagines Angel Island detainee life and more particularly, the experiences of his parents. In a new chapbook collection entitled Writ, he inquires, “Why and how did these detainees write the wall poems?” and “How was poetry used to express their angry feelings about their incarceration?”
To understand, he presents selected detainee stories, like that of two young men with identical papers who were deported, and of Soto Shee, a young mother who had attempted suicide but survived. Throughout he interrogates his own writing process and motivation for translating, all the while paying homage to and connecting with ancestors. In addition, Leong seeks a measure of redemption in his father’s story, who also was a former Angel Island detainee.
Leong explores using the full spectrum of American poetic expression from traditional forms like the villanelle and ballad, to free verse centered in language, juxtaposition and metaphor. More importantly, like in Tang Chinese aesthetics, each poem attempts to reveal an emotional core, either that of the Angel Island detainee or of the author in making translations. The reader is given a small window into one writer’s creative process while engaged in his formidable and monumental task.
Jeffrey Thomas Leong is a poet and writer, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, who worked as a public health administrator and attorney for the City of San Francisco. He earned his MFA in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, the first new translation of this work in almost 40 years. His writing has focused on the Asian American experience including adoption, multiracial families and student activism during the 1960s. He lives with his wife and daughter in the East Bay.
To understand, he presents selected detainee stories, like that of two young men with identical papers who were deported, and of Soto Shee, a young mother who had attempted suicide but survived. Throughout he interrogates his own writing process and motivation for translating, all the while paying homage to and connecting with ancestors. In addition, Leong seeks a measure of redemption in his father’s story, who also was a former Angel Island detainee.
Leong explores using the full spectrum of American poetic expression from traditional forms like the villanelle and ballad, to free verse centered in language, juxtaposition and metaphor. More importantly, like in Tang Chinese aesthetics, each poem attempts to reveal an emotional core, either that of the Angel Island detainee or of the author in making translations. The reader is given a small window into one writer’s creative process while engaged in his formidable and monumental task.
Jeffrey Thomas Leong is a poet and writer, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, who worked as a public health administrator and attorney for the City of San Francisco. He earned his MFA in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, the first new translation of this work in almost 40 years. His writing has focused on the Asian American experience including adoption, multiracial families and student activism during the 1960s. He lives with his wife and daughter in the East Bay.