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	The Kingdom of Surfaces by Sally Wen Mao Price $16.00 Paperback In Stock

Sally Wen Mao at Harvard Book Store

presenting

The Kingdom of Surfaces: Poems

in conversation with CHEN CHEN

Date

Aug

Thursday
August 10, 2023
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes SALLY WEN MAO—author of Mad Honey Symposium and Oculus—for a discussion of her new poetry collection The Kingdom of Surfaces. She will be joined in conversation by CHEN CHEN—author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency.

About The Kingdom of Surfaces

In The Kingdom of Surfaces, award-winning poet Sally Wen Mao examines art and history―especially the provenance of objects such as porcelain, silk, and pearls―to frame an important conversation on beauty, empire, commodification, and violence. In lyric poems and wide-ranging sequences, Mao interrogates gendered expressions such as the contemporary “leftover women,” which denotes unmarried women, and the historical “castle-toppler,” a term used to describe a concubine whose beauty ruins an emperor and his empire. These poems also explore the permeability of object and subject through the history of Chinese women in America, labor practices around the silk loom, and the ongoing violence against Asian people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At its heart, The Kingdom of Surfaces imagines the poet wandering into a Western fantasy, which covets, imitates, and appropriates Chinese aesthetics via Chinamania and the nineteenth-century Aesthetic movement, while perpetuating state violence upon actual lives. The title poem is a speculative recasting of “Through the Looking-Glass,” set in a surreal topsy-turvy version of the China-themed 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala. The Kingdom of Surfaces is a brilliantly conceived call for those who recognize the horrors of American exceptionalism to topple the empire that values capital over lives and power over liberation.

Mask Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Chen Chen

Chen Chen’s second book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions), is a best book of 2022 according to the Boston Globe, Electric Lit, NPR, and others. It has also been named a 2023 Notable Book by the American Library Association. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions), was long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears in many publications, including The New York Times and three editions of The Best American Poetry. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast.

Photo Credit: Paula Champagne

Sally Wen Mao

Sally Wen Mao is the acclaimed author of three poetry collections—Oculus which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2019; Mad Honey Symposium, which named a Top Ten Debut of 2014 in Poets & Writers; and The Kingdom of Surfaces, a finalist for the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award. The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she's been published in The Paris Review, Harper Bazaar, Guenrica, PEN America, among others, with rave reviews of her writing in national outlets such as the New Yorker, NPR, and The Washington Post. She currently lives in New York City.

Photo Credit: Jelani Ameer

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

Unable to attend a Harvard Book Store author event? You can still pre-order a signed book by one of our visiting authors.

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Ordering a signed book on harvard.com:

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FAQ:

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General Info
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info@harvard.com

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