Alien Miss

Alien Miss Synopsis

In her stunning second collection, Carlina Duan illuminates unabashed odes to lineage, small and sacred moments of survival, and the demand to be fully seen 'spangling with light.' Tracing familial lore and love, Duan reflects on the experience of growing up as a diasporic, bilingual daughter of immigrants, exploring the fraught complexities of identity, belonging, and linguistic reclamation. Alien Miss brings forth beautifully powerful voices: immigrants facing the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first Chinese American woman to vote, and matriarchal ancestors. The poems in this ambitious collection are immersed in the knotted blood of sisterhood, both celebrating and challenging conceptions of inheritance and homeland.

I browse through
archives full of men and women with long black hair,
throwing themselves into the land. thread of grass. thread
of immaculate touch. paper son, or paper
daughter. my own papers marked with wings, the pointed
tip of an eagle's beak. here, I'm made prey.
I pledge allegiance.