Togetherness

Against the cold, limiting language of state violence, Wo’s lavish adjectives and astonishing similes, their exuberant syntax and assonant lines touch the world with care, with love. . . Each form a different silhouette, a posture, a character, a move getting us closer to some kind of truth.

Togetherness is a poetry collection I recommend to all who love poetry or memoir—or both. Its narrative thread follows the search for love and acceptance, both from outside and from within, and it offers a refreshing and deeply intimate experience from those not often given a voice.

Wo Chan’s remarkable debut collection puts in tension memories of the diaspora as the poems move between childhood, the family restaurant, and a racist immigration system that demands exceptionality and authenticity. Articulating the multiplicities of experiences and affect in conflict, Togetherness invokes a lyrical address to love, community, and belonging.

At the red-hot, glittering core of Wo Chan’s explosive debut Togetherness is the intersection of the foul and the forlorn. […] Togetherness is not a study of restraint, but a joyous, unruly recreation of life’s big and small (melo)dramas.

Togetherness is a restless collection, brimming with forms new and old, some prose-y and others firmly poetic, and all eclectic. Most of all, it’s a searching debut by a poetic voice that is as many parts scatological as it is experimental; as saucy as it is ebullient and sincere, as elided as it is overflowing.

There’s much to talk about in Wo Chan’s work, much to love, and much to look forward to in future poems that are yet to be written by this beautiful poet. Togetherness is word art, a gift given to us by a very generous poet.

With stark imagery and honest prose, Chan never shies from the fluid, the nasty, the absurd, beautiful, erotic, nor the strange – no, they lay it all bare.

This is a vibrant, critical and loving collection, one that startles through both the strength and vulnerabilities displayed throughout Chan’s glorious, tender and occasionally wild performance.

Click here to read an excerpt in Poetry Daily!

Click here to listen to Wo Chan read a poem from Togetherness, featured in Poets & Writers‘ Page One series!

Click here to read a few poems from Togetherness in AAWW!

Click here to read a poem from Togetherness in Literary Hub!