Heart's Traffic

"Ching-In Chen's first book, The Heart's Traffic, constructs a re-naming, a caterwaul call to arms to attend to an archipelago of hybrid identity: political, sexual and always love-persuaded. Here the father is temporary, the mother is dead-alive and girls are writing tiger-legends through sestina, haibun, and the lost letters that must be reinvented if we can understand this new American body. The author necessarily offers up her riddles without answers, her ultimatum of banishment and homecoming with good food and sweet intention. She assures us, "I am kissing a new body into flesh."—Sarah Gambito