‘Chen Chen’s second collection displays his signature blend of humour and pathos set against a backdrop of the Trump presidency and the twin pandemics of Covid-19 and Covid racism. To be Asian American, Chen intimates, is to be taken “through the wound of it”. Throughout the collection, death, crisis and grief sit cheek by jowl with survival, resistance and glimpses of hard-won joy… With its exquisite blend of melancholy and exuberance, this is a life-affirming book for our troubled times.’ – Mary Jean Chan, The Guardian (best recent poetry round-up), on Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
‘In Chen Chen’s collection, the poet reveals the invisible, unjust bias against people’s racial and gender identities, revealing humour as a weapon in defending one’s identity and rights in society, the power of acceptance - both the giving and receiving of it. These poems call for a new way of interacting with poetic text, a text opaque with multilingual expressions and dialogues. They articulate love and tenderness within the family and across inter-generational divides.’ – Jennifer Wong, Wasafiri, on Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
'This collection is joyous, and celebratory. It takes the reader on a journey of self-expression and of hope. Above all, it is generous. The final poem... ends with the word 'Welcome'.' – SK Grout, The Alchemy Spoon, on Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
'This book is a wonder, grafting whimsy and seriousness; the elegiac and comic; the self-deprecatory and sublime. Formally interruptive and tonally subversive, here are poems mapping uncanny alternatives inside queerness, sonhood, confession, and the act of writing itself.’ – Oluwaseun S. Olayiwola, Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Winter 2022, on Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
‘This second collection by the China-born poet continues his exploration of family – both blood and chosen – examining what one inherits and what one invents as a queer Asian American living through the era of Trump, mass shootings and pandemic.’ – The Bookseller (New Titles Non-Fiction: October 2022)
'These questioning, funny, and deeply humane poems pack a fantastic punch.' – Publishers Weekly‘With humor, deep intelligence, and what feels to me like a luminous everyday philosophy, Chen Chen leads me “through the wound of it". It being life. In America. In the 21st Century. In a body touched by violence and care, grief and desire, hope and heavy knowledge. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency is dolorous, riotous, rapturous.’ – Tracy K. Smith
