LB Sedlacek reviews Septuagenarian

Septuagenarian: Love is What Happens When I Die
By Sherry Quan Lee
102 pages
ISBN: 978-1-61599-568-4
Modern History Press
Copyright 2021

Review by LB Sedlacek

Septuagenarian by Sherry Quan LeeSherry Quan Lee has put together an unsettling yet brilliant juxtaposition of sweet and sad, love and anger that will hit you right at your emotional core. The collection Septuagenarian feels almost like heartfelt portraits of pain, disconnection, and strength all rolled into one.

Her poems, though, delve deeper beyond emotion presenting lines that achieve poignancy with their build-up. Context is important with any poem and Quan Lee achieves that. Her poems are fulfilling and real.

Her approach is straightforward. Poems examining her life till now offer personal and compelling details. She invites us to participate in her struggle, her internal voyages throughout the years. Her descriptions are vivid and they allow us to see beyond the setting into her internal strife.

Each poem stands alone, but each poem complements the other poem before it. Same with each section of the book. The author doesn’t let you forget that she is human and willing to bare her soul within her verses.

It’s a well-crafted book. Her words will seep into your heart and then some.

How Dare We! Write [PB] (obsolete)

978-1-61599-330-7
$21.95
In stock
1
Product Details
UPC: 978-1-61599-330-7
Brand: Modern History Press
Binding: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Author: Sherry Quan Lee
Pages: 248

How Dare We! Write: a multicultural creative writing discourse offers a much needed corrective to the usual dry and uninspired creative writing pedagogy. The collection asks us to consider questions, such as “What does it mean to work through resistance from supposed mentors, to face rejection from publishers and classmates, and to stand against traditions that silence you?" and "How can writers and teachers even begin to make diversity matter in meaningful ways on the page, in the classroom, and on our bookshelves?"

How Dare We! Write is an inspiring collection of intellectually rigorous lyric essays and innovative writing exercises; it opens up a path for inquiry, reflection, under­standing, and creativity that is ultimately healing. The testimonies provide a hard won context for their innovative paired writing experiments that are, by their very nature, generative.
--Cherise A. Pollard, PhD, Professor of English, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

So-called “creative writing” classes are highly politicized spaces, but no one says so; to acknowledge this obvious fact would be to up-end the aesthetics, cultural politics (ideology) and economics on which most educational institutions are founded. How Dare We! Write, a brilliant interventive anthology of essays, breaks this silence.
-- Maria Damon, Pratt Institute of Art; co-editor of Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader

How Dare We! Write is a collection of brave voices calling out to writers of color everywhere: no matter how lonely, you are not alone; you are one in a sea of change, swimming against the currents.
-- Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, and The Song Poet, a 2017 Minnesota Book Award winner

How Dare We! Write is a much needed collection of essays from writers of color that reminds us that our stories need to be told, from addressing academic gatekeepers, embracing our identities, the effects of the oppressors tongue on our psyche and to the personal narratives that help us understand who we are.
---Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria, writer, spoken word poet/performer and contributing author to A Good Time for fhe Truth: Race in Minnesota

Learn more at http://blog.SherryQuanLee.com

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