Go Home!

A fascinating collection of a variety of literary forms from Asian Americans meditating on identity and being. I especially loved the short stories but the poems and essays were also interesting. The collection forced me to think about how various groups are accepted--or not accepted--in the United States and my own relationship to self and group and how I define myself. There is something for everybody here, in terms of forms, as well as some important insights into what it means to look "different" from the expectation of how an American "should" look.The emotional and intellectual content are both very satisfying. The collection is a little uneven in the quality of the work, as is usual in such collections although different parts of the collection may appeal to different people. The book has something to offer to a variety of people.I also liked that the individual offerings were short and I was able to enter the book at different times and read a whole piece. This fits my lifestyle at the moment. There is a continuity in the themes across the work but different authors handle the theme differently.

Go Home! is a wonderfully curated novel that ties together commonly experienced issues growing up in another country. For better or for worse, it broadly covers stories and poems from various Asian American communities, allowing it to touch upon issues that would otherwise go unnoticed. The stories that I could relate to I loved but the stories that I couldn't, also gave me new perspectives on issues that I otherwise wouldn't have ever considered.

Wonderful selection of beautifully written work.

I wish to cancel this order. It is not the book I wanted.

Some of these pieces I LOVED: Alexander Chee's Release, Alice Sola Kim's Mothers Lock Up Your Daughters, and Mia Alvar's Esmeralda. Some pieces felt less accessible to me, poetry being a perpetual obstacle (although Mohja Kahf and Jason Koo managed to write poems that spoke to me a little bit more). Honestly, there were two that I could not finish. But as a whole, I felt so blessed to be holding this powerful volume about stories about HOME from Asian diasporic voices, both established and emerging.

I really enjoyed this book. I was given the opportunity to read Go Home! for my Asian American Studies creative writing class at UCLA with professor Neelanjana Banerjee. This book will have you wanting to turn the next page and now I am inspired to write because of the beautifully, thought provoking poems and essays. These anthologies by inspiring Asian diasporic writers are expressing their experience of home and I appreciate it so much.