Publishers Weekly
★ 01/23/2023
Youn deconstructs in her piercing fourth collection (after Blackacre) Asian American identity to examine its many fragments. “Revealing a racial marker in a poem is like revealing a gun in a story or like/ revealing a nipple in a dance,” Youn writes in the opening poem, “Study of Two Figures (Pasiphaë / Sado),” establishing the tone of the inquiring and powerful pages that follow. In “Deracinations: Eight Sonigrams,” Youn dissects her childhood and young adulthood, recalling the encoded colonialism in Curious George books, being subjected to racial slurs by a bully, and searching fruitlessly for other Asian poets to emulate, “seeking/ a racial exemplar, an icon.” Youn demonstrates a mastery of the existential, declaring perceptively in “Study of Two Figures (Midas / Marigold)” that “Death is a wish to improve one’s surroundings./ Which is to say to be dissatisfied with one’s surroundings is a form of death.” The long prose poem, “In the Passive Voice,” is a virtuosic performance addressing, among other subjects, the challenges of maintaining racial solidarity under capitalism. Intimate yet expansive, Youn’s poems bring remarkable depth, candor, and intensity to personal and social history. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
A svelte, intrepid foray into American racism. . . . In reflecting and refracting the fantasies and absurdities, dark secrets and blatant cruelties by which American racism invents and maintains itself, Youn counters our brutal imagination with flammable, superior dreams.”—Joyelle McSweeney, The New York Times Book Review
“From From is equal parts comic and tragic, clinical and wrenching. Monica Youn’s parables and studies are devastating meditations on the sadism of whiteness and the abjection of racial containment. From the personal, to Du Soon Ja, to beloved icons like Dr. Seuss, Youn examines how complicity gestates and develops, how unexamined desire and fear lead to the hatred of the other and oneself while yanking up the roots of words to unearth the hidden biases built into the way we speak. Youn’s strongest work to date, From From is unforgiving and horrifying, singular and absolutely extraordinary.”—Cathy Park Hong
The long prose poem, ‘In the Passive Voice,’ is virtuosic performance addressing, among other subjects, the challenges of maintaining racial solidarity under capitalism. Intimate yet expansive, Youn’s poems bring remarkable depth, candor, and intensity to personal and social history.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Panoramic yet intimate, Youn’s lyricism illustrates how violence against the other is inseparable from fear and desire.”—Thúy Ðinh, NPR's “Best Books of 2023”
“This powerful book is, without a doubt, her best. Written during the Covid pandemic, a time punctuated by unrelenting and visible acts of anti-Asian violence, it speaks directly and unsentimentally of racism and misogyny while still retaining Youn's characteristic style; the familiar references to Greek myth feel catalytic and urgent.”—Dorothy Wang, BOMB Magazine
“A startlingly good book. I think that this book, of all of Youn’s books, is the one that most showcases her powers as a writer and thinker. . . . Youn’s bravery and intellect are on full view. . . . As an Asian American poet, I feel deep emotions when I think about all the incredible work being written by Asian American poets such as Youn. I feel excited about the future of poetry when I read books like this.”—Victoria Chang, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Youn is a master of the poetic conceit, convincingly bringing and holding two figures together while simultaneously dissecting any preconceived ideas of how they must be related. Through these pairings, she also invites readers to consider how they define and differentiate between broader concepts such as myth and history and West and East. . . . Doesn’t this show how fluid, relative, and illusory such ‘historical’ distinctions really are?”—Mia You, Poetry Foundation
“Youn’s formal inventiveness is a pleasure, and the often unexpected connections she makes between mythology, art, literary history, pop culture, and politics make this her most ambitious and invigorating collection yet.”—Laura Sackton, BuzzFeed
“Daring and inventive.”—Time, “100 Must-Read Books of 2023”
“The complex notion of Asian-American identity is spoken to directly in this collection, which ranges from a searing personal essay about surviving anti-Asian racism to a poem that acknowledges Dr. Seuss’s rarely remembered anti-Japanese propaganda campaign.”—Emma Specter, Vogue
“Youn does an extraordinary job of blending historical themes with haunting modern-day experiences to clarify sense of self. Readers will be captivated.”—Library Journal, starred review
“Utterly breathtaking. . . . Youn is addressing more than prejudice in this collection; she tackles the linguistic, the confessional, the historical, and much more. From From is truly an achievement.”—Joanna Acevedo, The Hopkins Review
Library Journal
★ 02/01/2023
In her fourth collection, Youn—a National Book Award finalist for Ignatz and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Blackacre—incorporates historical figures and cultural tropes as she explores identity and the search for self. (The title comes from the question so often asked of Asian Americans, "Where are you from…? No—where are you from from?" From a multiple-poem study of the magpie, a traditional symbol of good news in Korea considered bad luck in Europe, she moves to a prose poem about the recent, alarming rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, juxtaposed against the backdrop of a beach community whose white residents search for shark teeth. In "Deracinations: Eight Sonigrams," Youn develops the sonigram form, in which the letters and sound of a word are omnipresent, causing the poem to "inhabit the sonic landscape of a particular word." Here, the poem follows the speaker through their childhood, from being read Curious George by her mother, to her introduction to Korean soap operas on VHS tapes, to enduring racist slurs and remarks from classmates. VERDICT Youn does an extraordinary job of blending historical themes with haunting modern-day experiences to clarify sense of self. Readers will be captivated.—Sarah Michaelis
