Description:
Alan Chong Lau's poetic memoir of his days as a produce worker in Seattle's Chinatown reveals a microcosm of grassroots, working-class Asian America--a world where customers, workers, and fruits and vegetables intersect in exchanges that crackle with energy and brim over with humor.
With the simple profundity of a Zen koan, the poems bear witness to people's humanity. Lau portrays in words and pictures a community in constant flux as it moves to the push and pull of immigration. Blues and Greens has a lot to say about Asian Americans. What emerges is an acutely observed, nuanced critique of where Asian Americans--native-born, refugee, and migrant--are today.Review Quotes: "[Lau] speaks above all as a person and a poet, large-hearted and tireless, filling his pages with fresh wonder at the ever-changing same old workaday world just south of downtown."