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Poetry Lgbt

a place called No Homeland

by (author) Kai Cheng Thom

Publisher
Arsenal Pulp Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2017
Category
LGBT, Asian American, Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781551526799
    Publish Date
    Apr 2017
    List Price
    $16.95

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Description

Winner, Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers; American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book; Finalist, Lambda Literary Award and Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender Variant Literature

This extraordinary poetry collection is a vivid, beautifully wrought journey to the place where forgotten ancestors live and monstrous women roam--and where the distinctions between body, land, and language are lost. In these fierce yet tender narrative poems, Kai Cheng Thom draws equally from memory and mythology to create new maps of gender, race, sexuality, and violence. In the world of a place called No Homeland, the bodies of the marginalized--queer and transgender communities, survivors of abuse and assault, and children of diaspora--are celebrated, survival songs are sung, and the ancestors offer you forgiveness for not remembering their names.

Descended from the traditions of oral storytelling, spoken word, and queer punk poetry, Kai Cheng Thom's debut collection is evocative and unforgettable.

I dream warm, wet
Earth-colored wombs,
That rise and tremble and swell with the moon
To give birth to babies connected
By blue-river veins of memory

About the author

Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. She is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir Metonymy Press), the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2018), and the children's picture book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching and Wai-Yant Li. Her latest book is the essay collection I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes at the End of the World (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2020). Kai Cheng won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers in 2017.

Kai Cheng Thom's profile page

Awards

  • Winner, ALA Stonewall Honor Book
  • Short-listed, Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender Variant Literature
  • Short-listed, Lambda Literary Award
  • Winner, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers

Editorial Reviews

In a place called No Homeland, Thom transposes the energy of queer punk spoken word onto the page. The result is a vulnerable, shimmering debut. -Room

A tour-de-force debut poetry collection ... Thom will make you feel the heartache of narrators who realize the erasure of their identity, but she will also instill hope and happiness as others triumph over their heartache and the wrongs they are victims of. -Ricepaper

A thought-provoking, beautiful, and painstakingly candid poetic debut ... . In Thom's work, queerness is sensational but not sensationalized, and beauty, memory and desire are done right, sublime in their specificity.
-Publishers Weekly

With imagery and word choice that will leave you breathless and aching, Kai Cheng Thom's a place called No Homeland is a phenomenal collection that draws heavily on mythology and oral tradition, gender fluidity and sexual identity. It is at times full of high energy, the words pulsing and needing to be said aloud; at others raw and quietly thoughtful. It proposes a break from tradition and the rigidity of the past, focusing instead on a movement forward into a future of strong women. This is a slim book of poetry that will wreck you in only the most glorious ways. -Teen Vogue

Kai Cheng Thom's debut spins race, trans feminism, and community place-making with lore and magic. This entire collection has a captivating oral story-telling quality. You can almost hear Thom's well-honed lyrical talents aloud when reading her poetry on the page. -Amber Dawn, author of How Poetry Saved My Life

This debut collection by Toronto spoken word artist Kai Cheng Thom is impassioned testimony, fiercely polemical and often raw, on the charged subject of identity. -Toronto Star

This is a book I have been waiting for even before I knew it would come to be, and a crucial addition to the growing cannon of trans women of colour literature and Canadian queer and trans people of colour poetics. Thom's poems write the roadmap that trans femmes of colour and queer and trans people of colour desperately need -- one that maps our femme of colour bodies' fiercest wisdom and the places called 'nowhere' by the cis colonial imagination that are the grounds where we dream the futures that will bring us all home. Your white cis boyfriend won't save you from the end of the world, but these poems remind us beautifully that we already are saved. -Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of Dirty River and Bodymap

A firework display of courage and victory in the face of aggression ... Through her poetry, Kai Cheng Thom offers communal celebration to marginal people and a voice of encouragement for transwomen who walk similar paths. -Broken Pencil

Other titles by

Falling Back in Love with Being Human

Letters to Lost Souls

by (author) Kai Cheng Thom

For Laika

The Dog Who Learned the Names of the Stars

text by Kai Cheng Thom
illustrated by Kai Yun Ching

Sick of the System

Why the COVID-19 Recovery Must Be Revolutionary

contributions by James T. Brophy, nicole marie burton, John Clarke, Anita Girvan, Harry Glasbeek, Hugh D.A. Goldring, Dallas Hunt, Andrew Jackson, Emma Jackson, El Jones, Margaret M. Keith, Gary Kinsman, Julie S. Lalonde, Wayne Lewchuk, Robyn Maynard, Jane E. McArthur, Alexander McClelland, Karen Messing, Justin Piché, Elaine Power, Gina Starblanket, Jamie Swift, Richard Swift, Kai Cheng Thom & Alberto Toscano

I Hope We Choose Love

A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World

by (author) Kai Cheng Thom

I Hope We Choose Love

A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World

by (author) Kai Cheng Thom

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars

A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir

by (author) Kai Cheng Thom
narrator Adri Almeida

Maiden, Mother, Crone

Fantastical Trans Femmes

edited by Gwen Benaway
contributions by Alexa Fae McDaniel, Kylie Ariel Bemis, Ellen Mellor, Gwynception, Izzy Wasserstein, Audrey Vest, Kai Cheng Thom, Casey Plett, Crystal Frasier & Lilah Sturges
cover design or artwork by Alex Morris
consultant editor Emily Stewart

From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea

text by Kai Cheng Thom
illustrated by Kai Yun Ching & Wai-Yant Li

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars

A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir

by (author) Kai Cheng Thom

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