Winner of the 2019 Gerald Cable Book Award
A Way of Looking by Jianqing Zheng
A Way of Looking by Jianqing Zheng
ISBN: 978-1-878851-7-27
Paperback 80 pages $18.00
Release date: October 15, 2021
Distributed to the trade by Small Press Distribution
Jianqing Zheng is author of two poetry chapbooks, The Landscape of Mind (Slapering Hol Press) and Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Texas Review Press), recipient of two artist fellowships from Mississippi Arts Commission and the Fulbright Scholarship, and professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University. He earned a PhD in English from The University of Southern Mississippi. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Louisiana Literature, Mississippi Review, Poetry East, and Roanoke Review.
A Way of Looking is a powerful and original book. It is so concise and straightforward that it takes a few pages before one realizes how quietly complex it is. Zheng’s form—half prose, half verse—is the sort of thing that might easily go wrong, but he uses it to give two succinct views of each moment in the personal narrative. It’s as if he told an anecdote and then showed a photo that did not duplicate but amplify the story. A Way of Looking is a heartfelt account of exile and homecoming. It is a significant addition to the Asian-American literature of immigration. -- Dana Gioia
