My bedroom used to be in the family library. When I moved upstairs into my sister’s old room, I left the geology textbooks, Chinese language learning picture books, and copy of Shakespeare’s 1623 folio behind. I brought with me a crate full of old field guides where I carefully identified and sketched flora and fauna in Thailand, Karen Tei Yamashita’s brilliantly weird collection on cyborgian Asian-America (complete with the story of the chicken who sang Madame Butterfly and a toaster sex scene), Pierre Bourdieu’s book of theory I used to write my undergrad thesis, my favorite gay fantasy novel, and a wonderfully dry translation of Journey To The West (the literary home of Sun Wukong, my monkey muse). The hammock in the bottom right crate is particularly useful for enhancing the reading experience.
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Jasmine An is a queer, Chinese-American who comes from the Midwest. A 2015 graduate of Kalamazoo College, she has also lived in New York City and Chiang Mai, Thailand, studying poetry, urban development, and blacksmithing. Her chapbook, Naming the No-Name Woman, was selected as the winner of the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming in February 2016. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in HEArt Online, Stirring, Heavy Feather Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Her soulmate and forever muse is Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. As of 2016, she can be found in Chiang Mai continuing her study of the Thai language.
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