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My Name is Immigrant

Ping Wang

Paper: ISBN 978-1-934909-66-9 $18

128 Pages

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Wang Ping’s remarkable history has taken her from farm worker during the Cultural Revolution to an international reputation as a teacher and writer. In her spare time, she climbs mountains and rows the Mississippi. Her energy and courage are both legendary.

Internationally acclaimed writer and poet Wang Ping’s timely new book of poetry, My Name Is Immigrant is a song for the plight and pride of immigrants around the globe, including the U.S., China, Syria, Honduras, Guatemala, Nepal, Tibet and other places. “Shortly after arriving in the U.S.,” writes Wang, “I walked into the wrong class, which turned out to be a creative writing workshop taught by a poet. I decided to stay in the course and wrote my first poem there. It was about my experience in New York as an immigrant. It got published, then selected by the Best American Poetry. I went on to write more immigrant stories about people from around the world, as I discovered we are one giant village of immigration, and as the topic has grown in importance.”

What critics say:

“Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry” renders a moving argument about language and expression, and about the freedom poetry sometimes claims, the freedom to speak in ways that are obedient to the urgencies and irregularities of life… it’s moving, and on the surface, simple, and it reminds me that what all poems are truly in search of sits outside the words.”
— Tracy K. Smith, USA Poet Laureate, The Slowdown

“Wang Ping’s poetry is riddled with surprises that bite and soothe. There’s something wise and original in these poems wrung from need. ”
— Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winner

“Meeting her for the first time in person was an impressive experience and my admiration for her only grew. Her work with rivers and with other aspects of the landscape is totally refreshing, and her broad intelligence, delightful political wit and poetic vision expands understanding of the American nation.”
— Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize winner

“Her truth telling emerges from a deep well, describing the movement of people and the stories, the hope, and the desire they carry with them across deserts and oceans, over walls and through every barrier. The age-old question remains, with sharp clarity in these pages-who among us decides who is allowed in, accepted, celebrated? ”
— M.L. Smoker, Montana Co-Poet Laureate