Ambit: Review of ‘Letters Home 回家’ by Jennifer Wong
My review of Jennifer Wong's third collection,‘Letters Home 回家’ (Nine Arches Press, 2020) appeared in Ambit's online supplement this June. 'Jennifer Wong’s new book of poems is the “small dream of soy sauce” she describes in ‘Sushi bar amnesiac’. A tasteful, part-sweet part-sour collection, Letters Home 回家 traces the in-between spaces of identity and belonging produced by Wong’s migration from Hong Kong to England in October 1998. These page-length poems travel back and forth through space, culture and language creating a multidimensional nostalgia. In ‘Arrival’, she confesses, “When I first arrived/ I did not tell anyone that I had/ a rice cooker in my suitcase.” Coupled with the anxiety of a ‘limited leave to remain’, the poem – located neatly in the mid-section of the book – grapples with the duality of longing that informs Wong’s poetry.'
