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Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

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( 1,773 ratings, 338 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen is a collection of poignant and humorous essays exploring themes of identity, family, and the immigrant experience. Through a series of personal reflections, the author examines the complexities of navigating cultural expectations and mental health, all while blending insight and wit to convey the resilience and vulnerability of human relationships. This work delves into the intersections of identity, providing a unique yet relatable perspective.
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you're captivated by personal stories that explore life’s unexpected challenges with profound insight and wit. This collection combines introspection and humour, offering a unique perspective on navigating crises and the complexities of identity.

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"In his highly anticipated second collection, Chen Chen continues his investigation of family, both blood and chosen, examining what one inherits and what one invents, as a queer Asian American living through an era of Trump, mass shootings, and the COVID-19 pandemic"--

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

What happens when everything falls away, when those you call on in times of need are themselves calling out for rescue?

In his highly anticipated second collection, Chen Chen continues his investigation of family, both blood and chosen, examining what one inherits and what one invents, as a queer Asian American living through an era of Trump, mass shootings, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Always at work in the wrecked heart of this new collection is a switchboard operator, picking up and connecting calls. Raucous 2 a.m. prank calls. Whispered-in-a-classroom emergency calls. And sometimes, its pages record the dropping of a call, a failure or refusal to pick up. With irrepressible humour and play, these anarchic poems celebrate life, despite all that would crush aliveness.

Hybrid in form and set in New England, West Texas, and a landlocked province of China, among other places, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency refuses neat categorizations and pat answers. Instead, the book offers an insatiable curiosity about how it is we keep finding ways to hold onto one another.

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  • Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
    What happens when everything falls away, when those you call on in times of need are themselves calling out for rescue? In his highly anticipated second collection, Chen Chen continues his investigation of family, both blood and chosen, examining what one inherits and what one invents, as a queer Asian American living through an era of Trump, mass shootings, and...
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen is praised for its humour, deep intelligence, and its touch on themes of grief, desire, and hope. Readers appreciate the author's unique voice and the way he navigates life in America through personal experiences with violence and care. The book has been described as dolorous, riotous, and rapturous.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781950774692

Publisher: BOA Editions, Limited

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 13 September 2022

Country: United States

Imprint: BOA Editions, Limited

Illustration: Illustrations

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 228.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 128

About the Author

Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China and has lived in Western Massachusetts, Upstate New York, and West Texas. His debut poetry collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, the Thom Gunn Award, the GLCA New Writers Award, and the Texas League of Writers' Book Award. In 2019, Bloodaxe Books published the UK edition. He is also the author of a collection of essays, In Cahoots with the Rabbit God (Noemi Press, forthcoming 2023), and he has written four chapbooks, most recently GESUNDHEIT! (Glass Poetry Press, 2019), a collaboration with Sam Herschel Wein. Chen's work appears in three editions of The Best American Poetry, and his poems have been translated into French, Greek, Russian, and Spanish. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman and the National Endowment for the Arts. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD from Texas Tech University. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence. He also serves on the poetry faculty for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. He edits the Twitter-based journal the lickety~split and with a brilliant team, he edits Underblong. He lives with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles.


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