Of Gods & Strangers

TINA CHANG

A meditation on history and the imagination that bears witness to acts of genocide and to natural disasters in Ethiopia, Haiti, and Sri Lanka, Of Gods & Strangers interweaves lyrical, arresting accounts of our contemporary world with stories of "Empress Dowager" Tzu Hsi, last empress of China (1861-1908). An urgent reminder that poetry can offer us a social consciousness--"in my locked mouth an urge"--Of Gods & Strangers deftly traces the human dimensions of the "great modern machine," looking to recover "a future shining from the void.

“Chang's high-intensity second collection tracks her needs, desires, and disappointments and her quest to fit them into a trans-Pacific history...” Publishers Weekly

“Open this book and read the first poem ‘Unfinished Book of Mortals’ and see if you can put the book down. Tina Chang is writing to the future, from the past towards the present, and all the way back again. Of God & Strangers is haunted, intoxicating, and revelatory.-- the voice, ‘neither evil nor kind’ is ferociously alive.” Marie Howe

"Chang's high-intensity second collection tracks her needs, desires, and disappointments and her quest to fit them into a trans-Pacific history..." Publishers Weekly