"My initial impulse is to say that the poems aren’t “about” me, but that response plays into the faulty assumption that poems whose primary aim might be self-disclosure or testimony are somehow less aesthetically rigorous or energizing. I don’t buy that, really. At the same time, the “I” in these poems, while they might share autobiographical details with the person that wrote them, aren’t “about” me insofar as the speakers are fashioned, dramatized, contextually bound. I invoke them and write into them to better serve the poems and their modes, registers, and textures. Many of the poems take up self-interrogation, but I’m not interested in getting the plot details exactly right. The self is a fiction."
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Poets from ChinaPoets from the United StatesWomen authors from the United StatesWomen academics from the United StatesChinese Americans
Original Language: English
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As quoted in "The Self Is a Fiction: Jenny Xie Interviewed by Mariam Rahmani" in Bomb Magazine (12 April 2018)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jenny_Xie
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Jenny Xie
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