Iron Goddess of Mercy - by Larissa Lai (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"Larissa Lai's Iron Goddess of Mercy is a long poem that captures the vengeful yet hopeful movement of the Furies mid-whirl and dances with them through the horror of the long now. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term "Asian" can be understood to make sense (or nonsense) of a complex set of relations. The self crystallizes in moments of solidity, only to dissolve and whirl away again. The poet is a windsock, catching all the affect that blows at her and ballooning to fullness, only to empty again when the wind changes direction. Iron Goddess of Mercy is a game of mah-jong played deep into the night, an endless gamble. Presented in sixty-four fragments to honour the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, Iron Goddess of Mercy also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights. Finally, a balm to the poem's devastating passion and fury, Iron Goddess of Mercy is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin. Summoning the ghosts of history and politics, Iron Goddess of Mercy explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment."--<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><i>Iron Goddess of Mercy</i>by Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (for the novel <i>The Tiger Flu</i>) is a long poem that captures the vengeful yet hopeful movement of the Furies mid-whirl and dance with them through the horror of the long now. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term "Asian" can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations. The self crystallizes in moments of solidity, only to dissolve and whirl away again. The poet is a windsock, catching all the affect that blows at her and ballooning to fullness, only to empty again when the wind changes direction. <i>Iron Goddess of Mercy</i> is a game of mah jong played deep into the night, an endless gamble.</p> <p>Presented in sixty-four fragments to honor the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, <i>Iron Goddess of Mercy</i> also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights. </p> <p>Finally, a balm to the poem's devastating passion and fury, <i>Iron Goddess of Mercy</i> is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the<p> compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin. </p> <p>Summoning the ghosts of history and politics, <i>Iron Goddess of Mercy</i> explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Larissa Lai won Lambda Literary's Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize in 2020. She is the author of three novels: <i>Salt Fish Girl, When Fox Is a Thousand</i>, and most recently, <i>The Tiger Flu</i>, which won a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, was named an Otherwise Honor Book, and was shortlisted for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award. Her previous poetry books include <i>Automaton Biographies</i>. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary where she directs the Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing.
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