A bracing and variegated debut, Xuela Zhang's To Compare inhabits the fraught condition of living in and through translation in the age of globalization, social media, and the Chinese-American neo-Cold War. In To Compare, Zhang navigates the quagmire of transnational life, where one is always both here and away. "Has language/passed you by/like a curvy city/or shielded/and isolated you, /an illuminated vehicle/against the flooding/tenors of light?" Zhang writes in To Compare, reflecting on the nature of translation--both linguistic and otherwise-- as a way of life. Disjunctive, alluring, To Compare poetically represents our contemporary age.
Author Biography
Born and raised in China, Xuela Zhang writes in English and Chinese. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, Gulf Coast, Bennington Review, PROTOTYPE, and 诗刊Shikan, among others. She received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University and PhD in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis.
