Acknowledgments

“Frank’s Nursery and Crafts” was previously published in Water~Stone. “Oriental Flavor,” “It Was Flame,” “Cookies,” “Poem for Ahmed Al-Jumaili,” and “Villain/elle” were all previously published in Asian American Literary Review. “Lights,” “When My Daughter Asks Me to Check and Make Sure Racists Can’t Come In and Kill Us,” and “Therapist 4” were all previously published on diaCRITICS. “Theresa, I Think,” “Refugees from the Prom Center, the Eighties,” and “Our Minnesota” were previously published in Into Quarterly. “Rolling through a Four-Way” was previously published in Columbia Poetry Review, May 2017.

Thank you to the Minnesota State Arts Board for a fellowship where this manuscript could be completed, presented, and edited.

Friends, family, community: thank you is not enough, but you have all of it that I can give.

Big thanks to my kick-ass coworkers at the Loft Literary Center, past and present, special shout-out to Jerod Santek. Thanks to the Northeast Turkey Gang writing group. Thanks to Janet Pablo and Fred Tio for generously letting me stank up their beautiful residence at Blue Water Vista, where much of this manuscript was edited to the whisper of the ocean outside the window. To the many different and wonderful communities in Minnesota who have supported me, challenged me, educated me, forgiven me: thank you. Thank you to Kundiman and all the Kundi-fam. Thank you Dr. Kelly Berg, thank you Dr. Kristina Reigstad. Thanks to photographer Anna Min for trying to make me look good—in steezy Asian men we trust. Thanks to Tyehimba Jess, Tara Betts, and Viet Thanh Nguyen—generosity beyond words. Thanks to Verna Wong and Chaun Webster of Ancestry Books, and to all the booksellers and librarians who have supported me. Thank you to everyone who ever invited me to a microphone or a gathering of ears. Thanks to everyone who has taught my work. Thank you to Coffee House Press, especially Chris Fischbach and Erika Stevens, the latter of whom made this manuscript immeasurably better. Rest in peace Allan Kornblum.

Thank you to anyone who has ever helped me, in so many ways and so much more than I could have ever hoped for.

Thanks to my family, for surviving me. I can’t thank everyone I need to thank by name, or else this would be a book unto itself. But a special thank you to Juliana Hu Pegues, Sông Phi-Hu, Ed Bok Lee, R. Vincent Moniz Jr., Linda Nguyen, Kathryn Savage, Heather Wang, Shannon Gibney, Emmanuel Ortiz, Parag Khandhar, David Mura, Laurie Carlos, Diane Glancy, Diego Vazquez, Marcie Rendon, Carolyn Holbrook, Celine Liu, Scott Kurashige, Emily Lawsin, Yen Ling Shek, Mae Lee, Molly Beth Griffin, Paula Chesley, Lawrence Minh-Bui Davis, Kai Ma, Beau Sia, Dennis Kim, Su-Yoon Ko, Sajin Kwok, Siwaraya Rochanahusdin, Douglas Kearney, Giles Li, Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, Tatiana Ormaza, Adam Pine, Shá Cage, E. G. Bailey, Guante, Thuyet Nguyen, and Tony Nguyen for being keepers of this manuscript, for teaching me, for accepting my apologies, and for your support above and beyond.