A review by bluejayreads
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen

emotional reflective sad

4.0

In one of the poems in this collection, Chen Chen responds to a friend saying that all his poems are about being Asian and gay. The friend was correct - these poems are about being gay, Asian, or gay and Asian. But that is not a bad thing. Poems are about feelings, and these poems are full of feelings. 

Chen writes about the racism he and his family encounter for being not white in America. He writes about being an immigrant whose parents long for another country that they left when he was too young to remember. He writes about crushes on white boys who don't notice him and the rough joy of loving another man. He writes about the many ways he disappoints his mother and how his parents reacted when he told them he was gay. 

These poems are sometimes crass and crude, but it adds a hollow realness to the feelings, like the world is determined to hollow him out but somehow he's still here, still writing, still gay and Asian and putting pen to paper to give words to everything trying to scoop the life out of him. This collection of poetry is very different from poetry I've read before, more harsh and brutal than elegant and beautiful, but the emotions were vivid and clear, and that is what poetry should be. 
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