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The
Magic Whip
Reviews
A Minnesota Book Award finalist
Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention
BookSense.com:
"Stunning."
Port Folio Weekly:
"The Magic Whip is full of surprises that speak of a biting intelligence and rebellious spirit."
Library Journal:
"Probing oppression, exile, and the loss of the mother tongue, these candid poems advocate equality and cultural diversity."
North American Review:
"Wang Ping's poems inscribe and contextualize suffering and survival in the lives of Chinese (American) women dealing with issues of the female body, liminality, colonialism, exile, war. . . . always surprising, always trenchant and biting."
Multidiversity: Myers , newsletter of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights:
"There are not many female voices from Mao's China publishing poetry in the United States. . . . . These poems both teach and delight, but they also armor their readers with necessary truth."
Minnesota Monthly:
"Vincent Van Gogh once said he wanted to reach so far in his work that people would say, 'He feels deeply, he feels tenderly.' Wang Ping is known for just that sort of depth."
MultiCultural Review:
"An ambitious and accomplished meditation on history and empire, gender roles and relationships, and the obsessive collection of cultural artifacts and knowledge."
Tinfish Press:
"In The Magic Whip, Wang Ping delves insightfully into situations of human suffering, culture and identity with a voice that is both strong and nuanced, acting as a witness who will not let us forget or ignore what we accept as a society. . . . An intriguing and powerful work."
NewPages.com:
"Some of these recollections are heart-wrenching and others are lyric and self-contained. The best moments are the surprises, the turns of language and tone."
The Corresponder:
"These poems explore both the big and small atrocities of life, traversing two continents, sometimes diving deep into history."
Booklist:
"The whip of the title was the waist-length pigtail of a young girl, the symbol of her nubility and untried sexuality, and as such, analogous to the bound 'lotus foot' that kept Chinese women virtually immobile and, perhaps for that reason, held erotic power for men. Shanghai-born Wang Ping braids the two emblems of sexual status together in this book's disturbing title poem, chiming their images with men's traditional queues, shaven pubic hair, hair bleach, permanent waves, and other tokens of power and sex."
Publishers Weekly:
"With a terse voice that does not allow for dissembling, her speaker delves into the physical horror of footbinding, revealing anguished ties to beauty, love, and what parents have to give to their children . . . The particular achievement of this book is to make such descriptions ring uncomfortably close to contemporary, Western beauty practices."
Marilyn Chin:
"These poems will give the reader a panoramic view of a Chinese woman's consciousness. The voices are personal yet historical, contemporary yet ancient. Themes range from footbinding, to breastfeeding, to raising a son, to living in wild New York—a generous reading experience."
Yusef Komunyakaa:
"Wang Ping's The Magic Whip is riddled with surprises that bite and soothe. Though populated with Chinese myths and talismans, the tonal muscle and unique imagery of this rewarding collection tug us away from the stereotypical. There's something wise and original in these poems wrung from need."
Walter K. Lew:
"Echoing both the Buddha and Marx, Wang Ping has Li Qingzhao, the greatest woman poet in Chinese history, remind us that to hoard is a disease that can destroy empires and love affairs both. And thus we find in these 'magic whips'—both sharp-tongued and softly returning—a wildly roaming poetry of compassion that depicts desperate beings with everything the poet can summon: inexhaustible will to survive, healing songs of bitterness, the beauty of passions bound into cruel forms, and a disquieting earthly love that only the generous can gain."
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available by this author:
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