The Story
In her second collection of poems, Lee Ann Roripaugh probes themes of mixedrace female identities, evoking the molting processes of snakes and insects who shed their skins and shells as an ongoing metaphor for transformation of self. Intertwining contemporary renditions of traditional Japanese myths and fairy tales with poems that explore the landscape of childhood and early adolescence, she blurs the boundaries between myth and memory, between real and imagined selves. This collection explores cultural, psychological, and physical liminalities and exposes the diasporic arc cast by firstgeneration Asian American mothers and their secondgeneration daughters, revealing a desire for metamorphosis of self through time, geography, culture, and myth.
Description
In her second collection of poems, Lee Ann Roripaugh probes themes of mixedrace female identities, evoking the molting processes of snakes and insects who shed their skins and shells as an ongoing metaphor for transformation of self. Intertwining contemporary renditions of traditional Japanese myths and fairy tales with poems that explore the landscape of childhood and early adolescence, she blurs the boundaries between myth and memory, between real and imagined selves. This collection explores cultural, psychological, and physical liminalities and exposes the diasporic arc cast by firstgeneration Asian American mothers and their secondgeneration daughters, revealing a desire for metamorphosis of self through time, geography, culture, and myth.
