Happy book birthday to THE SHADOW LIST by Jen Sookfong Lee, out now from Buckrider Books!
“…the poems in The Shadow List are tightly concentrated narratives that dissect their subjects with an almost surgical precision.” –Quill & Quire
“These poems burn deep into your sinews so they become part of you. They go where you go. Now read this book!” –The Miramichi Reader
“The interiority informing The Shadow List is mediated correctly and rhythmically using the grammatical rules of standard English and is thus therapeutically dealt with and presented as information — ironed, folded and neatly shelved.” –The Ormsby Review
In these devastating lyric poems Jen Sookfong Lee unfolds the experience of her narrator, following her through frost-chilled nights and salt-scented days, as she pulls at the knot of accumulated expectations around her trying to create space to want and to be. The Shadow List is a book filled with desire, where we question the politics of who gets to choose and who doesn’t and where the narrator creates hidden lists of what she really wants. With a novelist’s way with character, Lee builds a deep connection with the narrator of the poems, yet each individual poem creates a vivid snapshot of moments many will recognize. The slick of black ice, the killing light of day, the cheap, plastic diamonds – they are all pieces of a life we gather and put in our pockets to remember with.
Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her son in North Burnaby. Her books include The Conjoined, nominated for International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, The End of East, Gentlemen of the Shade, and Finding Home. Jen teaches at The Writers’ Studio Online with Simon Fraser University, edits fiction for Wolsak & Wynn, and co-hosts the literary podcast, Can’t Lit. Jen is represented by Samantha Haywood.