Week Three: Documentation

–Curated by Janine Joseph

Introduction

For years I have carried with me the following lines from Li-Young Lee’s poem, “For a New Citizen of These United States”: “After all, it was just our life,/ merely years in a book of years.” I have carried them as I have carried, from state to state and house to house, boxes of papers and photographs documenting my time in the United States since arriving from the Philippines at the age of eight. After living undocumented for fifteen years, I used these records as part of my application to become a legal permanent resident and, years later, a naturalized citizen. In many ways, of course, there was documentation of my presence in this country before I became “documented.” The tone and sentiment of Lee’s lines reached me differently through the years and I was grateful for their flex.

For this week’s theme, I gathered ten poems by seven Asian American poets that peer into and refract the term “Documentation.” These poems directly engage with immigration forms and tests, and they expound on the definitions and classifications used to categorize immigrants. These poems show what it is like to live with and without documents, and they remember what it was like to have been without. These poems document themselves within overlapping histories and question the languages used for documenting those histories and memories. One in particular makes me reconsider the phrase “elevator pitch.”

This curation was a deeply personal undertaking. It is also by no means comprehensive, as my parameters were set by what is currently available online. These poets, and certainly others, are making significant contributions to an ever-growing body of poems about documentation and the complex, rich, and varied lives of immigrants. I am as grateful for them and for those whose poems we have yet to read.

–Janine Joseph

Poetry

• K. Ming Chang — "Immigration in A"
• Yujane Chen — "Correlations," "Passage"
• Sarah Gambito — "Getting Used to It"
• Jan-Henry Gray — "I-797C," "Across the Pacific Ocean"
• Esther Lin — "The Badlands," "Cholera is What My Grandfather Did During the War" [starts on pg. 152]
• Anni Liu — "Ars Poetica in a Dream Language"
• Dujie Tahat — "colossus, with craned in the sky," "Salat Departing LAX the Week After an Attempted Terrorist Attack"

Writing Prompts

• Using Sarah Gambito’s “Getting Used to It” as a model, write a poem that grapples with a joke or something said in jest.
• Choose a seemingly inconsequential moment in your past and write a poem about it as if it were your origin story.
• Write a poem in response to a question posed by Define American: “How do you define American?” If you are comfortable doing so, share your reflection on their site.

Actions

• Help Families Belong Together reunify families separated at the border. Donations help to “pay for airfare, hotel, and personal items for children and parents released from detention.”
• Commit to supporting all writers, regardless of immigration status. If you see that a literary organization, press, journal, prize, or contest still prohibits “non-citizens” and/or “non-residents” from participating, applying, or submitting, and urge them to update their eligibility guidelines. Those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protected Status (TPS), for instance, live and pay taxes in the United States with a social security number, and countless others have an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN). If you are unsure of how to proceed, reach out to The Undocupoets at undocupoets@gmail.com.
• Don’t reveal someone’s status without their permission, don’t ask people to reveal their status, and if someone shares with you that they are undocumented, ask how you can help.