Cathy Park Hong Books in Order

These poems confront the tensions between Korean and English, questioning how language shapes identity, history and cultural perception. Through fractured meanings and unsettling images, Hong examines mistranslation, the fascination with the exotic and her own place between cultures.

A former dissident works as a guide in an imagined desert city, offering the perspective that shapes this poetry collection. Her account brings political history and invented surroundings into a work that crosses the boundaries of narrative and genre.

Three linked poetry sequences move from nineteenth-century American outlaws to an industrial Chinese boomtown and a data-saturated future. Their differing voices explore the promise of prosperity and what collective ambition costs individual memory, identity and consciousness.

Cathy Park Hong combines memoir and cultural criticism to examine Asian American identity, racism, and emotion. Essays connect her upbringing as the daughter of Korean immigrants with questions about language, shame, poetry, friendship, and the tensions within American optimism.