An Authentic Life is an exacting and fearless interrogation of the education one receives from the institutions of academia and family. Sprawling yet urgent, meditative yet lucid, the poems in Jennifer Chang’s anticipated third collection, An Authentic Life, offer a bold examination of a world deeply influenced by war and patriarchy. In dialogues against literature, against philosophy, and against God, Chang interrogates the “fathers” who stand at the center of history. Poems navigate wounds opened by explorations of family and generational trauma, and draw on the author’s experiences as a mother, as the daughter of immigrants, and as a citizen of our deeply divided nation. Here, the patriarchal violence of history becomes intimate, brought down to a domestic scale. A woman sweeping the floor cannot escape thoughts of war, or her dying mother, while another scene shows friends questioning the “despite-ness” of love. In poems where the lyric is reimagined as porous, discursive, and bursting open, Chang fearlessly confronts the forms of knowledge that hold power. Meticulous and masterful, An Authentic Life creates a world where we can begin “to unlearn everything.”

"Some Say the Lark is a piercing meditation, rooted in loss and longing, and manifest in dazzling leaps of the imagination—the familiar world rendered strange." —Natasha Trethewey Chang’s poems narrate grief and loss, and intertwines them with hope for a fresh start in the midst of new beginnings. With topics such as frustration with our social and natural world, these poems openly question the self and place and how private experiences like motherhood and sorrow necessitate a deeper engagement with public life and history. From "The Winter's Wife": I want wild roots to prosper an invention of blooms, each unknown to every wise gardener. If I could be a color. If I could be a question of tender regard. I know crabgrass and thistle. I know one algorithm: it has nothing to do with repetition or rhythm. It is the route from number to number (less to more, more to less), a map drawn by proof not faith. Unlike twilight, I do not conclude with darkness. I conclude. Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity, which was a finalist for the Glasgow/Shenandoah Prize for Emerging Writers and listed by Hyphen Magazine as a Top Five Book of Poetry for 2008. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2012, The Nation, Poetry, A Public Space, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at George Washington University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.

This debut collection of vivid, lyrical poems explores the emotional landscape of childhood without confession and without straightforward narrative. Chang sweeps together myth and fairy tale, skirting the edges of events to focus on the psychological tenor of experience: the underpinnings of identity and the role of nature in both constructing and erasing a self. From the edge of the ocean, where things constantly shift and dissolve, through "the forest's thick, / where the trees meet the dark," to an imaginary cliffside town of fog, this book makes a journey both natural and psychological, using experiments in language and form to capture the search for personhood and place.

El libro digital, con un enfoque basado en conceptos, se ha desarrollado en cooperación con la organización IB para proporcionar un apoyo completo al nuevo programa de estudios de Matemáticas: Análisis y Enfoques Nivel Medio del Programa del IB Diploma, cuya primera enseñanza ha sido establecida en septiembre de 2019.

El libro digital, con un enfoque basado en conceptos, se ha desarrollado en cooperación con la organización IB para proporcionar un apoyo completo al nuevo programa de estudios de Matemáticas: Aplicaciones e Interpretaciones Nivel Medio del Programa del IB Diploma, cuya primera enseñanza ha sido establecida en septiembre de 2019.

Study findings not only help to validate pre-existing literature about the racial and cultural experiences of Asian Americans but also offer more nuanced understanding of Asian American identity development as it intersects with activist identity.