Wing Tek Lum

Asian American poetry from Hawaii, the Pacific island state of the United States, is generally characterizable in one of two ways: either as portraying a model multicultural paradise, or as exemplifying familiar Asian American literary themes such as generational conflict. In this light, the recent work of Wing Tek Lum in Expounding descent, making the experience of its Asian Americans somewhat different than that of mainland Asian Americans.

In one poem, Lum meditates on the ways in which a traditional Chinese lunar celebration he is attending at a local beach both connects him to and separates him from the past. In the company of new Chinese immigrants, the speaker realizes that while ties to the homeland are comforting and necessary, pointing out the often elitist tendencies inherent in the work of some traditionally acclaimed Chinese poets.

Lum closes his volume with a poem that further points to the complex relationships between heritage and local culture in determining one's identity. Pulling together images and figures as vastly disparate as a famous Chinese American literary character and an old woman selling bread, Lum avoids an excessively romantic vision of U.S. responded to in ways that allow for a healthy new sense of identity to be formed.