The Orange Tree (Phoenix Poets)

by Dong Li

Srikanth Reddy (Foreword)

Debut collection of poems that weaves stories of family history, war, and migration.  
 
Dong Li’s The Orange Tree is a collection of narrative poems that braids forgotten legends, personal sorrows, and political upheavals into a cinematic account of Chinese history as experienced by one family. Amid chaos and catastrophe, the child narrator examines a yellowed family photo to find resemblances and learns a new language, inventing compound words to conjure and connect family stories. These invented words and the calligraphy of untranslated Chinese characters appear in lists separating the book’s narrative sections.
 
Li’s lyrical and experimental collection transcends the individual, placing generations of family members and anonymous others together in a single moment that surpasses chronological time. Weaving through stories of people with little means, between wars and celebrations, over bridges and walls, and between trees and gardens, Li’s poems offer intimate perspectives on times that resonate with our own. The result is an unflinching meditation on family history, collective trauma, and imaginative recovery.
 
The Orange Tree is the recipient of the inaugural Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize for 2023.
 

• ISBN10: 0226826163
• ISBN13: 9780226826165
• Publish Date: 31 March 2023
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: University of Chicago Press
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 88
• Language: English

Reviews

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no traveler brought a good name to the family

 

And yet, as we see in this collection, they travelled.

 

Dong Li's collection the orange tree is also a history of China and it certainly doesn't shy away from the devastation included in that history. 'Tell our Daughters' certainly stands out in that regard, which focuses on the Japanese invasion and was gruesome. Of course, violence is also included in the titular poem The Orange Tree, which focuses on a family and the horror that formation of history can unleash.

 

I'm not going to lie, if the introduction hadn't told me that this story was being told from the point of view of a child, I genuinely would not have realised that.

 

The formatting was really different and I would love to get my hands on a paperback!