“Fearing your own queer self”: Depictions of Diasporic Queer Experience in Grace Lau’s Poetry
“Fearing your own queer self”: Depictions of Diasporic Queer Experience in Grace Lau’s Poetry

Summary/Abstract: The intersection of migrant and queer experiences constitutes one of the core motifs of The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak (2021), the debut poetry collec- tion by Grace Lau, a Chinese Canadian poet. Through a series of interconnected vignettes, Lau provides an insight into her experiences as both a Canadian and a Chinese immigrant, a lesbian and a failed model child, an aficionado of traditional Chinese culture and an enthusiast of contemporary Western popular culture. The mosaic of experiences illustrates the complexity and intricacy of the author’s identity/ies. Through the analysis of three poems (“The Levity,” “The Lies That Bind,” and “My Grief Is a Winter”), supported with references to the theoretical works on Asian North American writing and queer Asian migrant experience, the article discusses Lau’s depictions of queerness and her experiences as a Chinese immigrant in relation to the Canadian LGBTQ+ community, white queer liberalism, and internal politics of the Chinese diaspora. It proposes to see Lau’s poetry as an example of biomythography, a form of autobiographical writing showcasing how encounters with different communities shape the subject. In the process of disentangling her complex ties with the Chinese diaspora, the white Canadian LGBTQ+ community and her own family, Lau reveals the impact of her interactions with those different groups as she can finally express her identity as a queer Chinese Canadian.

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