About this Event
Join us for a reading and conversation with poet, science writer, and retired professional cage fighter Jenny Liou, moderated by public engagement curator Shin Yu Pai.
This event is being presented in person at Central Library, with the option to view the livestream from home. It is presented in partnership with Open Books, and supported by The Seattle Public Library Foundation and the Gary and Connie Kunis Foundation. Thanks to media sponsor The Seattle Times. The event will be recorded, captioned and then posted on SPL's YouTube channel after the event.
About the Speaker: Jenny Liou is an English professor at Pierce College and a retired professional cage fighter. She lives and writes in Covington, Washington.
About the Book: In Muscle Memory, Washington-based poet Jenny Liou grapples with violence and identity, beginning with the chain-link enclosure of the prizefighter’s cage and
radiating outward into the diasporic sweep of Chinese American history. Liou
writes with spare, stunning lyricism about how cage fighting offered relief from the
trauma inflicted by diaspora’s vanishing ghosts; how, in the cage, an elbow splits an
eyebrow, or an armbar snaps a limb, and even when you lose a fight, you’ve won
something else: pain. Liou places the physical manifestation of violence in her sport
alongside the deeper traumas of immigration and her own complicated search for
identity, exploring what she inherited from her Chinese immigrant father—who
was also obsessed with poetry and martial arts. When she finally steps away from
the cage to raise children of her own, Liou begins to question how violence and
history pass from one generation to the next, and whether healing is possible
without forgetting.
About the curator: Shin Yu Pai is former program director of Town Hall Seattle and curated and produced events for Atlas Obscura, while leading public programs for Atlas Obscura Society in Seattle for five years. She is the author of 11 books of poetry and a 2022 Artist Trust Fellow. She is host and creator of The Blue Suit, a podcast on Asian American stories produced by KUOW Public Radio, Seattle’s NPR affiliate.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Seattle Public Library-Central Library, 1000 4th Ave, Seattle, United States
USD 0.00