Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Poetry Canadian

Maples and the Stream

A Narrative Poem

by (author) Lien Chao

Publisher
Mawenzi House Publishers Ltd.
Initial publish date
Jan 1999
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780920661819
    Publish Date
    Jan 1999
    List Price
    $14.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780920661833
    Publish Date
    Jan 1999
    List Price
    $19.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

Description

This long, narrative poem in English and Chinese follows one woman's journey from China to Canada over four decades. In these pages the two languages sit side by side, mirroring each other, each telling a tale that alternates between confusion and despair and hopes and dreams. Lien Chao depicts the struggle of a generation in its persistent search for freedom and for free artistic expression.

This book is a personal epic, a mixture of lyric and narrative that joins Lien Chao's Chinese past with her Canadian present and future. The intensity of its joy and pain, its two worlds caught in two languages, makes it a fascinating and unique creation.
- David Helwig

Lien Chao's Maples and the Stream is an intensely truthful and engaging poem that crosses back and forth the nebulous border of diasporic encounter and identity. This is a hybrid text that poses the in-between places of a translational attention and offers us concrete touchstones of history, person, and desire. The maple is surely a more palpable tree for Lien Chao's lyrical honesty.
- Fred Wah

About the author

Contributor Notes

is the author of the award-winning Beyond Silence: Chinese Canadian Literature in English. She lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

This book is a personal epic, a mixture of lyric and narrative that joins Lien Chao's Chinese past with her Canadian present and future. The intensity of its joy and pain, its two worlds caught in two languages, makes it a fascinating and unique creation.
- DAVID HELWIG

Lien Chao's Maples and the Stream is an intensely truthful and engaging poem that crosses back and forth the nebulous border of diasporic encounter and identity. This is a hybrid text that poses the in-between places of a translational attention and offers us concrete touchstones of history, person, and desire. The maple is surely a more palpable tree for Lien Chao's lyrical honesty.
- FRED WAH