Asian American Poet

Cathy Song is a Korean-Chinese poet born in Hawaii in 1955. She resists being labeled as an "Asian American writer," and instead calls herself "a poet who happens to be Asian American. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Cathy Song participates in Hawaii's "Poets in the Schools" program, which allows students from kindergarden to high school to work with poets and learn about poetry. She says the program is very rewarding and she learns as much from the students as they do from her.

Cathy's published books are; Picture Bride (1983), Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (1988), School Figures (1994), and The Land of Bliss (2001). Her first poetry book, Picture Bride, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1983, and she won quite a few awards thereafter; the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Hawaii Award for Literature, and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

A picture bride is a marriage arranged through the exchange of photographs, which was how her mother and her father met, by way of their parents. She writes about women's issues, motherhood, family, and tries to acknowledge the many roles women play in society. She is inflenced by her own family, and tries to tell her families' stories in her poetry.


I chose this poet because Cathy Song is a female writer that writes about how it is like being female and Asian American. Her poems are easy to read and understand, and I can relate to what she writes about.
Well, that's what I'd like to say but the truth is Katrina borrowed an extra poetry book from the library and I really needed a poet to write about. I ended up liking it quite a bit.