Rhapsody in Plain Yellow

<p>Marilyn Chin with her multilayered multidimensional intercultural singing elegizes the loss of her mother and maternal grandmother and tries to unravel the complexities of her family's past. She tells of the trials of immigration of exile of thwarted interracial love and of social injustice. Some poems recall the Confucian "Book of Songs" while others echo the African American blues tradition and Western railroad ballads. The title poem references the Han Dynasty rhapsody but is also a wild associative tour de force. Political allegories sing out with personal revelations. Personal revelations open up to a universal cry for compassion and healing. These songs emerge as a powerful and elegant collection: sophisticated yet moving hard-hitting yet refined.</p>