I Would Vanish Into Its Stronger Existence

Chengru He's I Would Vanish Into Its Stronger Existence uncovers in verse, prose, images, and found documents the story of her mother's experience as a zhiqing, or "sent down youth" during Mao's Cultural Revolution in China. This story, and the journey mother and daughter take to revisit the rubber plantation in Yunnan where she was sent, provides a shifting backdrop to the author's own journey as a Chinese student in America, writing in English. How are we shaped by exile, and displacement, how does language and landscape confine us, or free us? These are the questions posed by Chengru He in a unique idiom of her own invention. A true hybrid of language and sensibility, moving from Shanghai to Tuscaloosa, through generations and memory, this collection marks the debut of an original international voice.