"In her raw, passionate and unflinching How to Write a Suicide Note,
Sherry Quan Lee has committed a bold act of courage, naming ghosts and
fears that can paralyze us, reminding us that sometimes we must die in
order to really live, encouraging women and people of color to re-vision
our lives as artists, in order to begin anew."
—Shay Youngblood, author of Soul Kiss and Black Girl in Paris
"Sherry Quan Lee negotiates the difficult path of language between raw
and educated, bare and poetic, to bring forth searing writing that is its
own truth. Even if we don't intentionally lie in our own work, How to Write
a Suicide Note pushes us to reconsider a more honest way of speaking. It
reminds us that writing is no less than an act of truth, although it holds
our shame, our desire to cover, and that at every moment, with every word,
we make a choice to go to truth if we are invested in our own lives."
—Anya Achtenberg, author of The Stone of Language, The Stories of Devil-Girl, and creator of the Writing for Social Change: Re-Dream a Just World Workshops
"I love the female aspects, the sex, and the strong voice Sherry Quan Lee
uses to share her private life in How to Write a Suicide Note. I love the
wit, the tongue-in-cheek, the trippiness of it all. I love the metaphors,
especially the lover and suicide ones. I love the free-associations, the
'raving, ravenous, relentless' back and forth. Quan Lee breaks the rules
and finds her genius. This is a passionate, risk-taking, outrageous,
life-affirming book and love letter."
—Sharon Doubiago, author of Body and Soul, Hard Country; and other works
"Who am I? Where do I fit in? From where will I draw my strength? By turns
lyrical and fierce, the poems in Chinese Blackbird ask some of the essential
questions of identity. Sherry Lee writes soulfully of the joy and pain of an
examined life."
—Alison McGhee, Associate Professor, Metropolitan State University Author of novels, poetry and picture books for all ages
"Sherry's Chinese Blackbird is a double phoenix triumph. It's a triumph over
the stories we hide about ourselves or the stories we’re told we have to hide."
—Marlina Gonzalez, Programs Manager, Intermedia Arts
"Sherry Quan Lee's books, Chinese Blackbird and How to Write a Suicide Note
are evidence that writing helps to acknowledge and work through issues that
affect women of color, especially biracial women. They are handbooks for writers
who want guidance in the craft of writing; but, mostly they are books of hope."
—Lori Young-Williams, student in Quan Lee's workshop, Stories that Save Lives
"Sherry Lee is a bold writer. Her work shines on the page. The way she tells
her truths, her sharp eye for cultural details, for where passion and longing
reside, her wit--all are in evidence on every page of Chinese Blackbird. I love
the way her mind works, and her willingness to travel off expected paths in order
to find the forms and the images she must have to make her art."
—Deborah Keenan, poet, professor, Hamline University MFA program
"In Chinese Blackbird, Sherry Quan Lee renders stories of her complex cultural
heritage with the lyrical touch of a poet coming into self-possession. In revealing
herself in her poetry, Lee exhibits in no uncertain terms the following motto:
"I write myself, therefore I am." As, Dr. Henry Louis Gates asserts in Bearing Witness:
Selections from African-American Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, such a saying,
"…could be taken as the motto of [African-African people] in this country." Lee, both
African-American and Chinese, creates a work representing the U.S. Black literary
tradition replete with autobiographies of Black writers, who birth, name and claim the
self that has often been denied, stemming from the antebellum period of slavery to the
postmodern era of the new millennium. Through the generative power of language, Lee
creates an inspirational and a multifarious self. This self blows breath unto the page
and into the reader, who may have felt quiescent or invisible, often feeling forced to
choose among various enriching worlds, until she experiences the truth that only good
literature can unveil about the joys and struggles of defining oneself on one’s terms."
—Pamela R. Fletcher, Associate Professor of English Co-Director of Critical Studies in Race and Ethnicity, College of St. Catherine
"It's been a long time since I've been treated to a voice so full
of honesty about one's struggle to come to terms with her identity.
Through elegant poetry, full of exquisite imagery and detail, Quan Lee
takes the reader on her personal, transformative journey, in which she
explores how race, class, gender, and sexual identity inform who she is."
—Carolyn Holbrook, Artistic Executive Director, SASE: The Write Place
"Quan Lee eloquently expresses how painful and confusing it can be to
embrace the many complex identities that one body can contain. With
evocative imagery and words that cut straight to the heart, Quan Lee
details her lifelong struggles with both the vagaries and concreteness
of race, class, gender and sexual identity. Her guilt and shame are
palpable. But so too are her emotional and intellectual triumphs.
Like a favorite sad song when we have been dumped by the love of our
lives, this volume will be oddly comforting to anyone who has ever
been overcome by that sorrow which seems insurmountable."
—Eden Torres, Assistant Professor Women's Studies, Chicano Studies, University of Minnesota