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Sherry Quan Lee

Website
Years: 1996; 2000

Biography

Sherry Quan Lee, MFA, 1996, University of Minnesota, and first year Cave Canem participant 1996 is the author of Love Imagined:  a mixed race memoir; a Minnesota Book Award Finalist 2015, Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, MI, and  How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life, 2008, and Chinese Blackbird,  memoir in verse, 2002.  Lee approaches writing as a community resource and as culturally based art of an ordinary everyday practical aesthetic.  Retired from teaching Creative Writing at Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul, Minnesota, she continues to mentor.  Lee is the literary editor of How Dare We! Write, 24 writers of color share the challenges they face(d) as writers, why they continue to write, and how they find ways to make their writing available. Each writer shares a writing exercise. HDWW, Modern History Press, 2017, is a required text in some college writing classrooms. Lee’s most recent book, And You Can Love Me: a story for everyone who loves someone with ASD, a picture book, is based on her grandson Ethan. Forthcoming, March 2021 is Septuagenarian, love is what happens when I die, a book of poetry, love not imagined, and Lee’s swan song. Writing news can be found on FB, Sherry Quan Lee.

Poem

Incarnation

 

Father escaped mother with his chow mein

and the flaming red-haired woman who

 

served it to him. Mother remained starched

white rice steaming in a black

 

kettle. Jesus was at the Lutheran church

across the street—I had access

 

to him. this white light of mine; I’m gonna let it shine

let it shine ‘til Jesus comes; this white light

 

of mine No one knew, Jesus and I weren’t white

each of us conceived—immaculately.

 

Hungry for sweet potato pie and string bean chop suey,

I jumped the fence, the neighborhood, the city.

 

At a monastery in New York I confess to a priest,

and twenty-seven poets that I am Black

 

and they, the Cave Canem poets, respond, Amen.

Sticky Rice, publishes my poem, “White Dragon”

 

no one says: you’re not Asian.  

I shave my head. Thank you Nikki Giovanni,

 

Sapphire, Ndegeocello. I am a Buddhist

nun, burn the chapters of my memoir

one by one.