VICE-ROYAL-TIES by Julia Wong Kcomt
Vice-royal-ties, a bilingual chapbook featuring poems from Chinese Peruvian writer Julia Wong Kcomt’s 2009 collection Bi-rey-nato, was published in December 2021 in Ugly Duckling Presse’s Señal Latin American poetry series. The title is a homonym for “virreinato” or “viceroyalty,” but can also be broken down into its component words: “bi” (bi/two), “rey” (king), and “nato” (born). Likewise, the poems in this chapbook play with binaries: in power, love, language, country, identity. The salt in the air of seaside Lima, the setting of the first section, condenses into the salt that trails through the second section, set mostly in Argentina. Named one of Entropy’s Best of 2020-2021 in poetry and Action Books’ Favorite Books of Poetry in Translation 2021. Translated from Spanish. Published bilingually.
“Julia Wong Kcomt's poems sweep you into the tender points of the diasporic soul—that ache of always being a little bit elsewhere, the yearning for homes and languages that might have been. Her decadent bravado and impish humor flit between Chinese and Japanese Peruvians, Brazilian and Argentine poetry, visions of Macau, Baudelaire, and the conquistadors who linger across Latin America. Jennifer Shyue's translation undulates with a delicate, playful attunement. I can't wait to read more.”
—Katrina Dodson, translator of Macunaíma
“I feel so refreshed reading Julia Wong Kcomt’s poems/Jennifer Shyue’s translations, like a lifetime of rain has lifted and I’ve been given a new prescription. And yet the feeling is not entirely free of a little foreboding, as the poems—lucid, lactic, slyly sensuous invitations into hypervigilance (attention in the face of a shapeshifting power)—are practically animistic, shading everything, making everything glow. Now I want to read everything Wong Kcomt has written (is writing) and everything Shyue is bringing, so ingeniously, into English.”
—Brandon Shimoda, author of Hydra Medusa
“Julia Wong Kcomt’s poems are taut and pulsing, each word as incisive as evocative. Jennifer Shyue’s keen ear in translating these poems makes us feel Wong Kcomt breathing along the lines.”
—Aron Aji, translator of The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales
“[T]his slim volume wrestles with impossible questions and is at once deeply rooted in Lima and constantly pushing against Peru’s perceived borders … Shyue’s deft translation manages to highlight the text’s multilingual origins, preserving the Spanish in ‘[c]afé con leche’ and ‘[m]adre / hay una sola,’ and choosing ‘madreselva’ over honeysuckle for its resonance with the rest of the mothers in the collection. … Kcomt allows notions of linguistic roots to unfold in surprising images, and … leaves me yearning for a full collection.”
—Layla Benitez-James, Poetry’s Harriet Books
“Some literary works leave the reader feeling as though they’re perched in the author’s brain, watching as thoughts and experiences converge. Vice-royal-ties brims with these kinds of moments, as with these lines: ‘Catacomb, torpedo. / I pray, squatting. Praying hurts.’ These poems feature raw emotion in precise configurations, making for a lasting impact.”
—Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders
“[T]he poems in this chapbook—translated with kindred keenness and vibrancy by Jennifer Shyue—are sharp, sensuous explorations of power, diaspora, longing, and multilingual identity.”
—Robin Myers, Words Without Borders
“This particular volume is very short … but enough to give a flavor (‘flavor’ being an apt term) of both Julia Wong Kcomt’s work and the translation. Shyue employs a light touch: ‘Café con leche’ starts one poem. She leaves it as is. The original text is laconic and rhythmic, attributes Shyue has captured in English.”
—Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books
“In Wong Kcomt’s most striking poems, she slings imagery like a backhand slap. The result is often a whiplash between yearning and carnage. … [O]ne can see Shyue’s art as a translator: her attention to the sonic as well as the semantic, her decisions in response to polyglot poems like ‘Six.’”
—Justin Sun, Action Books Blog
“Vice-royal-ties is comprised of layers of the personal that come into conflict and give birth to new realities … The impossibility of connecting is always countered by Kcomt’s utterly human efforts to reach out. Vice-royal-ties is truly and profoundly a book of our time.”
—Niccolo Rocamora Vitug, SUSPECT (Singapore Unbound)
“Translator Jennifer Shyue has retained superbly the Spanish nuances in English to keep alive this fascinating lyrical voice from Peru.”
—Leo Boix, The Morning Star
“Here, the personal is the political, and no actions by the poems’ narrators can be imagined without recognizing the consequences of one’s behavior, or the consequences that lead to the moment when love was possible. … Jennifer Shyue renders Wong Kcomt’s poetry into seamless idiomatic English and provides a helpful afterward to further elucidate the poems.”
—Tom Bowden, Book Beat
Tags: Julia Wong Kcomt, Spanish, Peru, verse, poetry, book, chapbook, poetry collection, Asian diaspora, Entropy, Senal, Circumference, Latin American Literature Today, The Margins, Poetry Daily, Words Without Borders, Poetry, Asian Review of Books, Book Beat, The Morning Star, Action Books, Singapore Unbound, print, bilingual