Frances Chung | |
---|---|
Born | New York City | September 5, 1950
Died | December 8, 1990 40) | (aged
Occupation | Poet, teacher |
Nationality | American |
Citizenship | United States |
Alma mater | Smith College |
Genre | Poetry |
Notable awards | The New York Times Company Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts |
Frances Chung (5 September 1950 – 8 December 1990) was an American poet.
Frances Chung (born 1950) was born and raised in New York City's Chinatown, Manhattan. Chung attended Smith College for mathematics, joining the Peace Corps for two years after to serve in Central and South America. [1] She later returned to New York City to teach the same subject in its public schools. [2]
Her only collection, Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple: The Poems of Frances Chung, was compiled and released posthumously in 2000, edited by Walter K. Lew. [3]
Chung died on December 8, 1990 of complications from cancer. While receiving surgery for a brain tumor and falling into a coma, doctors injected her with antibodies that she was allergic to, unbeknownst to them. [4]
Chung's poems, with their snapshot-like qualities, are said to question conventional ideas of the onlooker's gaze, such as those of a tourist ethnic neighborhoods like New York's gentrifying Chinatown. [5]
In his New York Times review of Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple, Michael Hainey wrote that William Carlos Williams was a possible influence for Chung's "compact and oddly moving narratives." [6] Publishers Weekly also cites similarities to Carlos in Chung's poems' "generosity, unorthodox line-breaks and beauty." [7]
Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum", which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.
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