This collection of poetry and art was beautiful crafted and explores the traumas and pain of the author. The imagery is beautiful and surreal. The poetry is written in free verse and is beautiful and very evocative. They are filled with emotion and very skillfully written. The flow of the poetry and art was done perfectly and really elevated the book for me.

I would like to thank Central Avenue for providing me with an ARC.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for this arc. The poetry was really beautiful and dark, and right up my alley, even though I'm very picky when it comes to poetry. I just loved the rawness of it. The artworks throughout the book were also beautiful and fit the mood really well. My favorite poem was 'To The Gods Who Do Nothing'

3.5/5 Stars
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an advanced copy. This in no way influences my thoughts or opinions

This is a collection of new-age poetry that talks about loss, trauma, identity, and race without being like the other Instagram and Tumblr attempts at poems.

The cover really doesn't do this collection justice as it is beautiful and haunting, like all things written from the heart tend to be.

"the grave of my body was full;
they could not live there anymore" - one of my favorite lines

One of the complaints I had was that sometimes the poem could get muddled and lost with all the different imagery and content. But I think there are some really great works that one can dive deep into and analyze. This could very well be a poet that our children's children will be studying.

Heidi Wong’s Turning to Wallpaper is a collection of glittering language and gut wrenching experiences. She dives into the pain of otherness, survival, loss and faith through an examination of what poetry can do to process deep wounds of living as a multi-cultured woman. She pulls at the loose strings of complicated experiences to unravel the layers of emotions attached to each situation. As Wong reflects in one poem, she is “piecing together poems with any word except/ the word” while making each memory crystal clear to the reader. Though she wrestles with a number of forms of trauma including sexual assault, racism, death and immigration, her poems resound with the strength of survival that asserts power after moments of powerlessness and questions her choices in the intimate process of facing ugliness. The poems have a surreal feel that is supported from the art spattered throughout the book with pieces which directly tie to the images she crafts.

The organization of the works in this collection travels the road to healing through recognition of strength and endurance. One path that is significant to the speaker’s journey is the loss of a twin in utero. Wong highlights the path to acceptance that turns from acknowledging “as if/ his shadow did not fill your lungs” to finding “the absence of grief instead of the absence of you” and later declaring “i eclipsed you”. Another refers to assault at the age of 19. The speaker traverses this subject with jarring imagery like “losing my eyes to his ceiling, leaving my tongue/ on his ochre dresser, my legs on his nightstand”. She also asserts, “i am not a broken girl. i know where my pieces lie,/ each one, still mine”. One poem, written to her assaulter, embodies a poet’s vengeance and a wronged woman’s curse upon him.

Emily Dickenson is noted for asserting that poets, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” in order to reach “the Truth’s superb surprise”. This is what Heidi Wong does with her surreal diction. She writes, “isolation wraps around your neck like a lover”, “she nurses the carcass of her softness back to health”, “my sanctuary is a mouthful of blood” and leaves “the exoskeleton of what I hoped to be true about nineteen/ draped over his closet door”. Her phrasing makes the reader engage with the text and the metaphors being drawn. Wong explores the concept of home when two continents pull at her identity: Asia and North America. She speaks to this rift, saying, “if you had to gouge one of your eyes out,/which would you choose?”. There is a complex relationship with both locations as she admits “america, you are the lover who never wanted me” and “i wonder if, as a child, i told my country i am not like you/ when i meant i cannot love/ what looks like me, when i cannot bear/ to look at me”.

Teachable Moments:

I have to say that, outside of some of the more potentially triggering content, this book as a whole would serve a teacher well for mainstream or AP level courses. Heidi Wong’s meta approach to poetry opens the door to conversations of poetry’s purpose, audience and powers. She takes structural risks at various points in the collection that pay off such as with a palindrome (“Heaven Backwards”), a double sonnet (“A Broken Double Sonnet on Your New Girl”) and a narrative told out of order (“Our Story, Told in the Wrong Order”). The work is filled with metaphor, examples of potent phrasing and imagery, and even allusions that connect a poem’s speaker with tragic characters and gods. I can clearly see using pieces from this collection to pair with Greek myths, N.K. Jemisin’s “Henosis”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear and develop alternate explorations of the referenced aspects for analysis or original writing. She is a master of linguistic acrobatics that speaks about subjects indirectly while also making the topics vivid and accessible, something that students can evaluate and mimic in their own works.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers; all opinions are my own.

Turning to Wallpaper is a beautifully presented collection of art and poems. It will appeal to the poet's large following on social media. The difficulties of the poet's life - her family, her creativity and heritage, are explored often through dark imagery in free verse. It did lack light and shade for me.

I received an advanced copy. Thank you to the publisher.