With submissions for the York Literary Review 2025 closing in just three days, as we near the end of LGBTQ+ history month, there’s no better time to find inspiration in the work of queer writers. The 2025 Review’s theme of ‘roots’ is an expansive one, encompassing nature, heritage, connections, folklore, and more. Roots are frequently linked to cultural, familial, and personal identity. However, the relationship between these is often complicated. Mary Jean Chan’s poem ‘what my mother (a poet) might say’ and Chen Chen’s poem ‘First Light’ both reckon with these complications, and can help expand our interpretation and understanding of ‘roots’ as a theme for writing.
In both poems, the speaker takes on the voice of their mother. In Chan’s poem, this acts as a commentary on censorship, but also as a way for Chan to connect with their mother. In ‘First Light’, Chen similarly uses this to connect to his mother and her experience of leaving China. However, in both poems, this connective voice is only imagined – Chan imagines what their mother “might” say, while Chen asks, “What would my mother say, if she were the one writing?” The poem is a way to construct a voice, or an understanding, which is otherwise unheard or unfelt to some extent.
Plant roots are connective structures. They anchor a plant to the ground and take in nutrients not only from the soil, but by connecting with fungal networks. One study indicates that trees recognise the root tips of their relatives and favour them when transporting nutrients through fungal networks. The metaphor for familial relationships is obvious. For Chan and Chen’s speakers, though, this relationship is more fraught. Both poets reference their mothers’ struggles to come to terms with their queer identities. Chan writes of their mother’s views, “I would be ci sin to love another woman” – ci sin means “crazy” in Cantonese, but Chan’s use of the romanised phrase also alludes to religious “sin”. In an earlier part of Chen’s poem, he writes, “my mother slapped me / for being dirty, diseased, led astray by Western devils, / a dirty, bad son”. The italicization in both of these sections suggest that these are tangible quotes from the speakers’ mothers, separate from their imagined poetic voice. While neither poem is centred about queer identity, both poet’s mention of it provides an altered context for the mother/child relationship; personal identity becomes an added strain on familial roots and connection.
Chen’s reference to “Western devils” also alludes to the strain of cultural differences. As Chen describes in the poem, he left China when he was three; the China he knows from this time is a “vast invented country”, much like the voice he invents for his mother. He is not wholly connected to the roots of his birthplace – much like literal roots beneath the surface, they cannot be grasped or seen. This disconnection further distances him from his mother who longs for her “lost country”. The only way he can relate to her feelings is through his own, much shorter severance from home, when his parents discover his sexuality and his father tells him to “Get out”. If home is where we root ourselves, both Chen’s leaving as a teenager and his family’s leaving of China portrays the same painful severance of roots.
This should not only be read negatively, though. Chen uses his temporary departure from the family home to better understand his family’s emigration from China; these different severances provide the opportunity for connection. Chen’s desire to understand his mother in the fullest way possible – literally speaking as her – suggests the persistence of familial love in the face of strain and conflict. Furthermore, Chen uses the poem itself as a space for imagination and possibility; the loss and disconnection in ‘First Light’ is filled, in a way, by Chen’s persistent invention. Chan uses their poem as a similar space of inventive possibility by imagining their mother as “a poet”, connecting their mother to their own profession and identity. While the struck-through lines of their mother’s imagined speech represent a barrier to connection, they simultaneously represent an overcoming of this; the lines can be read, in spite of the barriers. Chan can imagine and connect to their mother’s true voice, in spite of attempted censorship and disconnection.
Chan and Chen’s invention of their mothers’ voices is thus not just an expression of disconnection, but an attempt to move past this and connect. Cultural and familial connection in both poems may be severed in some way, but these roots are deep and anchoring enough to be reached for again. The poems are ultimately bittersweet – the connection of individual, familial, and cultural roots is fraught, but possible, if only through the imaginative space of the poem itself.
If you find yourself inspired by these ideas of connection and disconnection, communal and personal identity, and writing itself as a connecting and anchoring space, submit to the York Literary Review 2025 by 23rd February 2025, 23:59 GMT – find the submission guidelines here. Furthermore, if you are inspired by Mary Jean Chan’s writing in particular, they are reading their poetry at the International Women’s Day Poetry Showcase as part of the York Literary Festival next month – find more information about the event here.