"If We’re Not Growing, We’re Stagnating: Review of Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency "

by Joanna Acevedo

September 13, 2022

Joanna Acevedo (she/they) is the Pushcart nominated author of the poetry collection The Pathophysiology of Longing (Black Centipede Press, 2020) and the short story collection Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021). Her work has been seen across the web and in print, including in Hobart Pulp, Digging Press, and the Write Launch. She is a Guest Editor at the Masters Review and Frontier Poetry, Associate Poetry Editor at West Trade Review, Reviews Editor for the Great Lakes Review, and received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021. She is supported by Creatives Rebuild New York: Guaranteed Income For Artists.

Your Emergency Contact has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen; BOA Editions; 128 pages; $17.00

Chen Chen’s highly anticipated second collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency, does not disappoint. With Chen’s characteristic style and a new emphasis on formal innovation, this new collection is full of sharp revelations about family, the first-generation American experience, queer joy, and love at large. Chen is at his best in this new set of poems, which have a bright, conversational tone to them, a voice that he has only honed since his debut. These poems are unique—more tonally astute than his first collection, with deeper themes, and a kind of cohesion that brings the book together into a fully-realized project, rather than simply an arrangement of assorted poems. Interrogating the self, queerness, being a person of color, and much more, these works will stand the test of time, bringing a new queer voice to center stage.

A striking difference between this collection and Chen’s first, When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List Of Further Possibilities, this new collection exhibits a newfound maturity, which perhaps comes from his writing about his relationship. In one of the early poems of the collection, “Summer,” the speaker states, “He says it’s snowing & his sister is pregnant & his mother is dying so they probably won’t be able to go on as many rides at Disney. / I say okay & I see but neither is true.” The juxtaposition of the emotional and the absurd is characteristic of the author’s writing, but in Your Emergency Contact, Chen brings a new humor and lightness to these dark moments. Each poem makes many turns, surprising and sometimes shocking the reader, but always manages to keep on guessing. Writing about his relationship provides a new optimism to his work that communicates the world is a place where good things happen, as well as adding a pleasing touch to even the most cynical of poems. In another, more tender moment, Chen explains, “I cry, some nights. J. holds me, says, I’d eat a bag of your hair—a code we developed one long ago night when I asked him, Would you eat a bag of my hair?” As is often the case with this poet’s work, there is an element of the grotesque, the physical and thrilling. But this moment exemplifies the often strange promises that couples make to each other, and the odd shapes we contort ourselves into for other people. His neurosis is present here, but it’s a likable one. It’s the kind of oddity that keeps these poems exciting and fresh to read over and over.

Chen also addresses the newfound depth of his relationships in the poem, “Winter”, where he shares a story:

I mean, one winter night I got sick and pooped the bed.

& he just got up with me.

Helped strip the sheets, carry it all to the washer.

I kept saying, I’m so sorry, shivering, I’m so, I’m sorry. But he said, What? Hey.

I love you.

This poem completely abandons what is considered appropriate subject matter for poetry and demonstrates a confidence not apparent in Chen’s first book. Working in the vein of the confessional poets who have come before him, he bares it all for the reader—his sudden illness, and his boyfriend’s remarkably tender reaction. It’s in these small moments of tenderness that the collection really shines. Chen is proving to us, through his poems about pooping, that he understands the depths of adult relationships, the sacrifices one makes for their loved ones, and what it means to love a person wholly and completely—a departure from the panicked dissociation of When I Grow Up. He is maturing as both a poet and a person, and the confidence in this collection is evidence of that.

Another adult relationship that we see deepening in these poems is the one with his mother, and it is a thread through this whole collection. In “a small book of questions: chapter vii” Chen writes, “She asks about the dog before she asks about the boyfriend. / She doesn’t ask about him. She does this for a year." This “small book of questions” series all relate directly to the issue of Chen’s parents’ reaction to his homosexuality, and with candor, humor, and wit, the poet illuminates how to be a son when your parents, and in particular, your mother, does not accept intrinsic parts of your being, and the slow journey towards forgiveness and ultimately, acceptance.

Chen also addresses race and being Chinese in America in many of the pieces, but never as successfully as in the poem, “Winter”, when he says, “To realize some of my writing is just my saying to white men: Look how lovable I am." This line cuts down to the bone, as many of these revelations do. Pondering race earlier in the poem, Chen considers microaggressions and their insidiousness, as well as his own internalizations. Admitting one’s own imperfections is a hallmark of Chen’s work, and perhaps that is why it continues to be so accessible.

Overall, the book feels more cohesive, conceptualized as a discrete project rather than a constellation of tangentially related poems. Titles appear and reappear, new voices dip in and out, and Chen works with Chinese characters in many of the pieces, which leads to a variety of interesting experiences for the non-Chinese-speaking reader. The poem, “After My White Friend Says So Cool Upon Hearing Me Speak Chinese on the Phone with My Parents, I Take Another Sip of My Strawberry-Banana Smoothie & Contemplate Coolness & Chineseness, I Wonder if My Love of Long Titles Stems from the Long Titles of Classical Chinese Poets & Is, Therefore, Part of an Inherently Cool Chineseness I Have Inherited, & Carry, Even to the Smoothie Shop, & Then I Recall a Longish Stream of Not-So-Cool Things My Parents Have Said About White People” is almost entirely in Chinese, and hinges on the title for the poem’s success. It’s this kind of humor that brings such sharpness to this group of poems, and it’s this characteristic that defines Chen as one of the most exciting poets working today.

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency is a vibrant, powerful collection of ruminations on race, queerness, and romantic love, but it is also an exploration of identity—the story of a son trying to find his way back to his mother after a schism, a set of love poems to a boyfriend who has been deeply supportive, and a meditation on what it means to be an immigrant, or other, in America.. It is also an experiment with new forms and represents a departure from his earlier work, which should be acknowledged and celebrated—because if we’re not growing, we’re stagnating. Chen Chen has grown considerably, and he is blossoming in this new collection.

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If We’re Not Growing, We’re Stagnating: Review of Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency

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