Barbie Chang

by Victoria Chang

Barbie’s cultural artifice is unmasked by Victoria Chang’s imagination, lifting the struggle of Asian American experience to mythic levels.

Genres: Poetry, Contemporary, Asian American, Adult, Feminism

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2017

About the author

Victoria Chang's latest book of poems is With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Corsair in the UK), which received the Forward Prize in Poetry for the Best Collection. Her most recent book is The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her prose book, Dear Memory, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. Her recent book of poems, OBIT, was published in 2020 by Copper Canyon Press. It was named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a TIME, NPR, Publisher's Weekly, Book of the Year. It received the LA Times Book Prize, the PEN Voelcker Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award. It was also a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the NBCC, and long listed for the NBA. She is the Bourne Chair of Poetry and the Director of Poetry@Tech at Georgia Tech.

Her website is www.victoriachangpoet.com. Twitter: @VChangPoet.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection. Victoria Chang manages to be breathtakingly clever while retaining an emotional heart. Whether Barbie is dealing with the "mean girls"--the "circle" of women who exclude her at her child's school, searching for love with Mr. Darcy or struggling with parents who are sick and old and with whom, it appears, she has had difficult relationships, the poems were funny, intelligent, and moving. Chang's language left me frequently breathless and I admired the fast pacing of the poems. Add to this a collection of haunting sonnets, this is altogether a wonderful work.

[Samantha]

Ugh, Barbie Chang is so cool, y'all. This is one of those collections non-poetry readers could get into and learn so much about what makes a good collection, from the way this is structured and organized to the themes and social commentary. I can't get over the brilliance of the way these poems work together, the couplets throughout that are interrupted by sonnet sequences. And I am here for all of the themes, especially the running commentary on the "circle" of moms from which Barbie Chang is very much excluded. :D

Read this, then read Victoria Chang's other awesome collections.

[Martin Ott · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you could only read the work of 10 poets writing now Victoria would be one of them. Can't say enough good things about this and her other books.

[Susanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Such a cool concept and such wonderful poems — from the collection’s structure to the individual poems themselves. The couplets contain such great language and rhymes, in addition to the storytelling and imagery. So happy I read this.

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the very first poem, Victoria Chang takes the reader on a sonic journey through Barbie Chang's life. This book led me into a world of lyric rumination--how we will always be aware of "the Circles" that surround our lives, and how we can go into a place of sly romanticism when the world gets awry. I knew very early in reading Barbie Chang that I would be texting friends about this book, and I haven't stopped.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“love is / the only thing that is not an argument”

“darkness underneath the coat of blinding night / is truth and the only difference between truth and / everything else is that you can see everything else”

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ask the sky for
help but it just gives me the next rain
***
there must be a
God only God makes me listen this way I take
my quill and write God a note but there are no
more words they have flown beyond the lights
all the letters shaped like question marks

[Brandon Amico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victoria Chang’s “Barbie Chang” is a terrific, carefully crafted collection of poems concerned largely with the social nuances and pressures of fitting in with those in your peer and age groups. These concerns are complicated by the dynamics of race and social status (one poem describes the titular character trying to appear not to associate with other Asian people in order to fit in with her coworkers), as well as being a mother who is trying to safely shepherd her young daughter into a world she is still trying to successfully navigate through while simultaneously dealing with ailing parents.

Desire and acceptance, shown through love, social relationships, economic symbols, and family structures, power these poems and it seems that this yearning is what animates the lines to jump from track to track syntactically. Bereft of punctuation, these poems show Chang to be a master of pacing, as the poems double back or jump forward, loop and echo and play solely on their constituent parts, unaided by punctuation or most modes of enjambment (the lines for most of the book follow a strict length pattern). I don’t know of another poet writing in English who can do more in a single line than Victoria Chang; each poem is layered with intricate connections between words, lines, sounds, and images, that add to the narrative and emotions on display. It makes this book a joy to read.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent collection of poems and I really enjoyed reading it. The imagery and diction is superb, and a lot of the poems are really powerful and make your heart go out for the writer. Chang captures her experiences as an Asian American woman while also writing about universal themes.

Themes include feeling excluded and “othered”, the pressure to fit in social circles, racism, internalized racism, toxicity, the idea of love, having a complicated relationship with ailing parents and taking care of them, and being a mother.

[May · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to change the ending before this / begins I want to know how to begin without / the softness of sentimentality

is probably one of my favourite lines from a poem ever. I enjoyed Barbie Chang SO much.

My first brush with Victoria Chang was with the heart-wrenching poetry collection Obit, written to cope, reflect and mediate on Chang's loss of her mother. This one possesses the same amount of grief and clamor, while also being incredibly agile and clever.

she wonders who is observing / them two terrestrial specks / celestial sextants aligned only in the / night if they zoom in / they will see two fingerlike test tubes / filled with fire

The outcome? Me, swooning, gasping and weeping out loud over every piece in this collection. It was such a tactile, playful and precise look at the Asian American (feminine, motherly, daughterly, womanly) self within a larger societal context.

how does she turn her back if there is / no one watching her

the / trouble with being a / mother is that you too must die

I absolutely adore Victoria Chang's imagery and language use and will look forward to reading more of her works <3

every woman / begins and ends with another woman

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

well done thematically, extremely clever language! did not always work for me all the time. a few poems felt insubstantial. "he tells Barbie Chang she / is demented his dementia / is self centered it has no more center" ouch! parents dementia aging grieving that hurts. also “the moon / at night stretches on her bed like a / blue dress when it / goes down a child foolishly believes / it is gone” a good read (goodreads lol) but wasnt quite effective at haunting me

“I want to change the ending before this
begins I want to know how to begin without
the softness of sentimentality it exhales
from my pencil from the edge of my hair
through the heart as something wept seeps
down my arm through my fingers and comes
a speech that speaks for me and fills this page
with seaweed green swaths of love I cross them
out force new words storm words out through
a straw but they take the shape of a girl’s
handwriting there’s a heart on the lowercase i
it looks like a microphone and when I sing into
it my voice comes back softer like a lullaby”

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a challenging and exceptional collection of poems. What makes it challenging is the absence of punctuation and line breaks that would indicate syntax. Instead, Parts I and III are written in couplets (one long line, one short), and Parts II and IV are long, unbroken text blocks. The lines have a rhythm that takes time to discern, but it's there. What makes it exceptional are the lines and moments that capture profound ideas clearly: "maybe her life is/ scarce because it's not/ about filling up but emptying out..." or the line about the acorn being the nut with a little hat and that it is the perfect metaphor for the truth. There's a mastery of words and associations throughout the poems that carry more than just clever juxtapositions. For a sequence of verse about parents' decline (through dementia) and death (through lung cancer), ostracism, and longing, the pairing and contrast of words and phrases creates resonance that is meant to emphasize the images while also transcending it. This is must read.

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbie Chang Got Her Hair Done

Barbie Chang got her hair done for
the school auction

she was afraid sick of the Circle since
she heard of their

shopping for matching dresses so out
of the nest she flew

into the auction thinking she could
outmaneuver her

loneliness thinking she could overcome
being classified thinking

she could be an agent of her own
classification in came

the Circle dunk tossing coins at baskets
one in pink one in

green one in orange one in purple
matching floral

barrettes glowing like a rainbow that
seemed low enough

to reach to touch Barbie Chang would
never admit it but

she still wanted the rainbow to rain on
her to wear bows in her

hair that meant she belonged somewhere
else she owed it to

her children to make friends to blend
into the dead end

[Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have rarely come across a book of poems that has the thematic integrity that Barbie Chang has. It takes you through a journey - first you experience being an outsider, wanting to get in, then realizing it isn't worth getting in, then realizing it may have been okay to be an outsider when it was just you - now you also have a child, and wanting your child to not suffer the same pains you did knowing full well there is no way of escaping it.

[Adina · Rating 5 out of 5]

if she sticks
her head out the window

as if she is on a train maybe night
will take her head off

Favorites:
Barbie Chang Parks
Barbie Chang’s Father Paid
Barbie Chang runs
Once Barbie Chang Loved
Barbie Chang Can’t Stop Watching
Mr. Darcy Leans
Is A Windcatcher
These Men Can Be Collected
Barbie Chang Has No Intention
Dear P.
Barbie Chang Pokes Through
Dear P. There will be a circle

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn’t blow me away as much as “Obit” did, but it’s hard for anything to blow me away as much as “Obit” did. Victoria Chang is inventive, fun to read, & a great poet to teach in workshop settings. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.

[clvmars · Rating 3 out of 5]

i can tell the author is a giant nerd for literary theory

[Marissa DeMeritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love victoria chang always 5 stars always pulls at my heart and makes me feel introspective and softer

[Rowen H.]

the structure and rhythm of Chang's poems makes me want to read all of them out loud and I find it really compelling

[Joseph Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Ethan ｡⋆˚ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

not bad but not my preference in types of verse

[Sagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this

[Jade He · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Mery ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

[Rebecca Yang · Rating 3 out of 5]

the poems are fun to read out loud
sometimes circulates around same topics
some poems feel transitional rather than standing up on their own

[Emilie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection by Victoria Chang was perhaps my favorite book that I read this year. Love the combination of humor and social commentary. Many of the poems make use of couplets while also using enjambment to create surprise and suspense. I was especially intrigued by the poems that refer to "the Circle" (the group of parents observed at Barbie Chang's child's school). The "Dear P" poems in section IV are lovely and intense and memorable--the letter form makes these poems feel especially intimate; though the reader knows these letters are addressed to "P," one can't help but feel that these letters are also meant for us: "...it's okay to not spin the diamond that begs for your finger it's okay..."

[SabirSultan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give it 6 stars if I could. I read it twice.

[Meg Ready · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot damn. An exploration of grief, ancestry, womanhood, and the construction of the self, whose subject matter is made new through the absence of punctuation, the line as a unit of measurement, and repetition that breeds variation.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, readable poems!

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 1 out of 5]

The "Barbie" Chang conceit in Section I overstayed its welcome by a couple of weeks or more (what's that they say about houseguests and fish?). Sure, some deft internal rhymes, but the unpunctuated phrases with meaningless sentence beginnings and ends mid-line and the ineffectual line breaks got wearing. Ok, mom is dying, dad is crazy and the cool kids are leaving you out of their fun. An extended poetry experience those circumstances do not make, or if they theoretically could, this collection is not the one.

Section 2 is overwhelmingly dense, equally unpunctuated, equally afflicted by sentences beginning mid line for no apparent reason, but without the deft internal rhymes of Section I (Barbie Chang). Arid might be a better descriptor than dense. Yet in some ways a slog, implying mud. Eventually skipped last few bits in hopes Section III improved.

It didn't. More Barbie Chang. More deft internal rhymes. Otherwise, nothing new with language. Stopped reading.

I am genuinely astonished by the acclaim accorded this collection on Goodreads. I love Copper Canyon Press and I love poetry. This collection was a big fail. I could not force myself to finish (which I never do).