my yt mama

by Mercedes Eng

In the follow-up to her BC Book Prize-winning book of poetry, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, Mercedes Eng continues her poetic investigation of racism and colonialism in Canada, weaponizing the language of the nation-state against itself in the service of social justice.

my yt mama is a collection of poems that considers historic and contemporary colonial violence in the Canadian prairies, a settler geography and state of mind that irrevocably shaped Eng’s understanding of race as person of colour born and raised in Treaty 7 Territory in Medicine Hat, Alberta. These poems document an education in white supremacist ideology that began in infancy and occurred everywhere: at home where the author lived with her white mother, 1261 kilometres away from her Chinese migrant father’s family; in public institutions such as the school, the library, and the museum that erase Indigenous peoples’ histories while producing the myth of the “vanishing Indians;” and in the media and entertainment in which white supremacist beauty standards are constructed and reinforced.

Keenly attuned to the language of those in power, Eng exposes the violence of the English language in the colonial project, taking on the words of Canadian politician F. W. Gershaw’s history of the city of Medicine Hat as occasioned by Canada’s Centennial, to derail the superficially neutral language of yt history that mythologizes nation and city while simultaneously deriding Indigenous ways of being (ontology) and ways of knowing (epistemology) as “legends” or “myths.” Like the author herself, my yt mama is hybrid: part memoir, part history, part discourse analysis, part love letter to her mother.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 2020

About the author

Mercedes Eng teaches and writes in Vancouver, on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories. She is the author of two chapbooks, February 2010 (2010) and knuckle sandwich (2011), and of Mercenary English (CUE Books, 2013; Mercenary Press, 2016), a long poem about violence and resistance in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver. Her writing has appeared in Jacket 2, The Downtown East, The Volcano, on the sides of the Burrard and Granville Bridges as contributions to public art projects, and in the collectively produced chapbooks, r/ally (No One Is Illegal), Surveillance, and M’aidez (Press Release). She is currently working on a women’s prison reader and a detective novel set in her grandfather’s Chinatown supper club, circa 1948.

Reviews

[Dani]

SOLID 5 stars. Mercedes Eng is fierce. This collection is fearlessly honest, directly confronting issues of racism, colonialism, trauma, identity, belonging, and love.

Her poetry is fire on my tongue when I speak the words out loud. Words I never imagined I'd hear strung together as I grew up, like Mercedes, a hypenated identity, an Asian-yt, in-between, not here not there, child of the prairies, child of the motherland, child lost in the blur of non-belonging. I am so very grateful that a collection of poetry like this exists. I will read this many times.

[Karis]

standout for me was "yt prairie mamas and five generations of Ellens." certain parts felt didactically heavy-handed, but then motifs wove through, came through, made sense at the ends of their cycles so poignantly? i think what's leading me to 4>3 stars is eng's fierce understanding that just as she holds anger toward her yt mama, she holds love too.

[Dora Prieto]

Necessary reading that made me feel all the feels. In the words of Amber Dawn, "my yt mama is the antithesis of nation-state 'Canadiana' nostalgia." I am very inspired by the intertextual poetic prose all centred around the inherent power dynamics of place and belonging in a colonial white-supremacist nation.

[Jocelyn]

Honestly, I need to read this again to really have it all sink in, and which could change my feelings on it, but either way I would highly recommend it.

[Mackenzie Skuce]

This was the worst piece of shit I’ve ever read :)

[harmie]

This work by Mercedes Eng is a lot more personal and the author draws back the curtain far enough to investigate the intersections of their identity with the reader. The poems that focused on Eng's relationships with family were what resonated the most, and there were some lines and imagery that were fun to read and especially stuck. However, at times, as a work of poetry, Eng's text is sometimes limited by the reliance on fiction (or "biotext"), though less so than other work of theirs I've read. More experimentation with form or greater attention to the function of imagery and metaphor might yield additional self-contained works that singularly pack a punch, as opposed to relying on the larger body of text to support some of its less-sure pieces.

[df parizeau]

There is a leaness to Eng's poetry that I really appreciate. Even in longer prosaic pieces, Eng cuts to the real heart of the matter. This creates poems that have a rapid-fire pace, which Eng utilizes to keep the reader alert; there are things you need to know and others which you are not privy too--whether because Eng doesn't care to tell you or perhaps, because she is working towards clarity herself.

This is not a one-time read kind of book. There is so much to be explored in terms of Eng's word choice, structure, and masterful use of "yt space".

[Ellisha Blackburn]

Incredible. I first heard Mercedes give an online reading of many of these poems, which I highly recommend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh80F...

[imeda]

eng's poetry is incredible and presents itself in a way that has you flipping through the book, desperate for more. the running motif of how eng hates her yt mama but loves her all the same is incredibly well done and all the poems feel woven together seamlessly. the whole book is very well done and i'll definitely be rereading it soon