work through a series of discreet paragraphs or
stanzas (for example “Postcards from Nebraska”).
Johns was also an influence in Corpse and Mirror
(1983), which was selected by Ashbery for the Na-
tional Poetry Series. The title of the volume is a
reference to a sequence of Johns’s paintings. Later
in his career, Yau published monographs on both
Warhol and Johns and taught art and writing at
various institutions.
Yau is quoted as saying that he is a “poet who is
too postmodern for the modernists and too mod-
ern for the postmodernists.” Yet his books such as
Forbidden Entries (1996) and My Symptoms (1998)
are most noted for their dismantling of the wall
dividing fiction from poetry, a strong postmod-
ern theme. His earliest volumes, The Reading of an
Ever-Changing Tale (1977) and Sometimes: Poems
(1979), also present prose poems that criticize im-
perialism and begin to establish Yau as a postmod-
ern writer who refuses to maintain a persona as
either a poet, a storyteller, or an art critic.
His writings blend elements from many differ-
ent genres to examine Asian-American identity. In
the Hollywood poems of Forbidden Entries, for in-
stance, Yau explores the stereotypes that adversely
affect Asian-American experiences in the Ameri-
can film industry. Two short-story collections
continue Yau’s treatment of the themes of identity.
Hawaiian Cowboys (1995) is a more conventional
collection of stories. My Symptoms, however, inte-
grates prose and poetry.
A fiction anthology Yau edited in 1998, Fetish,
collects commissioned pieces that explore dimen-
sions of voyeurism. Borrowed Love Poems (2001)
continues Yau’s interests in painters and other art-
ists. My Heart Is That Eternal Rose Tattoo, also ap-
pearing in 2001, returns to the prose poems found
in Radiant Silhouette and Forbidden Entries.
Bibliography
Chang, Juliana. Review of Forbidden Entries, MELUS
23, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 226–228.
Morris, Daniel. “ ‘Death and Disaster’: John Yau’s
Painterly Poems.” In Remarkable Modernisms:
Contemporary American Authors on Modern Art,
edited by Daniel Morris, 41–60. Amherst: Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Press, 2002.
Xiaojing, Zhou. “Postmodernism and Subversive
Parody: John Yau’s ‘Genghis Chan: Private Eye’
Series.” College Literature 31, no. 1 (Winter 2004):
73–104.
Patricia Kennedy BostianYear in Van Nuys, A
Sandra Tsing Loh (2001)
In her send-up of Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence
(a memoir of pleasurable living in the French
countryside), SANDRA TSING LOH tells a tale of
downward mobility in a less-than-glamorous
suburb of Los Angeles. A Year in Van Nuys is a fic-
tionalized account of Loh’s experience as a writer
seeking fame and fortune—or at least a living
wage—while coping with life in the San Fernando
Valley. Loh’s narrator is an artist in crisis. She has
reached her mid-thirties, the brilliant novel has
not materialized, and she lives in one of the most
celebrity-obsessed regions of America. Frustrated
by a three-year writer’s block, she is depressed,
self-absorbed, envious of others, and embarrassed
by her misery. “My mouth widens, Roman mask-
like, into a bitter howl. ‘Why why why not me me
me me me me me me me me?’ ” (31).
Loh’s tone throughout this book is edgy and
comical. Her narrator’s low self-esteem becomes a
vehicle for satire as she discusses the things that
conspire to keep her unfulfilled: a tacky environ-
ment, a bossy and successful big sister, unapprecia-
tive editors, fatuous promoters, bubbly television
executives, her lack of swingy hair, and the bags
under her eyes. The good things, too, are presented
sardonically. Her “Technicolor World of Futility”
(86) does have its moments, as with the take-out
chicken gobbled over the sink and the Valium that
comes with laser eye-bag surgery. Her partner is
wonderfully supportive or at least passionately
nonconfrontational, and her therapist, who speaks
of the human psyche in terms of labyrinths and
cave paintings, “understands how, sometimes,
the most creative thing about a Writer can be her
Block” (28).
In A Year in Van Nuys, Loh perfects the art of the
whine. Her persona, neurotic and hyper-attentiveYear in Van Nuys, A 333