Poet Jenny Xie was exploring the library stacks at the Shanghai campus of New York University, where she was on a fellowship, when a book with a bright-red cover caught her eye. In it, she found hundreds of photos of China’s Cultural Revolution.
The images, taken by Li Zhensheng during the dramatic, often violent period of upheaval that gripped China between 1966 and 1976, had been clandestinely preserved until their U.S. publication. Xie devoured the book in one sitting.
The Rupture Tense, by Jenny Xie,120 pagesGRAYWOLF PRESS, Poetry.