By Ian Koh
Goo! It could be the sound a baby makes, or that of a substance that droops and melds into everything it touches. Or—it could be both. In Jenny Zhang’s latest poetry collection, My Baby First Birthday, the title is a self-reference to the narrator or otherwise through the lens of the “wh*te s*pr*m*c*st c*p*t*l*st p*tr**rchy.” The female narrator thinks “my cunt hides in the cutest fashion” and is “insensitive to YOUR PROBLEMS” (“Your Problems”). Written in shocking, often vulgar language, Zhang’s poems are an emotional exploration of an othered “I” and dominant “you” who are somehow both able to “come away from that / thinking each other was the nazi” and thereby find themselves in an incredulously unbalanced dynamic (“needs revision!”). The poems are about one party in this skewed dynamic feeling unknown by the other since “he has too much money to care” (“needs revision!”). What results is an ugly infantilization and goo-ing. The “detachable pussy” has been given to “you,” so “you” feel the cold, clammy, cringy, clinginess (“My baby first birthday”). “You” tried to pick it up like an infant, so it “kept dripping yesterday’s goo” (“Hammer”).
In this dynamic, there is what I dub uncensorship, or flagrant uncensored use of oft-censored words, and then there is censorship of uncensored words. The poems especially experiment with questions of perspective. On one hand, there is reference to the dominant voice: “you feel like seppukuing because your butthole is too determined” (“THE LAST FIVE CENTURIES WERE UNEVENTFUL”). On the other, there is reference to an othered voice: “I seppukued in front of the racists / …I died for racism / I died for white supremacy / …encourage the galaxy / to self-seppuku / to prove the necessity of repetition” (“seppuku”). If seppuku means performing honor suicide, it is because this butthole is a place nobody wants to be in. This butthole has a purpose, “determined,” that others would rather seppuku than be a part of.
The poems un-censor shocking and lascivious body parts and fluids such as “cunt,” “yeast infection,” “fuck,” “pussy,” giving them a free pass to hang out.Meanwhile, it censors other seemingly innocuous words such as the “****” (“what a terrible ****!!!”). What is “****” even? This calls attention to the way the dominant censor dialogue has made exposure to selected things unacceptable and others not so much. Yet, Zhang questions how much of the other “not so much” things should have been normalized.
In the poem “uncle boo,” Zhang asks, so do “you” like hanging out with the “yeast infection / …in my yogurt twat” where “we ate naan”? Well, no, because that is disgusting and the “I” definitely would rather not have it be uncensored or normalized. The “I”, in this case, prefers censorship. Therein, uncensoring is used to illustrate the cringe in the way normalization has been used as a means of concealment or embellishment: For example, the normalization of what is censor-worthy like your butthole so everyone has to “detach” for the “you” just to get by. The uncensoring of the “yeast infection” is a reference to what the “I” would much rather have censored, while the “you,” failing to see the implications at the end of consuming, heads towards a very horrific realization from which a reversal might possibly be too late. The poems ask how a point such as this was reached. How did ambiguous goo end up as a product on the dining table? While capitalism may have brought about value where there was none before, its greatness does not make it the only worldview that matters.
The uncensoring calls for the examination of assumptions and reevaluation of norms through empathy. It calls for one to see that normalization is loaded with implications for censoring and that normal does not always mean fine. Sometimes, what “normal” can bring about is seppuku.
Overall, the poems in this collection express anger and the emotional experience of what citizens of the internet might call “being triggered.” It is a collection that juxtaposes the white male gaze (“you”) with the experience of being an Asian female, including the hypersexualization and othering that plagues their everyday lives. Zhang’s collection speaks to defy the “you” and assure the “I” that they are not alone in this continued battle with otherness, censorship, and infantilization, hence bringing us back to the collection’s central theme of “Goo!” – an utterance brought forth both by a baby’s mouth and an unknown sticky substance.
My Baby First Birthday is available from Barnes & Noble, Blue Cypress Books, The Book Cellar, Eso Won Books, The Last Bookstore, Loyalty Bookstore, and Powell’s City of Books.
Ian Koh is a graduate student at Chapman who enjoys writing poetry and fiction. His reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Tab Journal and Tinderbox Poetry Journal.