Chop Suey and Apple Pie by Mai-Lon Gittelsohn (NWVS, #110)

Flowing through eight decades, from the vivid black robes emboldened with golden dragons and worn by a long-dead cousin in Chinese opera, to the ostrich-feathered arms of the final phantom and friend, this first collection of poems by Mai-Lon Gittelsohn is rich, sexy, loving and humane.
–Sandra Alcosser, Except by Nature and A Fish to Feed All Hunger

Mai-Lon Gittelsohn’s poems glitter with images threaded together on the wire of memory: the family restaurant in San Francisco’s East Bay with its pink formica tables and hand-typed menus, green silk and gold of her mother’s pants suit. I love her father’s fedora and maroon Packard, not to mention the Asian folk remedies of crushed papaya and the jar of dark liniment with a snake’s body inside. This little book is a jewel. Check it out.
–Joseph Millar, Blue Rust and Fortune

The poems in Chop Suey and Apple Pie are rich with the sounds, smells, and tastes of a Chinese American childhood. Mai-Lon Gittelsohn invites us into this world with precise details and vivid descriptions.. We see her godfather who cracks an egg, lets it fry in bubbling oil, spreading out like a golden eye and her father who shelled shrimp until his hands and face swelled. We watch her mother as she leans into the mirror, dips the tip of a burnt stick into rose water and glycerine, darkens her eyebrows, and her sisters, drawing a seam on the calf of each leg with an eyebrow pencil, as they dress to meet their sailors who look like gods, as they hunch over, hands cupped around the orange flame of their lighters, their eyes reflecting pinpoints of sacred light, In these finely made poems, everything is bathed in that sacred light of attention.
–Ellen Bass, Mules of Love, The Human Line

We welcome Mai-Lon Gittelsohn’s first book of poetry, Chop Suey and Apple Pie. It is a tender, vivid, and sometimes heart-wrenching recollection of her childhood in San Francisco’s East Bay. We, the readers, become her silent partner in each of her recalled events.
–Peter Sears, Green Diver

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]