Resemblance

Through experiments in form and syntax, Resemblance/? builds structures of (un)recognizability and (il)legibility in its attempt to create spaces where new meanings, new uses of language, and new selves may emerge. In the process, Chou uncovers his family’s relationship to traumatic moments in Taiwan’s modern history, in particular the period of martial law known as the White Terror and the ＂ 228 Incident＂ of February 28, 1947, in which as many as 28,000 civilians were killed by soldiers of the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek. Throughout the collection, Chou draws on archival research and images, including a discovery of a misattributed image, to critique the role of photography and visual culture more broadly in both mediating access to and misrepresenting buried histories and generational trauma. Sweeping in scope and filled with fragments, beyonds, and restricted areas, Chou’s debut collection longs less for facts than a renewed relationship to loss and longing itself.

Jonathan Chou is an Asian American poet, psychiatrist, and educator. He is the author of the poetry chapbook, Pomes, which was selected as a semifinalist for the 2022 Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award. His writing has appeared in Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal, The Healing Muse, and elsewhere. He teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine Program at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. He grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.