Bright Fear
Mary Jean Chan
Review by Wendelin Law
Each word, a photon; each line, a beam of light breaking free, dancing into existence; Mary Jean Chan is a painter of light, one who examines optics with the clearest lens, oppressively moulded and cut by intermingling queerphobia, post-/neo-colonialism and racism. Through these intimate experiences, Chan urges readers to give heed and speak up, for instance in the lines ‘I am asked why my poems are so clear. I’ll confess: / it’s what happens when you want to be understood’ (‘XIII’) and ‘do not be / afraid let us speak ourselves into / splendour…’ (‘preface’)
Light is often used as a symbol of hope and emancipation, but under Chan’s optical scrutiny light has a stratified depth that also breeds fear—‘even the bright air felt menacing’ when ‘there is fire on the streets / of a city I love and flames in the Arctic’ (‘Bright Fear (II))’. At other times, however, Chan illuminates a resolute calmness that resides in darkness instead: ‘It is 4:30 p.m. and pitch-black but we love each other’ (‘IX’). This contrasting interplay shines light on the defamiliarisation of a queer Asian body, for instince in ‘come home to / this body, this / unhomeliness’ (‘resolve’), which then delves further into existential dread on this ‘failing earth’ as well as the inevitable question of ‘what are we, as a species, doing’ (Bright Fear (II), again).
In ‘Love for the Living’, Chan goes on to explore the symbolism of the rainbow flag:
what is it like to believe the years are not
a life sentence for bodies like yours? Like this:
a spiral of rainbow bunting sprung like relief
across a lit sky.
While rainbows are formed by refraction and total internal reflection, the poem explores how the queer rainbow has gone through the refractions of ‘mother’s gaze / straight gaze / male gaze / white gaze’, as well as a total internal reflection that is ‘an inward twist’, like a coloniser’s gaze: ‘you are / nothing / without / a cerebral / cortex / the / coloniser’s / gaze / is your own’ (‘imperfection’s school’). The poem thus becomes a larger symbol for Chan’s yearning for liberation from these particularly unwanted lights—’I want to see this torso in a different light (to beam on it a kinder gaze)’.
Bright Fear is itself, in the literal sense, ars poetica—it sparkles in its antithetical conflicts (for instance, ‘bright’ and ‘fear’), internal struggles, and the ultimate rejection of being pinned down, giving rise to the blossoming ‘wish which stem from a desire’ (‘XIV’)—words that are multitudinous, diverging lights; words that reflect our true selves, as we continue to move on and grapple with life, in our brightest fear.
Published by Faber