Cover design by Zachary Marell and Tom Wallace. Cover photograph by Tom Wallace.

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"At the Chinese-American crossroads, Wang Ping confronts us with a sinewy, witty nostalgia for the harsh but deep reality of Chinese customs and culture." - Clayton Eshleman

THE MAGIC WHIP

"Wang Ping's The Magic Whip is riddled with surprises that bite and soothe. Though populated with Chinese myths and talismans, the tonal muscle and unique imagery of this rewarding collection tug us away from the stereotypical. There's something wise and original in these poems wrung from need." - Yusef Komunyakaa

"These poems will give the reader a panoramic view of a Chinese woman's consciousness. The voices are personal yet historical, contemporary yet ancient. Themes range from footbinding, to breastfeeding, to raising a son, to living in wild New York - a generous reading experience." - Marilyn Chin

"Wang Ping's poignant and insightful thoughts about the relation of beauty to violence, of the ways that standards for women's beauty often require violence, are unnervingly relevant to contemporary young women." - Kathy Ferguson, University of Hawai'i Professor and Women's Studies Program Director "Echoing both the Buddha and Marx, Wang Ping has Li Qingzhao, the greatest woman poet in Chinese history, remind us that to hoard is a disease that can destroy empires and love affairs both. And thus we find in these "magic whips" - both sharp-tongued and softly returning - a wildly roaming poetry of compassion that depicts desperate beings with everything the poet can summon: inexhaustible will to survive, healing songs of bitterness, the beauty of passions bound into cruel forms, and a disquieting earthly love that only the generous can gain." - Walter K. Lew, author of Treadwinds: Poems and Intermedia Texts

The Magic Whip was a finalist in the 2004 Minnesota Book Awards and received an honorable mention in the 2004 Awards List by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. The Gustavus Myers Center Panel of Reviewers commends The Magic Whip for its fearsome insight into how cultural ideals and standards, gender and power imbalances impact women and children in various contexts.

Poems from the The Magic Whip have appeared in the following journals, anthologies, and newspaper: XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics; Indiana Review; Luna; Facture; The World; GSU Review; Speakeasy; Global City Review; Bombay Gin; The KGB Bar Book of Poems, David Lehman and Star Black, editors; Exhibition Under Construction, May Joseph and Mark Nowak, editors; Hanging Loose; Manoa, Minneapolis Star Tribune; and The Butcher Shop.