Mickee Cheung was one of our 2024 Digital Residents. As a part of this program, we do Q&As with our residents to feature them, their work, and their words. See our Q&A with Mickee below, and explore more Spotlights here.
TSW: What is a question you’re asking yourself these days, and what’s a question you or your work is asking of your reader?
Mickee Cheung: How do I/we make the most of this wonderful, terrible life? Who am I and what is it that I really really want? How do I/we live in the face of so many horrors? How do I/we write in the face of so many horrors? How do I/we live and not just survive, and how do we get us all free from the tyranny of empires? Where do we go from here? What do we want to build from these ruins and what is my role in it?
I’m still searching for answers; I am asking the mushrooms in the dirt outside my home, I am asking my friends, I am asking the poems I read, I am asking my TikTok algorithm, I am asking the lines on the pages of my journals.
TSW: Who do you bring into the room with you when you write, and/or, who do you consider your work to be in conversation with? Who are you writing for?
MC: I’m writing for myself, or at least, I am trying to write for myself. For all my past selves, my future selves, and myself now, in this moment. I am trying, for once, to listen to myself and to write what I most need to hear. Part of me worries that this is selfish, or self-centered, but a larger part of me recognizes I can’t meaningfully write about the world or anything within it without first understanding where and who I am in relation.
I am trying to bear witness to the world. I am trying to write into being the world I want to live in. I can only keep writing and hope that whatever comes out reaches anyone else who needs to hear the same words.
I’m writing after poets whose words reached me and continue to motivate me to keep beginning: Muriel Leung, Natalie Wee, Lucille Clifton, Barbara Jane Reyes, Ross Gay, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and so so many more. Some poems I keep coming back to recently are “Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film” by Rio Cortez, “In Tepoztlan, a Cat Dreams of Kandahar,” by Malvika Jolly, and “Eschatology,” by Eve L. Ewing.
TSW: What motivates you to keep beginning, and/or, what is a story that gave you permission to tell yours? Feel free to tell us what’s on your bookshelf or TBR list these days.
MC: I’m always so inspired and energized when I get to experience other folks’ writing and artwork, as well as writing on writing and artwork. As Paisley Rekdal puts in her latest book, Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens, “I know I’m in the presence of poetry when I, too, want to write it.” I’m only a couple of essays into Vanessa Angelica Villareal’s Magical/Realism, and I’ve been absolutely loving her prose and insight on fantasy and borders. I’m also currently reading Theresa Ha Kyung Cha’s Dictee, Renee Gladman’s Calamities, A. D. Lauren-Abunassar’s Coriolis, and Poetry as Spellcasting by Destiny Hemphill, Lisbeth White, and Tamiko Beyer. Some more books that are haunting (in the best way) my inner world are Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang, Sato the Rabbit: The Sea of Tea by Yuki Ainoya, and To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose.
