sonia sanchez
...e Gay and Lesbian Experience (1995), Lesbian Erotics (1995), Chloe Plus Olivia (1994), and Making Waves: Asian Women United of California (1989). She is the recipient of the CLAGS of 1995 Ken Dawson Award for research in gay and lesbian history and was listed in the 1990 Lambda Book report as one of the 50 most influential people in gay and lesbian literature. She has also been featured in three films, Women of Gold (1990), Framing Lesbian Fashion (1992), and Cut Sleeve (1992). To date, Tsui is the author of three books: The Words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire (1983), which is a book of poems, text, and dramatic pieces; Breathless (1995), an erotica for lesbians; and a historical novel, Bak Sze, White Snake (not yet published). These books point to her flexibility in terms of genre, while she remains committed to the politics of inclusion and tolerance in the lesbian community. In The words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire, written in the 1983, tradition of identity politics focuses on ethnic and class differences among urban lesbians. Tsui struggles for self-definition in these poems, as a Chinese American woman who loves women and as a writer who refuses to be burdened by literary stylistic traditions. In the first poem, “It’s in the Name,” the speaker condemns the dominant culture’s, including non-Asian women, confusion of Asian women with each other- “it happens all the time. /orientals so hard to tell apart” (1). The book’s conclusion, on the other hand, is more upbeat, with “A Celebration of Who I Am,” and an inter-generational dramatic monologue of two women’s voices, “Poa Poa is Living Breathing Light.” Because her female and Chinese heritage is so central to Tsui, she includes several poems honoring her grandmother, whose struggles as an immigrant actress and Contonses opera singer mirror the poet’s own creative efforts. The Words of a Woman… is dedicated to Tsui’s grandmother, Kwan Ying Lin, “[her] first and closest connection.” The poem of “Chinatown Talking Story” describes her grandmother’s American career: “the gold mountain men said/when Kwan Ying Lin/went on stage/even the electric fans stopped.” Tsui grandmother, Kwan, too, loved women and left her husband to live with another actress. Other poems describe a different point of view. They express her family’s ignorance concerning her love for women; for example, in “A Chinese Banquet,” Tsui is not aloud to invite her lover home for a traditional meal because the category “same-sex lover” does not exist for her parents. However, Tsui insists that Chinese women come with strength: “born into the/skin of yellow women/we are born/into the armor of warriors.” For lesbians, often times they risked their family ties. For those of them raised in the non-Asian suburbs, their families were sometimes their only link to their Asian heritage while in the hope of finding a truer family in the lesbian and gay community they were creating. Tsui was seen as a part of the movement, a writer who was there, relatable, and indeed she was. In declaring her different identities against a society resistant to such wholeness, she showe...