SOURCE: Chang, Juliana. Review of Forbidden Entries, by John Yau. MELUS 23, no. 3 (fall 1998): 226-28.

In the following evaluation, Chang examines the ways in which Yau utilizes racial identity and stereotyping in Forbidden Entries.

The poetic and critical writings of John Yau present an intriguing site of investigation into questions of racial authenticity. Because Yau's writings in general do not address racialized identity in a straightforward, explicit manner, it is difficult for critics of multicultural literature to read his work as “representative” of ethnic/racial experience. What is remarkable, however, is that Yau's ethnic and racial authenticity have been most publicly called into question not by members of his own ethnic and racial groups, but by white poetry critics. In his response to Yau's critique in American Poetry Review of his anthology American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators and Outsiders, Eliot Weinberger notes that Yau “barely speaks and cannot read” Chinese...