SOURCE: Slowik, Mary. “Beyond Lot's Wife: The Immigration Poems of Marilyn Chin, Garrett Hongo, Li-Young Lee, and David Mura.” MELUS 25, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 2000): 221-42.

In the following essay, Slowik examines the ways in which Chin and other Asian-American poets address their need to examine their cultural roots while continuing to assimilate into their new culture.

When God tells Lot to flee Soddam and Gomorrah, he cautions him not to look back. Lot's wife cannot resist the temptation and, as they rush from the great fire storm erupting behind them, she does look back and is immediately turned into a pillar of salt. The fear of looking back and yet the compulsion to look back at the country that one has left behind infuses much cross-cultural writing in the United States today. The experience of immigration is a central fact in the lives of Asian, Hispanic, Mid-Eastern, Slavic, Irish...