Jenny Qi: “Trying to explain why I identify as a feminist poet is like trying to explain why I identify as human. Perhaps the most honest explanation is that my mother was the kind of woman who knocked on every door of a university until she got her first job after immigrating to the U.S., and she was the kind of woman who said, ‘If I had raised that friend of yours, he would have grown a spine.’ She was also the kind of woman who worked two shifts and, instead of collapsing into a bed, stood outside my third grade classroom to make sure I’d gotten to school. My mother was my first best friend, and she died when I was nineteen. Everything I’ve written since then has a bit of her in it.” (website)
