Weijia Pan’s ambitious debut, Motherlands, is replete with ancestry and history. From personal and poetic lineage to the intertwining histories of China and the US, Pan lays out each poem with a calligrapher’s precision. As he translates his experiences across borders, there is no mistaking the music––of canonical Chinese poets and classical musicians––that blossoms into a pure language. Pan honors his many lineages in a way that takes received forms to an electric place: inherited jawlines, distillations of ancient Chinese philosophy and verse, and nods to Western poets and musicians. Yet what allows this collection to deliver through subsequent rereads is its refusal to flinch from history’s appetite for violence. Pan writes with a tenderness and care that is surefooted and necessary.
	The scope of the collection oscillates between the personal and the historical in a way that demonstrates supreme control. The first poem brings the scent of pepper straight to the reader, unveiling the history that brought the spice to China with incredible economy, only to end on “anti-riot vehicles” (4). It is difficult to read this poem and not make the leap towards pepper spray. What rises from the page in moments of beauty is often closely followed by violence.
	 “Closing your eyes, you wonder if you’re a shard in the eddy of time––” Pan writes, as he moves through a world where old men in bathhouses play similar roles to border officers; where dialects never quite fit in the mouth as neatly as one would like; where the mythology of memory refuses to preclude historical terrors (42). It becomes clear that Pan is searching for a way of being in a world where ancestry and masculinity are continuously warped by the tide of history. Yet he refuses to be warped, instead viewing himself with mature empathy: “I know every inch of my body is a danger to no one; I like history; my great-grandpa survived all the wars for me” (19). Readers are left to sit with this vulnerable image, finding out later that Pan’s grandfather disappeared. 
	Immediately before the poem “On the Railways: A Little Song”––a heady riff on both Celan’s “Death Fugue” and Pinsky’s “Gulf Music”––Pan’s search sets up imitation that leans into homage, as he looks further back through history: “The future is English, a tall white master”, which immediately primes those familiar with Celan (24). Pan blends Pinsky’s braid of aural magic and historical narrative with lines that echo Celan’s to paint a picture of Chinese workers building the railways:

		Cling-cling, clang-clang. Aiya-aiya. Our master
			is a white man who plays cruel,
				his eyes are blue. You! You! Whupah-whupah.
			His anger a lingering red. At noon,
		we rub ointment that smells like leaves
			downriver. Cool-cool. Shhh-shhh.
		(25)

Pan ensures that the map is clear, reaching towards a language continuously informed by the artistic lineage that has shaped him. Poems like “Five Chinese Poets” and “Notes on Twentieth-Century Musicians” are incredible nods to canonical Chinese poets and classical pianists. Pan looks to authors and musicians as a way to better understand the past.
	In the closing of “Ultimatum,” where Pan considers the amount of time it will take to forget his mother tongue entirely, he writes “the new language / I will have acquired // will not be the same / as the one that bit me” (59). Motherlands reminds us again and again that our ancestors can be multiplied if they are put into words, that violence can be tied to the page in a way that declaws it. Pan’s unflinching view of history looks inward at China, as much as it does outward at America. There is supreme heart in this collection, which is not an accolade I dole out lightly. Pan’s poetics reach us at a time both necessary and prescient. He teaches us how to continue forward: “I built a shrine for my hometown; I live in that light” Pan writes, unable to return to China for Qing Ming (20). Looking forward does not preclude looking back, remembering where we came from. This stunning debut is rich and layered. If you were to only buy one collection of poems this year, look no further. I’m already eagerly awaiting his next book.