Upend

The book loosely navigates the archived immigration trial of Hong On, a biracial Alaska Native-Chinese man, in 1912 on Angel Island, CA during the Chinese Exclusion Act. Hong On was born in San Francisco, CA in 1895 and was orphaned shortly after. The concepts of U.S. government-designated recreational spaces, genocide, and intergenerational trauma are examined by Hong On's granddaughter, the author, who sees imperialistic residue in product, place, and color naming. At the core of this book is the speaker's Alaska Native great grandmother who is named "Unknown: Indian" on Hong On's birth certificate.   Claire Hong is a poet and agricultural worker whose daily life and writing practice involve researching and searching for cross-cultural, interspecies, and intergenerational relationships that have formed and form outside of, or despite, imperialism. Dedicated to traditional foodways, land stewardship, and multigenerational community work, Hong works to provide arid-adapted seeds and re