Poetry Reading - Ancestral Intelligence

Vera Schwarcz, Professor of History, and East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University

Celebration of the publication of Ancestral Intelligence, with a reading by the author.

In Ancestral Intelligence, Vera Schwarcz has added a forceful and fascinating work to her ever-growing list of publications depicting the cultural landscape of contemporary China. Here, she has created stunning "renditions" of poems by a mid-20th Century dissident poet, Chen Yinke, and has added a group of her own poems in harmony with Chen Yinke's. Like his, her poems show a degradation of culture and humanity, in this case through comparison of classic and modern Chinese logographs.