Welcome to Lantern Review Issue 9.2, our second issue of the season—and our first ever to focus exclusively on the work of young Asian Americans. Featuring fourteen talented poets and visual artists in their late teens and early twenties, the work in this issue truly embodies (even epitomizes) our celebration of “Asian American Futures.” Indeed, Issue 9.2’s contributors aren’t merely producing work about or around the notion of Asian American futures—their work is, by its very existence, shaping the future of Asian American arts and letters now.
In Issue 9.2, we find a cohort of speakers in transition. Moving across and among geographical regions, identities, and stages of life, the voices represented in these pages reach back into the past to ground themselves in the present; they metamorphose even as they mourn; they rise from rubble to reconstruct new conceptions of the body, of self, of home, of family, of community care. Here, you’ll find ghosts and lit gateways; dragons and night-dwelling insects; the darkness of the ocean’s deepest trench; the historical specter of internment; the existential quandary of Schroedinger’s cat. Through ars poetica, elegy, myth, self-portraiture, the pieces in this issue document, reclaim, and build anew, carving out their own paths of healing and transcendence, emerging to live another day.
We’ve chosen to title this issue “Arrivals.” The vital lines and images in these pages celebrate how far our community has come—and look ahead to imagine where it might yet go. They represent the ways in which the next generation of Asian American voices is arriving—no, has already arrived—to write their chapter in our community’s story.
What a delight it has been to curate this vibrant, powerful issue. We’re humbled and encouraged by the pieces herein and hope that you’ll enjoy savoring them as much as we have enjoyed bringing them together in Lantern Review.
Peace and Light,
Iris A. Law & Eugenia Leigh
Lantern Review Editors