First Mountain - by Er Zhang (Paperback)

About the Book

The poet's journey to bury her grandparents' ashes in China becomes a dramatic narrative about ancestral landscapes, family, and ritual, with a tragic climax.

Book Synopsis

The poet travels from her home in the United States to her ancestral village in Shanxi province to bury the ashes of her paternal grandparents in a ritual lasting several days. The narrative arc of the story movingly explores death and life, a multi-branched and multi-generational clan, and ancient and modern belief systems, as it moves toward a tragic climax. First Mountain is Zhang Er's third book to be published by Zephyr Press, and includes an introduction about the collaborative process between Zhang Er and Joseph Donahue to render the book into English.

About the Author

ZHANG ER, a poet born in Beijing, is the author of multiple books of poetry in Chinese. Verses on Bird and So Translating Rivers and Cities are two bilingual collections (Chinese/English) published by Zephyr Press, and she has also published a number of chapbooks in English translation. She co-edited Another Kind of Nation: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry, published by Talisman House Publishers in 2007. She is married to the American poet Leonard Schwartz and they live in the Pacific Northwest with their daughter Cleo. She is a professor at The Evergreen State College, WA.