Super Model Minority - by Chris Tse (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A powerful exploration of identity, race, and sexuality in contemporary New Zealand.

Super Model Minority is a spirited and confronting poetry collection from Chris Tse, one of New Zealand's most notable voices. Tse fearlessly confronts joy, pain, prejudice, and whiteness, transforming these experiences into shimmering, full-color poems.

This collection is for readers seeking insightful social commentary and raw emotional resonance. Through shapeshifting poems, Tse calls back and forth to themes of cultural identity, personal growth, and the complexities of living as a minority in a globalized world. Discover a powerful voice that challenges norms and celebrates resilience.

Review Quotes

'Super Model Minority is tender and electric, full of quiet intimacy and soaring elegy. In these shapeshifting poems, Tse confronts joy, pain, prejudice, whiteness. His poems transform and shimmer in full colour, calling back and forth to each other through the book like a pop song's echoing refrain.' --Nina Mingya Powles

'Super Model Minority is the brilliant and important new Chris Tse collection that you need in your life right now, and forever. More bold, more beautiful, more raw, more artful and more funny than ever before - these poems cut my heart before warming it, got me squirming awkwardly in my seat and made me determined to visit Iceland before I die.' --Helen Rickerby

'This collection by Chris Tse is like the glitter bomb that heralds the apocalypse. It's a reminder that life is a prismatic experience full of heartbreak, oh-so-predictable racism and awkward family games nights. It asks us to stop and consider all the aspects of ourselves that we want to take into the future, and how they are shaped by the histories we leave behind.' --Rose Lu

About the Author

Chris Tse was born and raised in Lower Hutt. He completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Tse was featured in AUP New Poets 4 (2011), and his work has appeared in publications in New Zealand and overseas. His first collection How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (2014) won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry, and his second book HE'S SO MASC was published to critical acclaim in 2018. He is co-editor of Out Here: An Anthology of Takatapui and LGBTQIA+ Writers in Aotearoa.