The Passion of the Rabbit God
The Rabbit God: protector of queer hearts across East Asia. Can this ancient myth help rewrite our tomorrows?
Hongwei Bao’s debut collection charts an emotional journey through centuries and between nations, with the poet’s own migration from Inner Mongolia to Nottingham offering a unique, fascinating perspective through which to examine Asian and queer identity.
These are poems which hop energetically over any and all borders. Scenes of everyday heartache give way to fireworks of rage and joy, while intimate examinations of relationships and desire sit alongside politically charged pieces – as the poet contrasts injustices from ancient China with those from present-day England.
In verses alive with longing and resistance, Bao’s poems ask: what does it mean to love, defy, and bloom as a queer, Asian soul in our ever-changing world?
Praise for The Passion of the Rabbit God
‘Hongwei Bao's poems have a clarity of vision, thought, and expression, but they also have a rare moral clarity – not in the sense that they give easy answers, but in that they see the minute gradations and degradations of our shared and particular lives.’
– Ali Lewis, author of Absence
‘In a world of war and division, Hongwei's poetry is a cry for unity. His gentle voice delivers heartfelt love and sees no differences in all humanity. More than this, these poems are beautifully well-written, eloquent on passion between man and man being as strong and visceral as heterosexual love, and on the way he is torn between love of his family and landscapes in China and his loved ones and new personal geography in England. His words resound.’
– Sarah Wardle, author of Spiritlands
‘Hongwei Bao distils his experience as a queer, Chinese migrant into lyrics of intense emotional force and political acuity. Faced with racism and homophobia, he maintains an equanimity that is both empowering and touching. A brilliant, liberating debut.’
– Gregory Woods, author of A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition
‘From queer Chinese mythology (I loved reading about the Rabbit God) to post-Brexit Great Britain, Hongwei Bao’s debut poetry collection brims with intellect and is wide-ranging in scope. It interjects an acute sensibility into his experience of diaspora and belonging; a pitchfork attuned to quiet transcultural moments that are also luminous moments of intimacy – a brown leather jacket suggesting the potentiality of embodiment, silences that are never just silences – moments that contain tremulous hope, breathless vulnerability, and often, dark sorrow at lost connections and lost understanding. His voice is by turns unabashedly clear and trenchantly honest, by turns passionate and confessional. Attentive to linguistic power structures, stanza shapes, line breaks and blank spaces, as well as the prospect of subversion, these poems puncture the simplicity of words and the appearance of things, to all that flow underneath as human – our ordinary moments, our social transgressions, our hearts and their suffocating cries.’
– Elaine Chiew, author of The Light Between Us
About the Author
Hongwei Bao grew up in Inner Mongolia, China, and lives in Nottingham, UK. He teaches at the University of Nottingham. As a bilingual writer, he uses poetry, short story and creative nonfiction to explore queer desire, Asian identity, diasporic positionality and transcultural intimacy.
Vital Statistics
Imprint: Valley Press
Edition: First (July 2024)
Paperback ISBN: 9781915606389
Catalogue number: VP0226
Page count: 82
Trim size: 216x140mm
