FROM THE PUBLISHER

Alan Chong Lau's poetic memoir of his days as a produce worker in Seattle's Chinatown reveals a microcosm of grassroots, working-class Asian America-a world where customers, workers, and fruits and vegetables intersect in exchanges that crackle with energy and brim over with humor.

With the simple profundity of a Zen koan, the poems bear witness to people's humanity. Lau portrays in words and pictures a community in constant flux as it moves to the push and pull of immigration. Blues and Greens has a lot to say about Asian Americans. What emerges is an acutely observed, nuanced critique of where Asian Americans-native-born, refugee, and migrant-are today.QUOTES: "In this sensuous, often witty book, one is struck from the first page onward with how completely this poet lives a 'life considered.' No one I know writes with more sensitivity about the nature of life and work than Alan Lau, and few poets explore so honestly the nature of living in a community with others who have had to live complex and difficult lives."-Gail Tremblay

"Reading the poems of Alan Lau has been for me like coming unexpectedly upon a living green oasis when crossing a desert. Lau's poems speak for and embrace an entire people, a tragic century, and from his eloquence and modesty and compassion the identity of this fine poet comes to enduring life."-Kay Boyle