INFO
| Name | Chinese Fish |
| Year | 2023 |
| Writer(s) | Grace Yee |
| Publisher | Giramondo Publishing |
| Type of Text | Poetry |
| Artform | Literature |
ABOUT
Chinese Fish is a critically acclaimed verse novel by Grace Yee, recognised with major literary awards in both Australia, where Yee now resides, and Aotearoa New Zealand, where she was raised. Published in June 2023 by Giramondo, an independent imprint affiliated with Western Sydney University, Chinese Fish is Yee’s debut collection.
The verse novel follows the lives of three generations of Chinese women in Aotearoa. It is innovative in its form, weaving together multiple voices with text sourced from archives such as newspapers, legislation and advertisements. Yee has said:
The earliest drafts for Chinese Fish were inspired by stories I heard growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand. At the beginning, many of these drafts were sketches, portraits, flash fictions, dialogues and monologues.
The collection has been received with acclaim. Aotearoa Poet Laureate, Chris Tse, described the work as “An unflinchingly honest look at life behind closed doors, where resentment simmers, generations clash, and individual dreams are set aside for the interests of family.” Writing for the Saturday Paper, Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen wrote: “What sets this work apart is its daring approach — it leaps across genres and forms, sometimes on a single page [...] Chinese Fish is a layered and thoughtful work that reveals more through multiple readings”.
In 2024, Chinese Fish won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, as well as the ceremony’s top honour, the Victorian Prize for Literature (from a field of over 800 books). Yee was the first poet in over a decade to win this prize, for which she received AUD$100,000 as well as AUD$25,000 for the poetry award. In their comments, the judges noted the attention that Chinese Fish pays to women’s experiences. Yee has described how the feminist dimension of the work is expressed through its form:
Each narrator was given a unique voice and place on the page. I gave the key Chinese women characters —Ping, and her daughter Cherry—space to tell their own stories, bearing in mind (the history of) settler Chinese women’s tendency to self-efface and ‘make themselves small’ on public platforms. So the poems narrated in Ping’s voice are mostly formatted in short lines and narrow columns that reflect the ways she has learned to minimise her presence in-the-world. Her words are italicised because it’s significant that she has a voice at all. Cherry’s brief asides amidst the omniscient narratives are protected by well-spaced parentheses, and her first-person lyrics offer intimate glimpses into the ‘inside’ Chinese world in a form that has more affinity with the mainstream, thereby bridging the space between them.
After Chinese Fish won the Victorian Prize for Literature, it sold out, requiring Giramondo to reprint the book several times to meet demand. It was also the winner of the Poetry prize at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
LINKS
Key awards
2024 — Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards: Prize for Literature
2024 — Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards: Prize for Poetry
