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藍白拖

if I extradited myself from my body cleaved into infinite / particles you’d never step all over me at once

By Emily Yang
Poetry | Emily Yang, slipper, 藍白拖
September 10, 2019

The iconic Taiwanese 藍白拖 blue and white sandals, often worn by middle-aged, working-class people, are also often the standard-issue shoes worn by prisoners in Taiwan.

Meditating on the weights we put on our own feet and the weights others put on us, Emily Yang’s poem steps into acts of submission and fragmentation, with a layered voice recording that embodies the “multiples” presently under the threat of Beijing’s central government.

As the third installment of the Transpacific Literary Project’s Slipper folio, this multi-dimensional work thinks deeply with the identities and materials that carry us through this world.


 

to stand with hk: for marco leung, lo hiu-yan, zhita wu, those who came before & those who will come after