Savage Pageant

Product Description

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. California Studies. Film. SAVAGE PAGEANT recounts the history of the defunct zoo, Jungleland, which housed Hollywood’s show animals up until its closure in 1969. In it, Stark explores the concept of US American spectacle and its historic ties to celebrity culture, the maternal body, racist taxonomies, the mistreatment of animals, and ecological violence. With a hybrid, documentary poetics, SAVAGE PAGEANT reveals how we attempt to narrate and control geographical space and how ghosts (remainders, the sketch, unfinished stories) collapse the tidy corners of our collective, accumulative histories.

About the Author

Jessica Q. Stark is a mixed-race, Vietnamese poet originally from California. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the latest titled
Vasilisa the Wise (Ethel Zine Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in
Pleaides, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Hobart, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, and others. Her first full-length poetry collection is SAVAGE PAGEANT (Birds, LLC). She writes an ongoing poetry zine called
INNANET. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for
AGNI and is a PhD student in English at Duke.