Diary of a K-Drama Villain - Softcover

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. "THE DIARY OF A K-DRAMA VILLAIN questions, 'what's in between?' to plumb the self and selfie as vernacular subject—as vernacular object—as vernacular space as in '/...our flops on perf English/'. Kang's poems thread body, virtuality, homesphere, suppositions of sexuality via the tilt of the `Asiaphile' through language and cultural registry, 'Here are some fortune cookie truths/to be planted in our neighborhood'. I finished this book and said, 'I'm so Min.'"—mg roberts

"Min Kang's hilarious and terrifying debut collection exposes the drama of our mediated late capitalist everyday—where choice appears to be (equally) endless and meaningless and a heroic effort is required to ensure that the normal is laboriously maintained. This action- thriller-meets-absurdist-ritual-theater- on-a-reality-TV-show-with-'ing. glish'- translation-issues is all the more intense for being both international in scope and at the same time contained by the 'DOMUSPHERE.'"—Laura Mullen

"Min K. Kang's THE DIARY OF A K-DRAMA VILLAIN is alive and subversive: each line undermining misperceptions of the Asian female condition with vinegary wit. Kang reclaims the lyric for the digital age; her style is the Engrish IM, the confessional missive as late night text, shredding that Anna May Wong avatar with vengeance. A startling and vibrant debut."—Cathy Park Hong

"Like a series of `crying selfies,' these poems swoon and feint—what appear to be baubles of a luxurious boredom are, in fact, wry acts of cultural vivisection, diagnosing the quotidian gore required to carve the feminine ideal out of a live body. Kang brings to the fore the brutal fact that, in American culture, the feminine ideal is a construct essential to the core of white identity and creeds of racial purity—a `purity' that she everywhere dismantles with delightfully relentless glee.'"—Lara Glenum

"Min K. Kang's THE DIARY OF A K-DRAMA VILLAIN proliferates and flogs the contemporary condition of dysmorphia. A reckoning of the shame applied to the Other, Kang is a feminist powerhouse who eschews didacticism for brazen elegance."—Lily Hoang

Min K. Kang's poems and other writings have been featured or are forthcoming in Asia Literary Review, Bone Bouquet, New Delta Review, and Tender. She lives and works in Houston, Texas, as a high school English teacher. DIARY OF A K-DRAMA VILLAIN is her first book.