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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
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Book Review: Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold by Dorothy Chan

Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold
Dorothy Chan
Spork Press
2018
978-1-948510-02-8
98 Pages
$18.00


Dorothy Chan is the author of Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, Forthcoming March 2019), Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018), and the chapbook Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). She was a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets, The Cincinnati Review, ​The Common, Diode Poetry Journal, Quarterly West, Jet Fuel Review and elsewhere. Chan is the Editor of The Southeast Review and Poetry Editor of Hobart.
 
Chan is currently a PhD candidate in poetry at Florida State University. She received her MFA in poetry at Arizona State University and her BA in English (cum laude) with a minor in History of Art at Cornell University.



Review





















A Review of Dorothy Chan's Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold by Miguel Soto

Dorothy Chan’s Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold is a collection of poems in three segments: “Snake Daughters,” “My Chinatown, a quadruple crown of sonnets,” and “Centerfolds, Histories, and Fantasies.” Each segment contains an actualization of the speaker’s self, and their position in Chinese-American culture, finding an abundance of beauty and appreciation. Through the satirical mode in each speaker’s voice, Chan delivers a vivid experience of Chinese-American culture, food, and womanhood. The speaker’s experiences is a realization of sexual manifestation, giving into, controlling, and owning the lustful appetite that develops in many human beings.  
 
In Chan’s first section, “Snake Daughters,” the poem “Ode to All My Flings Who Hated Dim Sum,” is a celebration of Chinese-American culture, serving the reader plates of food, history lessons, and sociopolitical critiques. The poem’s first two stanzas are loaded with flavor, which the speaker points out her past “flings” are constantly missing out on:
 
And they’re missing out every time I order
a sampler platter of har gow, shumai, chrysanthemum
 
jelly, and the Chinese version of ravioli, because the Italians
stole all their recipes from East Asia, goddamn it, Marco Polo

Food becomes crucial in many of Chan’s poems, as food is the center point for the speaker’s own realizations when it comes to how people respond to the food she presents them to, or even more simply, the celebration and joy that comes from being in the presence of familiar foods. Chan's speaker in “Ode to All My Flings Who Hated Dim Sum” assures the reader and her past “flings” that the issue is not with her cuisine, but the “flings” themselves: “these men / can’t handle the truth that this isn’t Bizarre Foods for me.” In countering the comments and gestures the speaker’s “flings” make, she adds a feeling of both exasperation and humor for having to deal with the ignorant remarks of the “white boys” she brings into her comfort zone: 
and no, white boy, you can’t handle my food,
you can’t handle me, and I’m not your Asian cupcake,
 
your Chinese wet dream in a slit red slip and pink kimono,
I’m not your stuffed panda that dances when you poke
 
my button, though you say I have the softest skin in the world--
well, it’s sandpaper once I open my big fat mouth.

The speaker refuses to be the object of Anglo-American misperceptions and stereotypes, rejecting the sexual fantasy imposed on her. The last line subverts the fetishizing of “softest skin” with “sandpaper,” mocking both the “white boy” and reader for thinking Chan's speaker ever even cared about being accepted into the confines of the ‘proper’ etiquette often imposed on women, especially non-white women.
 
Moving into Chan’s second section, “My Chinatown, a quadruple crown of sonnets,” the poems connect between historical backgrounds, Chinatown square, family, food, and a multitude of vivid memories, creating mini vignettes of experiences as a Chinese-American in the U.S. Chan’s segments are full of rich stories, critique, humor, and emotional range. In “Welcome to the Family,” the speaker amuses a “High Roller of Hong Kong’s Happy Hour” for a while, considering commitment versus passion. While the “High Roller” decides to meet the speaker’s grandmother, her displeasure shows in her comical stance: 
Is this the 21st century romance of 
seeing your man once a year, then swiping right
the rest of the time just to keep busy?
The poem’s rhetorical question examines the authenticity of the commitment ensuing. The speaker entertains the unnamed “High Roller” out of commitment, but her own disinterest surfaces, revealing her refusal to accept the fabricated “love story.” Chan’s section “My Chinatown, a quadruple crown of sonnets” sticks to the fourteen-line form, but is transformative in line variation, theme, and subject.
 
Progressing into the third section, “Centerfolds, Histories, and Fantasies,” Chan’s titular “Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold with the Killer Legs” encompasses the titillating motifs throughout Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold. The speaker’s purpose throughout each poem reclaims sexuality from objectification, refusing to be the object of the male gaze; instead, choosing to be the subject that she commands to be, because “this is LA, and women will have it all.” The "centerfold" proves how she commands her surroundings, coming down from the billboard, and stating, “King Kong only needed Faye, but a woman like me needs one hundred men.” The speaker’s authority “attacks” expected gendered conventions, shifting her position from the desired object as Faye, to the attacking giant, becoming the subject, but with the ability to direct the scene: 
my men run to Fredrick’s to pick up
the first-ever-Double-Z-cup-bra with matching black
lace panties, because I’ve been nude this whole time,
and I know you love it, so stop looking,
Chan’s “centerfold” demands and directs the attention of the scene, displaying autonomy over her own body and actions, and demonstrating the agency earned in refusing to be degraded by the men on their terms. The “centerfold” speaker exercises her influence over the men and scene: “I dare ten of them to lick me, but they freeze / at my womanhood.” Chan’s direction over her lines and language illustrates the unexpected turns of what she asks for, and what is actually acted on. Chan’s control over her lines conducts the shift in emotion, being able to depict the satire behind the significance of the “fifty-foot centerfold.” Instead of allowing the giant “centerfold” to run with bewilderment, the “centerfold” owns her sexuality, and knows exactly how to work it in her favor.
 
Dorothy Chan’s Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold is a journey of accomplishment and acceptance of the poems’ speaker’s Chinese-American origin, sexual fruition, and dominion over appetite. Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold is for the reader looking to experience the fulfillment of living in complete control over one’s own body, fears, desires, and oppositions. Dorothy Chan creates a world where her lead woman lives just as she pleases, and her pleasure becomes the reader’s own pleasure. 

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Miguel is the Asst. Managing Editor and Book Review Editor for Jet Fuel Review. As an editor, one of his main concerns is giving a space to marginalized voices, centralizing on narratives often ignored. He loves reading radical, unapologetic writers, who explore the emotional and intellectual stresses within political identities and systemic realities. His own writings can be found in OUT / CAST: A Journal of Queer Midwestern Writing and Art, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Rogue Agent. He writes for the Jet Fuel Review blog in Not Your Binary: A QTPOC Reading Column.
​

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  • Home
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
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      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
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      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
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      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
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