"[2] Chen stated he and his peers were surprised that the book was considered "Asian American literature"; Chen was "just ... trying to write honestly about my life" and instead considered a wide range of influences beyond, "say, Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior": "Alain Resnais movies, Louis Aragon, Love and Rockets comics, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Ingeborg Bachmann, Chekhov, the romantic voice of Raymond Chandler, and Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective."

Chen then subsequently stated that ethnic identity, as a poet, was complicated: he found that it was generally "understood by the dominant, largely white literary center" but also didn't want to cast off or consider himself "an exception to race.

"[2] Publishers Weekly lauded Chen's experimentation with his poetic form and his approach to Chinese American identity, stating he "deserves attention for his daring invention, for the heretofore unknown hybrids throughout his work.

Poems explore communication, family, and heartbreak in a range of frameworks: dream, argument, novella, letter, monologue.

"[6] Boston Review called the book "a memorable, beautiful-yet-sly, powerful debut" and appreciated how Chen "walks the high wire between deeply felt trauma and poetic artifact.