Dorothy Chan’s work is electric. It glitters, it bites, it dares you to look—and then dares you to look deeper. From the moment I first encountered her poetry, I knew I was holding something alive. Teaching Return of the Chinese Femme, 2025 Lammy Award in Bisexual Poetry Finalist, has been one of the most joyful and liberatory experiences of my career. My students are drawn to her voice because it doesn’t flinch. Because it reclaims glamour without apology. Because it speaks to the parts of themselves they’ve been told to shrink.
Dorothy doesn’t just write femme—she embodies it, queers it, politicizes it. In her poems, food is pleasure, fashion is armor, and desire is power. She refuses to be flattened into trope or token. Through lush repetition, sonic seduction, and sharp wit, she flips the gaze back on itself. And yet, beneath all the sparkle, her poems pulse with tenderness, memory, vulnerability. They hold joy and defiance in the same breath. Over time, Dorothy has become more than just a poet I admire—she’s become a sister, both on and in the work. Someone who reminds me that softness is strength, that camp can be critique, that the full-course dinner is the revolution. I was so honored to sit down with her to talk about femme iconography, resistance through glam, and what it means to write ourselves back into the center—on our own terms, in full technicolor.
Darius Phelps: You write, “I’m not your fetish. I’m your full-course dinner”—a powerful reclaiming of the self through food, hunger, and glamour. Can you talk about how food, desire, and spectacle intersect as forms of resistance in Return of the Chinese Femme?
Dorothy Chan: I love this question. As a poet, I’m always searching for something—what I like to call “X,” that ineffable thing we chase as artists. And the metaphor I use is that I’m swimming in this vast, dark ocean. It’s terrifying in some ways, but I’m not afraid. I know that once I find that thing, I’ll feel it in every part of my being—physically, emotionally, spiritually.
Sometimes X is a memory. Like sitting down to a ten-course meal in Hong Kong with my grandparents on my mom’s side. It’s not just about food—it’s about time, place, and the longing that transcends both. A meal might seem simple, but it holds so much weight: cultural memory, identity, family. Food becomes a placeholder for something bigger—something deeply rooted in desire and connection.
I think so much of femme identity is about negotiating desire, especially when the dominant gaze—white, heteronormative, male—is trying to fetishize or flatten you. Growing up, I questioned my gender, my sexuality, constantly. But I believe in fluidity. That’s part of what the ocean metaphor represents. Desire becomes a shield, a power source in my poetry. Femme, for me, is never just one thing. It’s layered. It’s performance and truth. It’s power.
DP: This collection exudes boldness but also reveals profound vulnerability. How do you navigate being seen as a Chinese femme in America—on your own terms and through the gaze of others? And how do you see the poem as a mirror, shield, or even runway?
DC: I love the image of the runway! It reminds me of something Michael Kors used to say on Project Runway when he saw the right dress on the right model—“She turned the corner, and I felt something.” That’s what I want my poetry to do. To evoke that indescribable something.
When I was naming this book, I knew “femme” had to be in the title. As someone who resists the gender binary, I’m interested in how femme can be expansive—how it can hold fluidity, power, queerness, race, and cultural hybridity. Being a Chinese femme, especially with Hong Kong heritage, inherently means you’re crossing oceans—literally and metaphorically.
I also draw a lot from pop culture. Sailor Neptune is my favorite Sailor Scout, and Sailor Moon was a formative part of my childhood. Those transformation sequences? That’s poetry. There’s something magical and unapologetic in those moments. And I think poets work with persona in very much the same way. The poem becomes a version of ourselves that might be bolder or more confident—but it’s still us.
I’ll never forget something Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, my mentor at Cornell, taught me: you write the persona that gives you the courage to become who you already are. That’s the magic. The mask doesn’t hide—it reveals.
DP: Many of your poems radiate with pop culture, fashion, and femme iconography—Riverdale, Sex and the City, dim sum, glamour—but they’re never hollow. How do you balance play and critique in those references?
DP: That balance comes from love. I’ve been studying pop culture for a long time—not just formally, but from my own experience as a queer kid growing up in a very white suburb. I spent weekends watching Turner Classic Movies, immersing myself in Old Hollywood. I think that’s where I developed this appreciation for aesthetics, glamour, but also subversion.
There’s this fascinating space I return to in my work—a kind of “nostalgia for something I never lived.” Like, I wasn’t there for the Golden Age of Hollywood, or the original Archie Comics heyday, but I still feel deeply connected to them. Riverdale is a great example—it’s campy and wild, but it also transcends time and place. It mixes retro with the contemporary. And if you trace that set-up back to Archie Comics, Riverdale as a place transcends. Sometimes Riverdale is a small town with one diner; other times, it’s next to New York City. If the comic artist wants Veronica Lodge to go on a shopping spree, suddenly, Riverdale has this huge shopping mall. That elasticity, that refusal to be fixed, is something I admire—and replicate in poetry.
I’m also deeply inspired by scholars like Karen Tongson, who talk about how queer kids of color often develop deep attachments to American pop culture as a survival tactic. It’s about finding yourself in the in-between—being both critical and celebratory. I hold multiple truths in my poems. I can love Sex and the City and still call out its flaws. That tension is the work.
DP: Your voice throughout this collection is lush—repetitive, rhythmic, sharp. How do you approach sonic texture in revision? Are there particular poets or musicians who influence your sound?
Chan: Thank you! I love thinking about sonic texture—it’s so important. I do a lot of work with sound in revision. There’s this almost musical quality I’m chasing in my poems, this cadence that has to feel right in the mouth, on the page, and in the body.
I’ve been blessed with incredible mentors: Norman Dubie, Alberto Ríos, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Jeannine Savard, Alice Fulton, Richard Siken, Douglas Kearney, David St. John, Joanie Mackowski, Michael Koch, Stephanie Vaughn. I carry their voices with me when I write. I also teach creative writing, and my students often inspire me—especially in terms of staying present with younger generations and the conversations they’re having.
As for music? I love classical music when I need to quiet my mind. It calms me, allows me to enter that oceanic space. But I also listen to a lot of Top 40—Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter. It energizes me. I think the best poems can hold both: the structure and the shimmer.
DP: You once said “writing femme is political.” What does returning to the Chinese femme mean for you in this moment—and what do you hope young queer Asian femmes find within these pages?
DC: It means creating space—for myself, for others, for those still finding their voices. I can’t speak for every experience, but I know what it’s like to feel othered, to be told you’re too much or not enough. Returning to the Chinese femme is my way of reclaiming joy, fluidity, and power.
As a professor, I always tell my students: I’m not here to tell you what to think. I’m here to give you tools to question the world. To see how language can be a form of resistance. And poetry, when done well, can do that—it can offer comfort, knowledge, even liberation. I want young queer Asian femmes to know they’re not alone. That they are seen, not just on screens but in books, in language, in history. I want them to feel the possibility when they read this collection. That’s what Return of the Chinese Femme is about: beauty, bite, and becoming.
Darius Phelps is a poet, educator, and scholar whose work explores grief, identity, and liberation through poetic inquiry. He is a Poetry Co-Editor at Matter, Associate Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, and the author of the forthcoming My God’s Been Silent.
Dorothy Chan (she/they) is the author of five poetry collections, including Return of the Chinese Femme (Deep Vellum, 2024); BABE (Diode Editions, 2021), a 2022 finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize from the New England Poetry Club; Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019), a finalist for the 2023 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry; Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018); and the chapbook, Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017), selected by Douglas Kearney for the 6th Annual New Delta Review Chapbook Contest. They are a two-time Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation and a 2019 recipient for the Philip Freund Prize in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Chan is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and Founder of Honey Literary Inc., a 501(c)(3) BIPOC literary arts organization. They were a 2022 recipient of the University of Wisconsin System’s Dr. P.B. Poorman Award for Outstanding Achievement on Behalf of LGBTQ+ People. Chan’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2025, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Society of America, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. Visit their website at dorothypoetry.com.