A survival manifesto and celebration song both, Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines by Natalie Wee, special edition, is reimagined as both poetry collection and art object. This book asks us to consider what it means to exist in bodies that are pathways to extremes of grief and joy. Illustrating the body as a site of resistance, lineage, and testimony from the lens of a queer racialized immigrant woman, this collection invites you to explore both the tremendous suffering and radiant possibilities of living: “watch me swallow / the hardest thing / my body has made / & live.”
LOW-BARRIER ACCESS
Teh People Studio has allocated a percentage of books set at a low-barrier price. Please contact tehpeoplestudio@gmail.com for details!
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All preorders of this chapbook included the limited-edition 5"x11" risograph print illustrated by Wenting Li at no extra cost.
“Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines is a stunning book for countless reasons, but first and foremost is Natalie Wee's command of form, and desire to take risks — not only narratively, but in the way the poems appear to a reader. This is a book that earns its many rich complexities, and offers several more than worthwhile payoffs.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Fortune For Your Disaster
“Natalie Wee’s poems are ‘alchemists / of tenderness, / teething vowels for vows.’ These are love songs to remind queer and racialized body why we must continue living, why we deserve a future against the daily violence of imperialism. Our Bodies and Other Fine Machines will “make a nation out of anyone that holds you,” and Wee’s voice sings with the luminous declaration that ‘I lived: every border a gutting: I lived.’”
—Rebecca Salazar Leon, author of sulphurtongue
“In the bejewelled landscape of contemporary queer poetry, Natalie Wee's work is a subtle gem. Once you've seen it, you can't help but keep coming back to take another look. The second edition of Our Bodies and Other Fine Machines, exemplifies Wee's talents — mastery of form, razor-sharp emotional acuity, and gorgeous, visceral imagery. These poems thrum with fierce intelligence and unrelenting purpose, each one revealing yet another facet of Wee's fearless meditation on love, lust, pain, and pleasure from the vantage point of a queer woman of colour. Wee excavates the body with the precision of a diamond-tipped scalpel, cutting through the hypocrisies and moral pretensions of our time to give us pure feeling laid bare.”
—Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World
“In a heartbreakingly vulnerable collection of poems, Natalie Wee shows us that love can be a tender, quiet affection, and an all-encompassing yearning. Unafraid to reveal the vulnerable parts of oneself that we usually keep hidden due to shame and distrust, Wee writes with viscerally aching honesty and leans into fear, into an existence beyond that.”
—Beni Xiao, author of bad egg
