Good Luck Gold & more

This book will make you feel, many dif­fer­ent feel­ings. It is filled with poet­ry and a short essay about the poem on the fac­ing page. There are two or three ques­tions at the bot­tom of each essay that encour­age dig­ging deep­er … into your own experience.

I admire Janet Wong for the books she writes, and the work she does with chil­dren and the chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture com­mu­ni­ty, and the pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny she found­ed, Pome­lo Books.

This book is for every­one. It is about Janet’s life, grow­ing up the daugh­ter of an Amer­i­can-born father of Chi­nese fore­bears and a moth­er born in Korea. She and her fam­i­ly have expe­ri­enced racism and that is a facet of the poems and essays. Much of it is about every­day life, birth­day par­ties and grand­par­ents and vis­it­ing sick peo­ple and art con­tests and dogs and funer­als … expe­ri­ences and rela­tion­ships so many of us have in common.

It’s also about spe­cif­ic expe­ri­ences that peo­ple with cul­tur­al tra­di­tions that might dif­fer from our own can enjoy learn­ing. I like that aspect of the book very much because then I can feel a con­nec­tion, know­ing that we are dif­fer­ent in our back­grounds but alike in our wish­es and dreams.

At the end of “The Vis­it,” a poem about a par­ent leav­ing, and the accom­pa­ny­ing essay about Janet’s father trav­el­ing for work and even­tu­al­ly divorc­ing her moth­er, these ques­tions are asked:

What do you wor­ry about?
What can you tell your wor­ry­ing self?
Is there any­one who needs your help?

You deserve this book. Your class­room and your library need this book. For a group or an indi­vid­ual, there are so many ways to appre­ci­ate this book and find it use­ful, help­ful. A con­ver­sa­tion starter, yes, but also a med­i­ta­tion. And the poet­ry is masterful.