RavePloughsharesCathy Park Hong’s sonorous triptych Engine Empire reshapes the Western’s tropes into a chilling interrogation of digitally facilitated detachment ... Hong’s tight lines spin dialect into its own critique, using extremes in language to render extremes in environment. Her omission of many articles and coordinating conjunctions creates a highly compressed syntax built from only essential components ... While Hong’s diction turns more contemporary, its mournful tone recalls the bloodshed of colonialist expansion ... Hong’s brazen metaphors and determined personas transform a history of trauma into a sensitivity to the conditions of human survival.
