More than just a portrait of an iconic NYC locale and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard, this book is also a memoir about grief, healing, art, and reinvention.

Mao writes to escape being "trapped in someone else's imagination," literally shaping poems that challenge empire, cultural plunder, and the ongoing violence Asian people experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, both in the U.S. and her birthplace of Wuhan.