Thousand Star Hotel

Poems from a father, a refugee, an activist resisting the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor.

Thousand Star Hotel confronts the silence around racism, police brutality, and the invisibility of the Asian American urban poor.

Publication date: July 5, 2017

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 112 pages

ISBN: 9781566894708

This project made possible with special funding from the Fringe Foundation.

Thanks to a 2013 ADA Access Improvement Grant administered by VSA Minnesota for the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, this title is also formatted for screen readers which make text accessible to the blind and visually impaired. To purchase this title for use with a screen reader please email us at info@coffeehousepress.org.

Bao Phi is a multiple-time Minnesota Grand Slam poetry champ and National Poetry Slam finalist who has been on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and whose work was included in the Best American Poetry anthology of 2006. He is the author of Sông I Sing and is currently the program director of the Loft Literary Center.

Winner of the 2017 Poetry Center Book Award

“[Phi’s] irreverent profundity shines in prose poems and fixed forms alike.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“The strength of this book comes from the clear and forceful voice. The words leap off the pages, half alive already. . . . A fierce, burning indictment of racism and xenophobia.”

—Chicago Review of Books

“A cutting collection of poems about growing up a refugee, becoming a father, feeling surrounded by police brutality and the invisibility of poor Asian-Americans.”

—NPR’s Code Switch

“Filled with snapshots of the American immigrant experience, intense love for family, and deep empathy for community, . . . Thousand Star Hotel, challenges racism, police brutality, and the silencing invisibility of the Asian American urban poor.”

—Bustle

“Written with immense empathy and honesty, Thousand Star Hotel is a moving, heartbreakingly beautiful portrait of the lives of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S.”

—BuzzFeed

“There’s sparkling range within these poems, and the reach is fluid. . . . [Phi] takes disparate and precise moments of family, work, fatherhood, and shows their wider echo.”

—The Millions

“Equal parts heartbreaking and bitingly funny. . . . This volume is a must-read for readers seeking a greater understanding of race, but also for any reader who has children or parents, experienced heartbreak, or just loves the sound of finely wrought lines.”

—The Star Tribune

“[Phi] has few peers that can match him in his assessment of contemporary culture and social justice.”

—Cultural Weekly

“[Phi's] poems alternate between the profane and the provocative as they deal with war and history, love and heartbreak, the inner city and the inner self. A powerful read, a gutsy writer.”

—Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Bao Phi carries an honest, powerful voice, and he is not afraid to look into the boiling pots of his past or the roiling violence in America and abroad.”

—Tara Betts

“A vividly inward look at an Asian American experience that never flinches from the hard realizations of humanity.”

—Tyehimba Jess