June Gehringer is the author of I love you it looks like rain and EVERYONE IS A BIG BUG TO SOMEONE. Gehringer’s collection of poetry, I Don’t Write About Race, attempts to explore Gehringer’s struggle with her identity as a mixed Chinese trans woman living in America. I Don’t Write About Race deals with complex issues including gender, mental illness, and race. However, the simplicity of the poems does not give these issues the space they deserve. Instead, it seems that the collection relies entirely on its complex issues for value but does not fully explore the implications of those issues. This is disappointing, considering it seems that the entire purpose of the text is to explore identity.

The collection begins with the section titled “I don’t write about race”. The title of this section, indeed the title of the entire collection, sets up the expectation that Gehringer will in fact write about race. While that discussion takes place, Gehringer places the duty of unpacking the message entirely on the reader. She writes, “I don’t write about race, / I write about erasure. / I write only, and always / about myself.” The fact that she only writes about herself comes off as self-indulgent and isolates the reader from the text. The reader is further isolated by the lack of context—Gehringer presents complex issues and complex characters but does not fully explore them. In fact, in the author’s note, Gehringer claims that the book was written as an attempt at understanding herself. However, she concludes, “Having finished the book, I don’t feel I understand myself any more than I did when I began. Rather, I have realized that my identity is too complex to be understood. The best I can hope for, I think, is to be able to give voice to my complication and my confusion”. In admitting this, it seems that the purpose of the book was not fulfilled, not even for Gehringer, and especially not for the reader. There is certainly value in exploring the self within the text, but it seems quite dismissive for the final conclusions to appear outside of the space of the poetry, and, as previously mentioned, it isolates the reader from the text. The reader is left with the same confusion and complication that Gehringer seems to feel, which could work wonderfully, had it been deliberate. Instead, it seems that the work is carelessly constructed.

Perhaps the most important fault in the text is the lack of context. Because Gehringer does not let the reader into her world, it is difficult to understand the characters within the text, and ultimately, it’s difficult to see them as well-rounded. As a reader (and especially as a racial minority), I find that I care about the characters only because I care about the issues that Gehringer attempted to explore in the book.

Ultimately, June Gehringer’s book, while a quick and entertaining read, did not provide the discussion of complex issues that I expected and hoped it would. The poetry does not push the boundaries of thought or form, causing the collection to fall flat because of its simplicity. Perhaps it is because the text explores the self that it excludes the reader, making it appear too self-indulgent.