About the Book

When Justine Chan worked as a park ranger at Zion National Park, she chose to retell a Southern Paiute folktale for her weekly evening program on coyotes. The more that long, hot summer unfolded, the more time she spent alone in the desert, the more she retold the story, the more the story became her life. And in that space, she began to write.

Should You Lose All Reason(s) is unafraid of looking hard—back, down, towards, around, forward, at the stories we tell, at herself, at the desert, at the sun, at everything. In conversation with the Southern Paiute folktale, she weaves together a triptych of poems, poems both always on the move and stuck, in exile, in wilderness. Drawing from her experiences serving in AmeriCorps, working as a park ranger, and traveling across the United States, she explores race, loneliness, stories, hauntings, family, landscapes and cityscapes, climate change, survival, music, resilience, the West, and America itself.

At times scorching, at times brimming with awe and desire, this debut book of poems from Chin Music Press resonates with a brilliant new voice.

“Multi-storied and multidimensional, where myths come to life and people turn into stars, Chan’s imaginarium is dazzling.”
— Tiffany Midge, author of THE WOMAN WHO MARRIED A BEAR

Available to order from
Chin Music Press & wherever books are sold!

ISBN: 9781634050456

Early Praise

“Justine Chan’s long poetic narrative embraces a search for belonging in an American landscape and in an American family with linguistic force, passion, and love. People talk about identity all the time, but Chan shows us how to occupy it and hold it in your heart.”

Shawn Wong, author of Homebase

“Justine Chan’s beautiful book, Should You Lose All Reason(s), howls with song, with nourishment, with “bright red bougainvillea spilling over fences.” Through the power of Chan's anaphora, these poems echo across lush landscapes, with “ladders made of juniper trunks.” Chan's lines ask us to wonder and wander, pulling us into visceral ecologies and mythologies that echo with parenthetical ache: “(Sometimes) I (still) can't shake it.” As a fellow Asian American poet, I found this a collection that asks us to look, especially at ourselves—and with a tenderness that we are not often given.”

Jane Wong, author of How Not To Be Afraid of Everything

“At home in the landscapes of the American West, Chan’s poetry is raw and ecstatic, intoxicating and musical, and filled with the textures that can give us meaning, can keep us going. It is a love letter to all the wanderers of the ‘dreams of the desert.’ It is an homage to those who find beauty in the chaos of the city. It is a humble, acute call towards relationships and how each of us are always near to some and far from others.”

Greg Bem, author of Spray and Mist

“Justine Chan’s Should You Lose All Reason(s) is an aching and exhaustive elegy. The poems in this gripping debut seem to suggest if you can just name it, it won't be lost."

Francine J. Harris, author of
Here is the Sweet Hand

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