Mary Jean Chan
Chan is the author and often the subject of her poems. Since a primary conflict in her life has been identity, she writes frequently about acceptance, rejection, and secrecy. Her queerness is central in poems like "The Window" and "Names" because her relationship to her mother is strictly defined by this obstacle of ideology. Chan embraces her identity, but she lives with a great deal of shame about how she relates to her mother and respectively to her lovers. Throughout her writing she demonstrates a large capacity for empathy and a commitment to family.
Her Mother
Chan's mother is a frequent guest in her poems. Their relationship is one of mutual longing, much love, and bitter heartbreak. Lonely figures, they both desire the other's approval, but their relationship is complicated by generational differences, by cultural differences, and by the very nature of parenting. In "what my mother (a poet) might say" Chan writes line after line exposing beautiful, intimate truths about her mom, but she crosses them all out, leaving only the impersonal. She gives the impression that her mom struggles to practice vulnerability and self-acceptance.
The Lover
Chan doesn't reference a single lover by name, but she talks often about female relationships. The subject of "Names," forever unnamed, is her representative of the lover. This woman remains beloved but shut out of Chan's family life in order to protect her from Chan's mother's disapproval of the romantic nature of their relationship. In her estimation, Chan believes her lover doesn't understand the secrecy and is most likely hurt. She reasserts how important the lover is to her and how badly she wants them to succeed.
