"Henry Wei Leung’s Goddess of Democracy explores Hong Kong’s political uncertainties as primarily exposed by the Umbrella Revolution, deploying sophisticated poems fraught with political (and personal) ambivalences that he grounds through copious journalistic explanations of various events via epigraphs and one dedicated prose section. Through this simple combination of lyric and documentation, Leung’s book simultaneously seeks and challenges the viability of the historical moment as one supposedly situated within a coherent political narrative. It sings the anger of revolution, but with a distinct dissonance, a song that both wavers on the edges of noise and is attenuated by memory’s density."

Ryo Yamaguchi | Jacket2

"The poems in this collection are intimate and deeply moving, writing as both witness but inquisitor as well, articulating grief, horror and trauma, as well as an appreciation for the small mercies possible through and around the fragile question of democracy. His poems offer neither shortcut nor solution, but articulate a restlessness and deep attention; writing not to argue what to do through moving forward, but the possibility of moving forward at all, leaving nothing and no one behind."

Rob McLennon