Dr. Pamela Pan

New from Finishing Line Press: What Does Happiness Look Like? by Pamela Pan   On SALE:    finishinglinepress.com/produ…   In her second poetry collection, What Does Happiness Look Like?, Pamela Panmoves from Shanghai to California,from the Cultural Revolution to the modern classroom, across oceans and generations. In her title poem, she traces happiness through different stages of her life: strolling pebbled paths in college, tasting metallic poverty in graduate school, lifting the skies like pillars as a mother, and writing to kindle light after her children have grown. In “Regrets of a Dandelion Seed,” she reckons with the cost of being a dandelion seedfloating across the ocean, leaving her root-bound mother. In “I’ve Never Finished a Book Before,” she recounts how a migrant field worker in her classroomdiscovers that he is not alone and that his story—and his parents’—deserve to be told.What Does Happiness Look Like?draws readers into stories of migration, motherhood, and teachingand lets them discover unexpected joyand abundance.#migration #memory #love #family #motherhood #poetry #teaching  PRAISE:   Pamela’s poetic pitch and tonality remind us of the connection between love and home, a teacher’s guidance, bonds forged between classmates, the sacrifice of laborers who gave up their youth for their country’s dreams. Her poems about her mother in “Regrets of a Dandelion Seed,” “Mama’s Hujian,” and “Wonton Soup” are crafted like beautiful love letters. In other poems Pamela confronts the ravages of time and posits that we survive what life throws us like orchids withstanding wildfire. She asks why time carves some of us more deeply than others, suggesting the blade of time is no match for “Those whose rivers never slow, never pool or stagnate, who dive deep for glinting words, scale the banks for fresh perspective…” and concludes, “Even the sharpest blade of time grows dull against a current that will not be still…” Pamela’s poems are to be read and savored, and read again.   –Linda Drattell, award-winning poet and author of Remember this Day and The Lighter Side of Horse Manure Pamela Pan has done it again. In this stunning new collection, the people in her life become friends and family of your own. Within these pages, you feel each person’s pain, heartache, resilience, and growth, as if you’ve known them forever.Through brilliantly crafted verses, she transports readers to distant places that linger in the mind’s eye like a vivid dream. This is a journey that demands a quiet corner, a cup of tea, and a box of tissues. Prepare to be moved by a voice that understands the deepest corners of the human heart.   –Monique Rardin Richardson Poet and author of The Evolution of My Smile and Pieces of Me   In her second collection of poetry, Pamela Pan weaves self-awareness into ballads of hope and happiness. “I am wrapped in a world spun from syllables to sing verses only I know.” Through life’s stages as a daughter, mother, and teacher, she learned “love could be exhaustion” and “joy could live inside bone-deep weariness.” The ravishing details and powerful images also speak to the universal experience of confronting adversity. “Even on the darkest days I flick regrets from my wings.” And when “I push through the clouds again, to soar in the hope-lit sky,” the reader cheers her on. –Constance Hanstedt, Author of Don’t Leave Yet, How My Mother’s Alzheimer’s Opened My Heart and Treading Water   Please share/please repost  #FLP #preorder #poetry #booktok #poetrytiktok

NEW FROM FINISHING LINE PRESS: Tasting Moments by Pamela Pan On SALE:   finishinglinepress.com/produ…   Tasting Moments celebrates the strength of ordinary people as they gain wisdom and embrace new possibilities. Rooted in personal history but resonant with universal truths, these twenty-one poems delve into themes of love, family, nature, healing, and the passage of time. This chapbook offers a space to pause, reflect, and savor fleeting yet significant experiences. With a voice that is intimate and evocative, the collection invites readers to taste the power of remembrance and the richness of living, one moment at a time. #poetry #love #family #memory #life #friendship   Pamela Pan is an English professor at San Joaquin Delta College and a writer of poetry, essay, and fiction. She has a PhD from the University of California, Davis, a Master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a Bachelor’s from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.   Pamela Pan’s Social Media Links @Pamelalpan @pamelapanwriter   PRAISE FOR Tasting Moments by Pamela Pan   Pamela Pan’s poetry collection jumps out of the starting gate from her very first poem, challenging us to “Release the ‘I can’t’ shackles.” Family ties are delicately described: the culinary wisdom of her mother and grandmother, a trip home to Tianjin where healing her mother helps her heal herself, description of an uncle who was her bulwark at a time when she was most fragile, a wedding anniversary where the celebration of time rejoices each moment spent together. She shares when a mother learns her son only has one hundred days left to live, compares passengers on a train to the sorghum of the earth, describes time as having slipped through one’s fingers “like kernels of golden unhusked rice.” Her lyrical poem of a close friend who takes her own life, in Snow Lotus, is heartrending as we get to know the girl, her innocence, her beauty, and her inability to protect herself from the undeserved shame cast by others. Pamela’s deft use of metaphor rouses us, insists that we feel what the narrator in each of her poems feels; this is a collection to be savored and read over and over again, find the nuggets you’ve missed the first go around, for there are many. –Linda Drattell, award-winning poet and author, Remember This Day and The Lighter Side of Horse Manure   Pamela Pan’s Tasting Moments is more than a poetry collection. Her life stories, filled with family, friends, and cherished memories, are a priceless treasure of wisdom passed through generations. Pamela’s poems are deeply moving portrayals of our world and society, often bringing readers, such as myself, to tears. So, please have a tissue ready, especially for poems like 100 Days. Pamela’s observance of human behavior and her gift to articulate such heavy and diverse emotions from those she’s met is impressive, and I applaud her. Her poems speak to the universal emotions we all experience, making us feel understood and less alone. –Monique Rardin Richardson, author of When Then Became Now and Pieces of Me.   I will read Tasting the Moments by Pamela Pan over and over. These are poems of resilience, grounded in deep affection for her family and people around her.   She sings the praises of strong individuals—her grandma who taught the life-affirming power of food, the uncle who fought “the merciless corrosive agent of time,” workers and peasants who are “the sorghum of this planet”—while reminding each one of us “you are the swan on the lake, the queen and king of your own life.” I highly recommend this collection of poems for Pan’s honesty, imagery and passion for writing. –Constance Hanstedt, Author of Treading Water and Don’t Leave Yet, How My Mother’s Alzheimer’s Opened My Heart.   Please share/repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #read #poems #literature #poetry