At first you may balk at Cathy Park Hong's second collection of poetry, written in a made-up language called Desert Creole (an amalgam of pidgin English, Spanish, Latin and Korean), but you'll soon fall under her mesmerizing cadences. What unfolds is the intriguing life journey that has led a young Korean revolutionary, from both the Kwangju uprising and the Dance Dance Revolution, to her current role as hotel tour guide in a city called the Desert.