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. With unflinching and cosmopolitan imagination, Hong's lines boldly create a hyper-globalized future, where the Desert in 2016 is comprised of pleasure hotels themed after world cities. While most of Hong's genius lies in her language the heart of her collection lies in the interlinked humanity of her characters and in their lifechanging choices. The pleasure of this book is its success in immersing readers in a poetic language that is both completely foreign, and yet, utterly familiar; and in rousing us to the possibility of an imagined future that may be all too reminiscent of the present. -Maiana Minahal