"Mao's third collection probes the world of art to ask how we decide what is beautiful or important, and challenges us to consider the ways culture is shaped by empire and politics."--The New York Times

"The Kingdom of Surfaces is mesmerizing, gorgeous for its attention to language and image, and equally horrifying for what it holds before our gaze and how it challenges that gaze."--Sarah Kain Gotowski, New York Journal of Books

"One of the most ambitious titles of the year, and deserving of serious consideration for the year's major prizes, The Kingdom of Surfaces offers a capacious yet nuanced object study in western imperialism, focusing on the acquisition and imitation of Chinese art in Europe and the U.S. during the chinoiserie rage of the 18th century."-- Preposition Magazine

"The Kingdom of Surfaces is an impossibly rich and complex collection. . . . Sally Wen Mao reasserts her place among the most celebrated writers of our time with her expansive and philosophical third collection."--Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question

"Lineage is a mainstay of The Kingdom of Surfaces. . . . So many gorgeous, sharp lines in this book that often reveal the pain beneath. A stirring collection."--Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions

"Sally Wen Mao's The Kingdom of Surfaces is an honest portrayal of the evils of commodification as well as what we humans are willing to suffer through or cause suffering upon for the sake of beauty."--Maya Williams, Full Stop

"Beautiful descriptive language both contrasts and sets the scene for Mao's explorations of objectification. The Kingdom of Surfaces focuses on the intersectional phenomena of art objects such as vases being looted, sold off, and displaced, and the same happening to oppressed people throughout history."-- Bella Dalton-Fenkl, International Examiner

"The Kingdom of Surfaces is a piercing exploration of how Chinese aesthetics were co-opted by Western culture during Chinamania and the nineteenth-century Aesthetic movement."--Electric Literature

"By turns "maker, muse and beholder," Mao (Oculus) explores in her ruminative third collection the politics of beauty and the ironies inherent in culture and civilization under the sign of empire... Emerging from epic battles and 'wreckage, / wrack of flesh and blood tide, ' Mao brandishes her own tenacious imagination."--Publishers Weekly

"Sally Wen Mao's collection The Kingdom of Surfaces is a profoundly moving reflection on what objectification means for the experience of Asian womanhood. Her poems are hard-hitting, educational, and timely. Most importantly, they are a love letter to her Chinese heritage and its color, messiness, and depth--all of which cannot be captured at museums."--Annelie Hyatt, Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism

"Through poems of profound complexity, in the blending of factual accounts with the sometimes surreal, often sublime, imaginings of the speaker, a finely wrought structure of proof and interrogation, vulnerability, power and, especially, of beauty emerges. The book itself becomes the vessel, complex and strange, yet strong enough to contain all the evidence required to hold history accountable."--Allisa Cherry, West Trade Review

"In The Kingdom of Surfaces, the anger bubbles over, is evident everywhere, and yet these poems have a kind of conversational intimacy that is new to Mao. . . . She distills all the ugliness of these years, and the many years before, down to its grim essence."--Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR