Tairan Qiu – “The New Year’s Outbreak” and “When?”
I’m a doctoral student in the Language and Literacy Education Department at UGA. I was born and raised in Kunming, China and enjoy living in Georgia because the landscape and weather here are similar to that of my hometown. For my research, I work with young immigrants from China and explore their literacies and transnational lives. In my spare time, I enjoy cooking, hiking, and spending time with my husband and dog. The current project includes two bilingual poems that I wrote at different stages of the pandemic. In January, during Lunar New Year, I wrote “The New Year’s Outbreak” to express my longing for celebrations and time with family, and my worries and guilt for my country due to early outbreaks of the novel coronavirus. The second poem “When?” is a sequel to the first poem. It’s about my experiences of outbreaks in the U.S., at a later time.