Moth Sutra: For Bicycle Delivery Men, New York City

First Bilingual Edition (2026) | English and Chinese language | Full color portfolio
Chinese translator: Xie Xinqiu

 

by Russell C. Leong

 

UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press
Contact: aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu

 

"What do migrants and refugees deliver to America?," is a question often asked these days. Through his lyrical poems and powerful graphic images in MOTH SUTRA, acclaimed poet Russell C. Leong suggests that migrants and refugees build community and history, and deliver their unique visions of both the past and the future, thereby enriching the human dream for America today.

 

MOTH SUTRA is a graphic portfolio of interlinked poems and illustrations about an Asian delivery man who rides a bicycle throughout Manhattan as he cycles through his life from the East to the West-past, present, and future. Leong created MOTH SUTRA to honor a community of migrant workers, friends, and strangers–a motley part of New York Chinatown society including bird trainers, Buddhists, barbers, cooks, bakers, waiters, martial artists, ginseng dealers, painters, and, of course, fast-food bicycle delivery men. Leong, speaking, joking, or cursing with them in broken Cantonese or Mandarin, charts their journey, "rising in the East, falling to the West" through lyrical poetry and pictures drawn with brush, together with stamps from his own images.

 

Unlike the subjects of Walt Whitman's famed 1860 poem, "Mannahatta," Leong's subjects, depicted more than a century later, are the modern "tailgaters from China, Somalia, Honduras," struggling for a living in one of the world's toughest global cities. Yet, they survive and thrive in surprising ways, as Leong's poems attest.

 

A lively and earthy Chinese translation is provided by poet and scholar Xinqiu Xie, who now resides in China. Xie includes his translator's notes linking the Manhattan workers to those of contemporary China. The Chinese editor is Professor Ming Xia of the CUNY Graduate Center.

 

MOTH SUTRA is part of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press efforts since 1970 to bring literature and humanities to contemporary readers across the Pacific through new bilingual formats.

 

About the author
RUSSELL C. LEONG is a recipient of an American Book Award for PHOENIX EYES, and a PEN Josephine Miles award for his poems. He was one of fifty U.S. poets featured on the five-part PBS series "The United States of Poetry." He received his Master of Fine Arts in Film and Theater from UCLA, where he taught and edited for thirty years.

 

Leong's stories and poems have been published, translated, read or performed in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Taipei, Nanjing, Beijing, and Shanghai. Moth Sutra was first performed at the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC and at the Black Box Theatre, University of Hong Kong. Review copies, readings, book signings, writing workshops: contact the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press

 

Praise for MOTH SUTRA

 

"In MOTH SUTRA you say 'What's in a name? Real or fake / whether you call me by my name, or not...' What I found valuable about this work is that it offered me all the names that were needed. It named the people, it named the places from where people have come, it named the various histories of resistance, the accidents, the things people forget."

 

Amitava Kumar
Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair
Vassar College

 

"MOTH SUTRA weaves together, through the voice of a polyglot fast food deliverer, nameless migrant workers from all over the globe who make the city hum. The illustrations in various shades of lampblack, grey, and cinnabar red illuminate the lyrical lines with verve, luster, and imagination, throwing us into the poem's light."

 

King-Kok Cheung
Professor of English and Asian American Studies
UCLA

 

When I read MOTH SUTRA I hear Whitman, Happy Lim, Zhuangzi. You have a singular voice and only a Chinese American could write as you do with sympathy, global knowledge, and humor. The delivery man is going to the West."

 

Gordon H. Chang
Professor of History
Co-founder and Inaugural Director, Asian American Research Center
Stanford University

 

Praise for Leong's "The Country of Dreams and Dust," previous winner of the PEN Josephine Miles literature award:
"A breakthrough for the poetry of Diaspora."

 

Ishmael Reed

 

 

Order Online at https://commerce.cashnet.com/aasc
Release Date: March 2026