01/20/2026 Guest Review from Tamika Thompson: COVEN OF THE EAST

COVEN OF THE EAST

Reviewed by Tamika Thompson

In Angela Yuriko Smith and Pauline Chow's anthology Coven of the East: Reimagining Asian Women's Magical Histories, every work is masterful. With an ethereal quality that begins with Chow's cover art, Coven brings together poetry, stories, essays, and hybrid works, which teach as much as they captivate. 

Readers are treated to a range of themes, settings, characters, and figures of lore in arresting works that tackle hauntings, dayan, Mudang, voijinn maim, K-Pop's BTS, while also foregrounding female figures in Asian cultures that have been either erased or demonized.

Standout works include a powerful hybrid work, Beggar's Chicken by R.F. Whong; short fiction that reads like poetry, A House That Cannot Fall by Ai Jiang; a haunting essay by Angela Yuriko Smith, Hearing Voices; a story of revenge, Worry Wah Wahs by Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito; a story that takes on sexism and abuse, We Feed the Hungry Ghost by T.S. Ren; a poetic tale, Don't Forget Me by Kristy Park Kulski; a truly frightening work of fiction in Rule of Threes by Arushi Karthik; and an earth-shattering poem, HUSH by Lee Murray, which reminds all people everywhere that there is "no safety in silence."

The anthology reads like a dream in which Asian women march across the page, refusing to shrink to survive like in revenge-at-sea tale, Once Upon a Time a Skeleton in The West by Wen Wen Yang, giving voice to ancestors who were erased, like in Reclaiming the Witch's Path by Benebell Wen, and challenging passed down self-hatred like in the unsettling nonfiction by Sam Wilket, A Shapeshifter's Hair. 

And that is the beauty in the work. With elegant prose and emotion in every line, the text speaks to everyone, making Coven of the East a universal must-read.

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Thank you to Pauline Chow for sending me a copy for review.

The anthology can be purchased here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/coven-of-the-east-reimagining-asian-women-s-magical-histories-benebell-wen/974204d7532e4e7b?ean=9781964733074&next=t