Whose Fantasy Is This? On Sally Wen Mao’s “The Kingdom of Surfaces”

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August 28, 2023 • By Hazem Fahmy

The Kingdom of Surfaces

Sally Wen Mao

Postcolonial discourse perceives an implicit power imbalance in such Orientalist dress up, but designers’ intentions often lie outside such rationalist cognition. They are driven less by the logic of politics than by that of fashion, which typically pursues an aesthetic of surfaces rather than an essence governed by cultural contextualization.

Hazem Fahmy

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Hazem Fahmy is a writer and critic from Cairo. A PhD student in Middle Eastern studies at Columbia University, he runs the literary newsletter wust el-balad on Substack. His debut chapbook, Red//Jild//Prayer won the 2017 Diode Editions Contest, and his second, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo, was published in 2022 by Half Mystic Press. A Kundiman and Watering Hole fellow, he has or will have writing appearing in The Best American Poetry 2020, Boston Review, Prairie Schooner, MUBI Notebook, Reverse Shot, and Mizna. His performances have been featured on Button Poetry and Write About Now.