I posit that Shin Yu Pai's poetry on Asian American stories and mementos are not merely commemoration/memorialization, but further engage with the challenge of constructing an identity of the self through writing, identifying ongoing personal and political troubles in the process. This makes it worthwhile to compare Pai’s techniques and style to the poets identified with the "Confessional Poetry movement" of the 1950s-60s, since scholars today argue for confessional poetry as a form that similarly takes a personal experience — like recollection, emotion, or belief — and enlarges it into commentary on larger societal structures and norms. Although her poetry may not seem immediately "confessional", I identify ways that the personal can be found in Pai's work, even as she writes in someone else’s story; how her poems move from self-disclosure to broader, sociopolitical commentary; and how her work contests and contributes to the idea of Asian American poetry and identity as well as our understanding of confessional poetry studies today.