36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
An explosive, devastating debut book of poetry from the acclaimed author of The Boat
In his first international release since the award-winning, best-selling The Boat, Nam Le delivers a shot across the bow with a book-length poem that honors every convention of diasporic literature—in a virtuosic array of forms and registers—before shattering the form itself.
In line with the works of Claudia Rankine, Cathy Park Hong, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, this book is an urgent, unsettling reckoning with identity—and the violence of identity. For Le, a Vietnamese refugee in the West, this means the assumed violence of racism, oppression, and historical trauma.
But it also means the violence of that assumption. Of being always assumed to be outside one’s home, country, culture, or language. And the complex violence—for the diasporic writer who wants to address any of this—of language itself.
Making use of multiple tones, moods, masks, and camouflages, Le’s poetic debut moves with unpredictable and destabilizing energy between the personal and the political. As self-indicting as it is scathing, hilarious as it is desperately moving, this is a singular, breakthrough book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Le's evocative and introspective debut delves deep into the complexities of diasporic experiences, weaving intergenerational memory through a moving portrayal of survival, displacement, and identity. Le reflects, "My family came to this country with/ nothing more than a small knapsack// full of cut diamonds." This metaphorical sack, filled with the precious memories and heritage of their Vietnamese homeland, is juxtaposed with footnotes that highlight the complexities of diaspora: "(The need to deflect via humour qua coping mechanism is a violence"// "The war broke differently for north v south, for those who left earlier v those who left later; the failure to differentiate is a violence)." These annotations underscore the internal and external conflicts arising from the complicated, layered nature of the immigrant experience. Elsewhere, Le remarks, "We know. When they say/ kill ratio they mean death—our death." Reimagining Vietnamese culture and legacy, this volume stands as a testament to the power of poetry to articulate complex themes, from the weight of cultural heritage to the nuances of representation.
