Afterland : poems

Afterland Poems

Mai Der Vang, 1981-

Book - 2017

"Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture's ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and... grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived."--Amazon.com.

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Subjects
Hmong (Asian people) > Poetry.
Refugees > Laos > Poetry.
Laos > Poetry.
Published
Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
Mai Der Vang, 1981- (author)
Physical Description
94 pages ; 23 cm
Awards
Walt Whitman Award, 2016
ISBN
9781555977702
  • Another Heaven
  • Dear Soldier of the Secret War
  • Light from a Burning Citadel
  • Tilting Our Tears on a Pendulum of Salt
  • Water Grave
  • Carry the Beacon
  • To the Placenta of Return
  • Yellow Rain
  • Lima Site 20
  • Transmigration
  • Toward Home
  • Dear Exile
  • Matriarch
  • Beyond the Backyard
  • Sojourn with Snow
  • Original Bones
  • The Hour after Stars
  • My Attire Is the Kingdom
  • After All Have Gone
  • Grand Mal
  • Last Body
  • Gray Vestige
  • Heart Swathing in Late Summer
  • Meditation of the Lioness
  • Days of '87
  • At Birth I Was Given a Book
  • Late Harvest
  • Cipher Song
  • I Am the Whole Defense
  • Diadem on Lined Paper
  • Ear to the Night
  • Phantom Talker
  • This Heft upon Your Leaving
  • Final Dispatch from Laos
  • Terminus
  • I the Body of Laos and All My UXOs
  • With Animal
  • Ambush
  • A Mouth and Its Name
  • To the Longhorn Hmong
  • Mother of People without Script
  • When the Mountains Rose beneath Us, We Became the Valley
  • I Shovel into the Heart to Find Its Naked Face
  • Three
  • Crash Calling
  • Thrasher
  • Progeny
  • The Howler
  • Offering the Ox
  • Dear Shaman
  • Dressing the Departed
  • In the Swallow's Breath It Is You
  • Calling the Lost
  • The Spirit Meal
  • Gathering the Last of the Dark
  • Your Mountain Lies Down with You
  • Afterland
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Recruited by the CIA to covertly combat Communist forces in the Secret War (1953-75), the Hmong people of Laos have since spent decades withstanding widespread political persecution. In her award-winning debut, Hmong American Vang deftly probes the tumultuous history of the Hmong, from the melodic myths of the ancients and the long-hushed horrors of war to the excruciating expense of exile (Fire is the child / Whose parents are the dead). Vang's collection interweaves profoundly personal recollections with unflinching glimpses into the circumstances of refugees past. While Your Mountain Lies Down with You invokes the sacrifices of the poet's grieving grandfather, Water Grave illuminates all he left behind: The crowded dead / turn into the earth's / unfolded bed sheet. / We drift near banks, / creatures of the Mekong, / heads bobbing like / ghosts without bodies. Yet, amid bullets and bees, cyanide and stars, humpbacks and harvests, Vang imbues her imagery not only with loss but also with the remarkable resilience and crystalline spirituality of Hmong lore and language. Ask me to build our temples / So rooted, so stone, we won't ever die out, Vang writes. With this luminous, indelible volume, she's already built one.--Shemroske, Briana Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this sinewy and unflinching debut, winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award, Vang shares the story of the Hmong diaspora who were forced out of Laos and into exile as a result of America's secret war of the 1960s and '70s: "This is a phantom attack/ that never happened, but our fallen know it did." Vang refers to the U.S. recruitment of Hmong fighters to fight the People's Army of Vietnam alongside Americans. As a result of Laos's key location in the Vietnam War, areas of the country were subjected to years of bombing. "What ends the deepening numbers," she writes, "resounding into night, a planeload/ releases every eight minutes forever." Vang explores the depths of her inherited trauma ("I dig for my finest blouse, placenta/ of my home. It sleeps beneath// the bedpost,/ calling as the heartbeat underground") and she shares the experience of the Hmong diaspora by chronicling the physical displacement of her people and a deep and reverberating spiritual disruption. Vang suffuses her poems with unnerving details of strife, which her attention to emotion and texture keep from feeling lifeless or exploitative. "Hmong people say one's spirit can run off,/ go into hiding underground," Vang writes, and she calls "for what left/ to come back,// and for the found/ to never leave." (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Poets such as Quan Barry and Ocean Voung have brought us face to face with the Vietnam War, and now Vang, an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers' Circle, reminds us that the war in Laos-the largest CIA paramilitary operation ever-was equally horrific. From the first page, the writing is visceral and potent; in 1975, when "your Hmong village is a graveyard," a son's head lies "in the rice/ pounder, shell-crumbled," and a brother's tongue is cut out, boiled, and "forced down your throat," an American returning home says casually, "Sorry about your mountains." The reader staggers as the next poem says, "I am a skin of sagging curtain./ I am locked in the ash oven of a forest." Vang then moves on the refugee experience, as her parents leave Laos, "a herd of horses never/ To reclaim their steppes," and live amid "Rusted sedan, wire zipline/ to stapled roof//," bringing the bitter proclamation, "My parents fled for this." Throughout, Vang keeps the energy ratcheted up to the tightest turn of the wrench. VERDICT An especially accomplished debut-it won the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, a first-book publication prize-this is important reading.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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