Yellow rain Poems

Der Vang's award-winning Afterland (2017) brought attention to the horrific murder of the Hmong through the dispersal of a chemical weapon known as yellow rain. Used as pawns by the U.S. in an effort to stop the spread of communism, the Hmong were abandoned after the Vietnam War. Der Vang tackles this history in her powerful, ambitious collection, a multi-genre, comprehensive, and unified work of depth, historical accuracy, and vision. Der Vang gives the Hmong a voice again, brilliantly balancing the "I" of her personal experience as a Hmong American while conveying the "we" of the trauma the Hmong carry in their minds, spirits, and even in their genes: "first born in a new land, daughter who keeps looking back at sky." The State Department claims just 6,000 deaths from yellow rain, while scholars and human rights groups cite 20,000 to 40,000. Writing, "Hmong, / Keep / Your Dying / To Yourself," Der Vang refuses to relinquish the dead to a side note in history or, worse, to allow them to be forgotten. Her exhaustive research produced disturbing historical documentation, which she repurposes in collages of facts and quotes, transforming the impersonal and politically and ethically deceitful into a vivid reclamation of the brutal truth.

The powerful second book from Vang (Afterland) offers a record of the suffering of the Hmong people in Southeast Asia during the 1970s and '80s, when thousands were killed and stricken by a mysterious substance known as yellow rain. Many people claimed to have seen the substance dropped from planes, inciting the U.S. to accuse the Soviet Union of chemical warfare. Vang constructs collage poems from intelligence documents and memorandums, scientific research, news reports, and personal accounts to weave a tapestry of the known and unknown, and an elegy for those whose deaths remain a mystery. Vang's grief is palpable as she memorializes the victims and recognizes the silence and uncertainty that surrounds yellow rain as a critical part of her heritage: "I inherited yellow rain as I also inherited the lost. When/ my parents recalled what they knew about yellow rain, they/ did not speak of bees. Only in whispers did the elders say/ anything about the rain and those who fell beneath it." While she does not offer an explanation for yellow rain, she holds the United States accountable for its history of atrocities in the region, including the use of Agent Orange. Vang memorably reckons with a complex and tragic cultural history. (Sept.)