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winona_reads3's review
3.0
i felt as though some pieces didn’t go together.. i liked the last ten pages or so
alisarae's review
Gorgeous collection of poetry about the Hmong people of Laos and their flight during the travesties of the 20th century. The author, Mai Der Vang, is Hmong-American and recounts her family's journey from Laos, to a refugee camp in Thailand, to a ghetto in Minnesota, to California. She constantly plays with the connection between body and land, interweaving the physical and spiritual parts of being human with descriptions of land, stones, flora, and fauna. I used Google image search a lot while I was reading because these poems are so visual. Laos is a beautiful country, and I feel the sadness of what has been lost after centuries of conflict.
laurelinwonder's review
5.0
The American War in Laos and the Hmong refugee experience form natural subjects for Vang's poems that excavate the humanity of those swept up in the war and the subsequent exodus of some 300,000 Hmong refugees to the United States. In this collection you can roam into the lives of those most devastated by the war here, those killed, injured, or forced to leave their homeland in the aftermath. It will haunt you, it will make you think, and if that can be done in such precise lines, you need to read it. If you are not a usual poetry reader I cannot recommend sinking into this collection strongly enough, it is accessible, heartbreaking, and written in an earth-shattering voice.
ravisingh's review
4.0
“we beg ourselves to live, to float the mortared cartilage and burial tissue in this river yard of amputated hearts.”
vivakresh's review
4.0
Taking her family's refugee narrative to the realm of incredibly precise language. Making sure her contemporary voice doesn't overshadow the past but enhances it. A concision of voice that often surprises, needs to be read again. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because, at times, I felt like the poet was trying, somehow, too hard, to be "poetic" and maybe slightly too reserved. Some of the poems were nuts too hard to crack.
lizmart88's review
Continuing in my poetry binge this month. Really enjoyed this collection from Mai Der Vang. She writes about her identity as an American born Hmong woman. The poems showcase another side of how western minds view the the Asian experience and the Asian American experience.
huskerbee's review
3.0
Didn't like this as much as I hoped I would. All seemed a bit abstract for the sake of being abstract, very much like the in vogue style of tumblr poetry (random aesthetically pleasing images that don't really lead to a greater point). There were some really beautiful pieces - one about the country reimagined as clothing, I think - but a lot was also fluff.
eawillis's review
5.0
Many thanks to Graywolf for the ARC.
AFTERLAND is a storm; it is lightning illuminating the night “with the kind of light that can only/ Be found in the dark.” Mai Der Vang’s poems are a reaching-out: to ancestors, to origins. She traces these origins from China, centuries past, to the Hmong exodus from Laos, to her family’s immigration to the U.S., in order to grasp onto a history that cries out with the ”howls” of the “clattering deceased.” In this way her poems are a remembrance, but also a creation story of Hmong refugees in America. She meditates again and again upon people, especially the dead, as Story: "our/ bodies will be books...When the words burn, all that's left is ash." Vang’s poems are an important and timely evocation of so many dead, and so many still living, within a war-torn world, and within a nation that would deny their right to live peaceful lives.
AFTERLAND is a storm; it is lightning illuminating the night “with the kind of light that can only/ Be found in the dark.” Mai Der Vang’s poems are a reaching-out: to ancestors, to origins. She traces these origins from China, centuries past, to the Hmong exodus from Laos, to her family’s immigration to the U.S., in order to grasp onto a history that cries out with the ”howls” of the “clattering deceased.” In this way her poems are a remembrance, but also a creation story of Hmong refugees in America. She meditates again and again upon people, especially the dead, as Story: "our/ bodies will be books...When the words burn, all that's left is ash." Vang’s poems are an important and timely evocation of so many dead, and so many still living, within a war-torn world, and within a nation that would deny their right to live peaceful lives.