Reviews

Phan Nhiên Hạo reminds us that one does not have to write in English in order to be an American poet, nor does one have to publish in Vietnam in order to be a Vietnamese poet.

Hong Khaou’s new film Monsoon is a poetic, and at times, frustrating ballad that tells the story of a life in-between, coloured by multiple homes, identities and stories left untold.

Fantasy is about what we might have or could have inherited and the specific grief of disinheritance as well as a fear of losing cultural memory and identity. It’s a type of existential horror that Schreiber writes about and, like any horror story, there’s a feeling of dread that what haunts us will continue despite the story’s ending.

"Coconut Children" is a coming-of-age story about a cohort forever uneasy with itself and others. A generation that was taken from Vietnam before it could lay roots, and then transplanted to a land where the soil was rich but alien, never quite nourishing.

For us, more than anything, "The Republic of Vietnam" is a primer and a demand for a more comprehensive, Vietnamese-written works of history.

These chapbooks center the histories women carry with them as well as how they're making space in the world, in the present as well as the future.