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kdawn999's review
3.0
This book is formally and thematically ambitious, and I admire the level of documentary research of this poet. If you do a cursory internet search on “yellow rain” you won’t find much. Quite a lot of US government information is classified. The Harvard scientist who concludes the yellow rain was merely bee feces has the biggest voice on the topic, and he is completely dismissive of the Hmong stories about this attack/disaster, thousands of whom were displaced because of it. Somewhere out there is a buried Radiolab podcast from 2012 (referenced in this book) in which they invited a prominent Hmong writer and her uncle to the discussion only to dismiss their claims as “heresay.” This book has made me very interested in this history, and I would love to read any recorded oral histories that exist on this event—I just don’t know where to find those yet.
Even though this work sheds light on such an important topic, I feel the poetic form is a risky one to mix with journalism. The most informative parts of the collection are the epigraphs and prose textual excerpts documenting the recorded history. I had a very well-educated discussion group to talk with about this book, and even then some who relied only on factual information from the text thought the poet was accusing the US of dropping the chemicals on Laos in this incident—which isn’t the claim. I think a creative non-fiction essay would have been the better route to go with the story. The poems and their disruptive lineation also weren’t generally my aesthetic preference, though they were plenty accomplished.
I can see why poems may be a perfect way to express the collective misery of a predominantly oral tribal culture, but it irks me that this very important telling of history could be misread. For this discomfort I’m giving just 3 stars, but this is an important work and the discussion group I had was excellent.
Even though this work sheds light on such an important topic, I feel the poetic form is a risky one to mix with journalism. The most informative parts of the collection are the epigraphs and prose textual excerpts documenting the recorded history. I had a very well-educated discussion group to talk with about this book, and even then some who relied only on factual information from the text thought the poet was accusing the US of dropping the chemicals on Laos in this incident—which isn’t the claim. I think a creative non-fiction essay would have been the better route to go with the story. The poems and their disruptive lineation also weren’t generally my aesthetic preference, though they were plenty accomplished.
I can see why poems may be a perfect way to express the collective misery of a predominantly oral tribal culture, but it irks me that this very important telling of history could be misread. For this discomfort I’m giving just 3 stars, but this is an important work and the discussion group I had was excellent.
dead_vole_jumpscare's review against another edition
3.5
felt like a lot of it was so layered that i got lost very often, but the narrative and story elements were very good and something i didn't know about before
lyndsaydurbs's review against another edition
5.0
This was heartbreakingly beautiful. The poems were composed very nicely and I really enjoyed the lyrical flow to a lot of them.
They contained a fantastic use of direct quotes from documents while still being surrounded/followed by the lines written from Der Vang.
I was certainly unaware of what Yellow Rain was and the story of the Hmong people during the Vietnam/Cold War. I am just fairly unaware of a lot of historical events and was not aware of the full extent of Bio/Chemical Warfare that was “occurring” in this time.
My one complaint, which is not a complaint on the actual poems, is that the ebook does not get all of the imagery that I imagine is in the physical copy. When encountering the ebook’s first page with specific sizing, I was unable to meet the specifications within the Kindle App I was reading on. This made some poems a little harder to follow and understand. I had expected something similar to the “compositions” where they are basically images of the works and not direct text translations.
They contained a fantastic use of direct quotes from documents while still being surrounded/followed by the lines written from Der Vang.
I was certainly unaware of what Yellow Rain was and the story of the Hmong people during the Vietnam/Cold War. I am just fairly unaware of a lot of historical events and was not aware of the full extent of Bio/Chemical Warfare that was “occurring” in this time.
My one complaint, which is not a complaint on the actual poems, is that the ebook does not get all of the imagery that I imagine is in the physical copy. When encountering the ebook’s first page with specific sizing, I was unable to meet the specifications within the Kindle App I was reading on. This made some poems a little harder to follow and understand. I had expected something similar to the “compositions” where they are basically images of the works and not direct text translations.