Book
A Nail the Evening Hangs On
A Nail the Evening Hangs On is the debut poetry collection of Cambodian American poet Monica Sok, first published in 2020.[1][2] Moving between Cambodia and the United States, its poems follow the Cambodian diaspora and the way the trauma of the Khmer Rouge genocide is inherited by the children of refugees.[1][3]
About the book
Sok is the daughter of Cambodian refugees who left Phnom Penh in April 1975. Her work turns to Cambodian history, intergenerational trauma, family history and myth-making.[2] In this collection she uses persona, myth and imagination to piece together voices and fragments, and the poems move across time to break a family's silence.[1] They also reflect on the role of the United States in escalating the genocide in Cambodia.[1][4] Sok has said that she was writing about the genocide, but more about the inheritance of its trauma, and that the poems came out of silence.[3]
The poems travel from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, where Tuol Sleng and other war museums reshape the imagination of a child of refugees. They then cross to New York City and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where intergenerational trauma persists in daily life, on the subway or among the cornfields of a small hometown.[1] Many are persona poems, and the voices stay unnamed until the closing poem, "Here Is Your Name."[3] Sok has said she did not want to write the words "Khmer Rouge" outright and chose mosquitoes as a metaphor instead: small, blood-sucking carriers of disease.[5]
The poems
The first section brings large historical events down to the level of one person's life, in poems such as "The Radio Host Goes into Hiding," "The Death of Pol Pot" and "The Radio Brings News."[6] "The Radio Host Goes into Hiding" scatters pieces of sentences across nine pages, so the reader must put them back together.[6] "The Radio Host Goes into Hiding," "The Radio Brings News" and "I Am Rachana" follow several characters in the camps.[3] In "The Death of Pol Pot," the image of Pol Pot dying in a bed is set against a child playing make-believe with her brother, while her mother keeps her from knowing about him.[3]
The second section is a single long poem, "Tuol Sleng," in which the narrator takes her nephew to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh.[6] The building was a school before it became the S-21 torture prison, and it is now a museum. In the poem, an image of a teacher handing chalk to a student turns into a soldier knocking out a prisoner's teeth.[4][5] As the boy runs through the halls, the poem turns the place back into a school.[3]
The final section includes "Self-Portrait as War Museum Captions" and ends with "Here Is Your Name," in which the speaker writes her name next to her brother writing his.[6] Across the book, photography and memorials sit beside the way trauma and history live on in family memory.[6]
Other poems reach well beyond the museum. In "Cruel Radiance," the speaker rides the R train in New York City to teach a poetry class while looking at a photograph of a girl the Khmer Rouge executed.[4] "Americans Dancing in the Heart of Darkness" is set during the 2010 stampede at the Water Festival in Phnom Penh, which killed nearly 350 people. A group of Americans dances while the city grieves, and the last two stanzas fill with family members calling from all over.[5][3] In "The Death of Henry Kissinger," Sok takes Kissinger's words carrying Nixon's order to bomb Cambodia and turns them around. Children born to survivors of the bombing blow bubbles and fly kites that block bombs and stop submarines.[3][5] A grandmother enters in "Weaver" and returns in "Ode to the Loom."[3] "In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas" shows Buddha images with hands missing or cracked down the side.[7]
Publication and editions
Copper Canyon Press published the collection in paperback in 2020, as ISBN 9781556595608.[1][8] It came out at the end of February 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading in the United States, and Sok's book tour was canceled.[3] The book followed her 2015 chapbook Year Zero, and some of the chapbook's poems were carried into it.[2][3] Sok finished the book in Oakland.[3] The publisher's page includes a recording of Sok reading "The Weaver."[1]
Reception
The New York Public Library named the collection to its Best Books of 2020, and NBC News included it in an Asian Pacific American Heritage Month reading list.[1] Booklist called it "An unsettling, powerful, important debut."[1] The Millions called Sok a significant new voice, and The Paris Review saw the book as a portrait of the Cambodian diaspora after the United States-backed genocide under the Khmer Rouge.[1] The Stanford Daily wrote that it weaves together fragments of Cambodian history and family memory.[6]
The Cambodian American Literary Arts Association includes the book on its #myLowellbooklist, and Beyond the Mekong lists it among poetry by Khmer and Cambodian authors.[9][10]
Access
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Copper Canyon Press: A Nail the Evening Hangs On
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Wikipedia: Monica Sok
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 The Poetry Project Newsletter: Language as Rebirth, interview with Monica Sok
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The Adroit Journal, Issue Thirty-Five: A Conversation with Monica Sok (2020)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Asian Review of Books: "A Nail the Evening Hangs On", poetry by Monica Sok (June 17, 2020)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 The Stanford Daily: A Nail the Evening Hangs On, an exploration of personal and collective memory (November 4, 2020)
- ↑ Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas
- ↑ Barnard English: Monica Sok
- ↑ Bookshop.org: CALAA Lowell book list
- ↑ Beyond the Mekong: Khmer and Cambodian authored books, part 2