Book
On Earth Beneath Sky
On Earth Beneath Sky is a 2020 collection of poems and sketches by the Cambodian American writer and painter Chath pierSath.[1][2] It follows his survival of the Khmer Rouge, his flight from Cambodia, his life as a refugee in America and his return.[2]
About the book
The book holds 68 poems and sketches in five sections, arranged by theme rather than in time order. Two poems about the poet's mother frame the whole.[3] The first, "My Mother Wanted My Brother to Take Me Back to Her," records his escape from Cambodia in 1980 with his older brother and sister, and his lasting separation from his mother. The last, "The Way I Want to Remember My Cambodia," recalls his mother's cooking fire and her salted fish grilled over charcoal.[3] In the introduction he calls himself "the son of two countries."[4]
- "Claim Me, America": thirteen poems on arriving in the United States and becoming American, from refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines to Colorado, San Francisco and a farm in Massachusetts.[5][6]
- "I Lost My Kampuchea": odes and death songs, written in the light of his return to Cambodia in 1994. Two prose sketches tell of the US bombing of Cambodia under Nixon and Kissinger that came before the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, and of a visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, once the Khmer Rouge prison S-21.[3][2]
- "Mother, I'm Coming Home": poems of healing, with the Mekong River as a symbol of power and continuity. The title poem is set in three-line stanzas with end rhymes that recall traditional Khmer verse, and in it the speaker comes home to collect his mother's bones.[2][5][1]
- "Body & Soul": his years in Massachusetts, New England nature and his homosexuality, drawing on Walt Whitman's "body electric."[2]
- "Paris": the refugee experience in relation to colonial roots and belonging.[2]
The poems carry longing for lost childhoods and relatives taken by war, and memories of flying kites, fishing, netting grasshoppers and herding water buffalo.[1] They also look at Cambodia today: "The New Cambodia" sets livestock strapped to motorbikes beside Range Rovers in fast-growing Phnom Penh, and other poems turn to rural poverty, land loss, war widows, landmines and work across the border in Thailand.[1] The title draws on the lyrics of a popular song from Cambodia's Golden Age.[5] The collection addresses displacement, healing after the Khmer Rouge genocide, Cambodian American identity and social and economic conditions in Cambodia.[1]
Publication and editions
Loom Press published the book in 2020, in 143 pages, ISBN 978-1735168920.[3] It followed pierSath's earlier collections After (2009) and This Body Mystery (2012).[2]
Reception
George Chigas reviewed it in the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement in 2021, reading it as a record of the poet's continuing healing after the genocide.[3][5] Southeast Asia Globe and Poetry Northwest also reviewed it in 2021.[1][2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Southeast Asia Globe, 'There are many ways to be Cambodian': The poetry of Chath pierSath (May 13, 2021)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Poetry Northwest, Part of that Secret (August 17, 2021)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 George Chigas, review of On Earth Beneath Sky, Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement (Purdue e-Pubs)
- ↑ Scraps & Fragments, Poetry
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Richard Howe, George Chigas Reviews Chath pierSath's New Book (February 2, 2021)
- ↑ Scraps & Fragments, On Earth Beneath Sky (November 10, 2020)