A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure
 | |
| Author | Hoa Nguyen |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Wave Books |
Publication date | April 6, 2021 |
| Pages | 144 |
| ISBN | 978-1950268184 |
| Preceded by | Violet Energy Ingots |
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure is a 2021 poetry collection by Hoa Nguyen. Her fifth poetry collection, it was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry.[1]
Contents and background
[edit]The book's poems constitute a biography of Nguyen's mother, Nguyễn Anh Diệp, who was a motorist in a stunt troupe composed entirely of women during the fifties and sixties.[2] The book also involves Nguyen's reckoning with her motherland as a Vietnamese American and her understanding of its history through the perspective of her mother. In Fence, Nguyen said she wanted the book to have some substantive relationship to archive, both what has been documented and what has been lost, forgotten; she specifically drew heavily upon Saidiya Hartman's scholarship during its writing.[3]
Critical reception
[edit]The book won the Canada Book Award and was a finalist for the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.[4][5]
In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called the book "ambitious" and lauded Nguyen's use of language in order to simultaneously communicate a biography of her mother and make a broader argument about diaspora.[6]
Critics observed Nguyen's approach to writing about her mother and motherland as a simultaneous act.[7][2][8] Chicago Review observed: "In Nguyen's new volume ... war and motherhood collide again, rippling across each other with startling effects that confirm an ongoing determination to register the back-and-forth diffraction of the political and the domestic."[9] The Poetry Foundation said that Nguyen's rendering of her mother's biography was "brilliant, adventurous, and singular" and especially appreciated how "she refuses cartographies laid out by men, by nation-states, by form, by colonizer, and even by the fatalistic dynamics between mother and child."[10] diaCRITICS argued that the poetry collection bore similarities to Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and remarked that readers would be nourished "with tales of Diệp’s daring as a young woman and flying motorcycle artist before having left Vietnam."[11] Poetry Daily analyzed Nguyen's use of the lyric in order to convey her mother's biography, stating that Nguyen "fundamentally understands the power in the materiality of language."[12]
References
[edit]- ^ Harris, Elizabeth A. (October 5, 2021). "Finalists Announced for This Year's National Book Awards". The New York Times.
- ^ a b Christiansen, Paul (June 27, 2021). "Saigoneer Bookshelf: 'A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure' Speaks Many Voices". saigoneer.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ Jacobs-Beck, Kim (2021-08-31). ""This rain reminds me of rain": Contemplating the Archive in Hoa Nguyen's A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure". Fence Digital. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ "Canada Book Awards". Canada Book Awards. 2021-01-04. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ "Ten Finalists Contend for This Year's Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards". Claremont Graduate University. 2022-02-25. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ "A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by Hoa Nguyen". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ Kek, Angeline (2021-08-14). "BOOK REVIEW: A THOUSAND TIMES YOU LOSE YOUR TREASURE (2021) BY HOA NGUYEN". asiamedia.lmu.edu. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ "Poets Recommend—Part III". Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ Flanery, Patrick (2021-11-22). ""Why try / to revive the lyric": Hoa Nguyen and the Singing of Loss". Chicago Review. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ Fernandes, Megan. "A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ To, Sydney (2021-06-23). "Book Review: A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure". Retrieved 2024-11-16.
- ^ "Dujie Tahat on Hoa Nguyen's A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure". Poetry Daily. Retrieved 2024-11-16.