Split

" Split crosses borders, exposing truths and dreams, violations of body and mind, aligning them until the deep push-pull of silence and song become a bridge. And here we cross over into a landscape where beauty interrogates, and we encounter a voice that refuses to let us off the hook."—Yusef Komunyakaa “Perhaps the writer's most difficult task is to render the catastrophic linked non-stories that comprise transgenerational trauma. Cathy Linh Che's collection Split accomplishes this nearly impossible challenge with uncommon grace and power. Each poem unwinds the cataclysm of personal wounding by making itself irresistibly beautiful." —LA Review In this stunning debut, we follow one woman's profoundly personal account of sexual violence against the backdrop of cultural conflict deftly illustrated through her parents' experiences of the Vietnam War, immigration, and its aftermath. By looking closely at landscape and psyche, Split explores what happens when deep trauma occurs and seeks to understand what it means to finally become whole. Pomegranate I open my chest and birds flock out. In my mother's garden, the roses flare toward the sun, but I am an arrow pointing back. I am Persephone, a virgin abducted. In the Underworld, I starve a season while the world wilts into the ghost of a summer backyard. My hunger open and raw. I lay next to a man who did not love me&emdash; my body a performance, his body a single eye— a director watching an actress commanding her to scintillate. I was the clumsy acrobat. When he came, I split open like a pomegranate and ate six of my own ruddy seeds. I was the whipping boy. Thorny, barbed wire wound around a muscular heart. Cathy Linh Che is a Vietnamese American poet from Los Angeles, CA. She has received awards from The Asian American Literary Review , The Center for Book Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, Kundiman, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Residency, and Poets & Writers . She is a founding editor of Paperbag. ""Split crosses borders, exposing truths and dreams, violations of body and mind, aligning them until the deep push-pull of silence and song become a bridge. And here we cross over into a landscape where beauty interrogates, and we encounter a voice that refuses to let us off the hook."--Yusef KomunyakaaIn this stunning debut, we follow one woman's profoundly personal account of sexual violence against the backdrop of cultural conflict deftly illustrated through her parents' experiences of the Vietnam War, immigration, and its aftermath. By looking closely at landscape and psyche, Split explores what happens when deep trauma occurs and seeks to understand what it means to finally become whole. From "The German word for dream is traume.":When my mother whispered, Has anyone touched you there? I had to pick. Alan, I said. I was seven. The training wheels were coming off. Between the couch and wall, the ceiling was white with popcorn bits. The boys stoodand watched. I lay there, my eyes open like a doll's. Someone said, Let me try. He rode on top then abruptly stopped. The boys laughed, and then, they stood me up. Cathy Linh Che is a poet from Los Angeles, California. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, Kundiman, Poets & Writers, Inc., and Poets House. She is currently co-editor of an anthology called Inheriting the War and a founding editor of Paperbag. She lives and teaches in Brooklyn, New York."-- Provided by publisher “To be a daughter, a survivor, & a poet are all aligned in the need “to rewrite everything,” a need that [Cathy Linh Che] navigates with brutality & tenderness, devastation & irrepressible endurance.” —Publishers Weekly"Split crosses borders, exposing truths & dreams, violations of body & mind, aligning them until the deep push-pull of silence & song become a bridge. And here we cross over into a landscape where beauty interrogates, & we encounter a voice that refuses to let us off the hook."—Yusef KomunyakaaIn this stunning debut, we follow one woman's profoundly personal account of sexual violence against the backdrop of cultural conflict deftly illustrated through her parents' experiences of the Vietnam War, immigration, & its aftermath. By looking closely at landscape & psyche, Split explores what happens when deep trauma occurs & seeks to understand what it means to finally become whole.Cathy Linh Che is a Vietnamese American poet from Los Angeles, CA. She has received awards from The Asian American Literary Review, The Center for Book Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, Kundiman, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Residency, & Poets & Writers. She is a founding editor of Paperbag.