A Review of Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees

Barbara Berman reviews Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees (Norton, 2017), edited by Laren McClung, for The Rumpus. "[Everything] in its pages, from the foreword by Yusef Komunyakaa, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Vietnam veteran, to the final lines by Gold Star Daughter Karen Spears Zacharias, displays unflinching eloquence," writes Berman. More:

...“It’s hard to explain what losing a father does to a family.” Zacharias writes this in a prose piece called, “The Man in the Jeep,” then gracefully segues to a report in the Portland Oregonian about the body of a young man found in the Columbia River. The young man was headless and police hoped the t-shirt he wore would help identify him.

“I think that’s what losing Daddy did to us. With him gone we were headless. It was as if somebody came into our home with a machete and in one swift slice decapitated our entire family.”

She speaks for millions here who have lost family members to war, in a work of prose that, like so much in these pages, could effectively be staged and performed.

Hieu Minh Nguyen is the queer son of Vietnamese refugees. His second collection of poetry, Not Here, was published this year by Coffee House Press. “Buffet Etiquette” is a vivid example of what dislocation can do to language...

Read on at The Rumpus.