Book Review: A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure

A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure
by Hoa Nguyen

A book review on DVAN by Sydney Van To

“Throughout the collection, Nguyen grapples with all she does not know of her mother land, her mother tongue, and her mother. Her poetry materializes from yet gravitates toward these absences—a movement which Nguyen describes as ‘circling the distance.’ The result are portraits of Diệp which are at once detached but loving, legendary but also whimsical… Nguyen situates Diệp within the vast and hostile landscape of Vietnam during the 1950’s and 60’s by innovating upon a breadth of poetic forms: letters, song lyrics, news clippings, magazine adverts, military reports, ghost stories, cultural instruction guides, language textbooks, and transcripts of US psychological warfare tapes. Even in her odes to her mother’s bike stunts, youth, and romances, the collection refuses to take its eyes away from the decades of incendiary and chemical devastation wreaked upon Vietnam.”

Read the full review by Sydney Van To here on DVAN.