Overview

Mai Der Vang's poetry--lyrically insistent and visually compelling--constitutes a groundbreaking investigation into the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants. Primordial is a crucial turn to the ecological and generational impact of violence, a powerful and rousing meditation on climate, origin, and fate. With profound and attentive care, Vang addresses the plight of the saola, an extremely rare and critically endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam. Remarkably, the saola has only been known to the outside world since 1992, and sightings are so rare that it has now been more than a decade since the last known image of one was captured in a camera trap photo in 2013. Primordial examines the saola's relationship to Hmong refugee identity and cosmology and a shared sense of exile, precarity, privacy, and survival. Can a war-torn landscape and memory provide sanctuary, and what are the consequences for our climate, our origins, our ability to belong to a homeland? Written during a difficult pregnancy and postpartum period, Vang's poems are urgent stays against extinction.

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Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a Northern California Book Award. Yellow Rain was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the California Book Award. Her first book, Afterland, received the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Fresno State. Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a Northern California Book Award. Yellow Rain was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the California Book Award. Her first book, Afterland, received the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Fresno State. Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a Northern California Book Award. Yellow Rain was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the California Book Award. Her first book, Afterland, received the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Fresno State.

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