Watch author Nam Le's book talk and reading at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9...

In his first international release since the award-winning, best-selling The Boat, Nam Le delivers a shot across the bow with a book-length poem that honors every convention of diasporic literature--in a virtuosic array of forms and registers--before shattering the form itself. In line with the works of Claudia Rankine, Cathy Park Hong and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, this book is an urgent, unsettling reckoning with identity--and the violence of identity. For Le, a Vietnamese refugee in the West, this means the assumed violence of racism, oppression and historical trauma. But it also means the violence of that assumption. Of being always assumed to be outside one's home, country, culture or language. And the complex violence--for the diasporic writer who wants to address any of this--of language itself. Making use of multiple tones, moods, masks and camouflages, Le's poetic debut moves with unpredictable and destabilizing energy between the personal and political. As self-indicting as it is scathing, hilarious as it is desperately moving, this is a singular, breakthrough book.

Nam Le’s poetry has been published in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Bomb, Conjunctions, Boston Review, Lana Turner and The Monthly. He has received major awards in America, Europe and Australia, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize for Literature. His short story collection The Boat has been republished as a modern classic and is widely translated, anthologized and taught. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Le is in conversation with Natasha Sajé. Natasha Sajé was born stateless in Munich, Germany, and grew up in New York City and its suburbs. She is the author of five books of poems, including The Future Will Call You Something Else; a postmodern poetry handbook, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory; and a Pen finalist memoir, Terroir: Love, Out of Place. She is Professor Emerita of English at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program, and lives in Washington, DC. www.natashasaje.com

Be Sure To Click SUBSCRIBE:    / @politicsprose  

@politicsprose

Visit us online at: http://www.politics-prose.com/
Follow us on Twitter:   / politicsprose  
Follow us on instagram:   / politicsprose  
Like us on Facebook:   / politicsandprose  
Follow us on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@politicsprose
Follow Us On TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@politicsprose...
Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter:
https://politics-prose.us9.list-manag...
Become a store member and save: https://www.politics-prose.com/member...

Audio Archive: https://archive.org/details/@politics...

Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online.