A Nail the Evening Hangs On by Monica Sok (English) Paperback Book

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A Nail the Evening Hangs On reshapes a Cambodian family's memory about the Khmer Rouge regime-memory both real and imagined.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

In her debut collection, Monica Sok uses poetry to reshape a family's memory about the Khmer Rouge regime-memory that is both real and imagined-according to a child of refugees. Driven by myth-making and fables, the poems examine the inheritance of the genocide and the profound struggles of searing grief and PTSD. Though the landscape of Cambodia is always present, it is the liminal space, the in-betweenness of diaspora, in which younger generations must reconcile their history and create new rituals. A Nail the Evening Hangs On seeks to reclaim the Cambodian narrative with tenderness and an imagination that moves towards wholeness and possibility.

Author Biography

Monica Sok is a Cambodian American poet and the daughter of former refugees. She is the author of Year Zero winner of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her work has been recognized with a "Discovery" / Boston Review Poetry Prize. Currently, Sok is a 2018-2020 Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. She lives in Oakland, California where she teaches poetry to youths at Banteay Srei and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants.

Review

"The poet is able to offer quiet wisdom without sentimentality. Ultimately this poet refuses to surrender to victimhood. The chapbook ends optimistically in the borough of Brooklyn, where the young speaker lives happily, sometimes seen in the neighborhood eating bagels with friends and writing new poems. She has found her way to 'the healing fields.'" — Marilyn Chin"Monica Sok's haunting debut collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs On, is about the Khmer Rouge genocide, generational trauma, the work of healing and the shape of memory, and what it means (and feels like) to grow up in diaspora as the child of refugees. The poems unfold in a chorus of voices that is both painful and powerful. This is a book to sit with and reckon with. I can't wait to see what she does next."—Book Riot

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Long Description

In her debut collection, Monica Sok uses poetry to reshape a family's memory about the Khmer Rouge regime--memory that is both real and imagined--according to a child of refugees. Driven by myth-making and fables, the poems examine the inheritance of the genocide and the profound struggles of searing grief and PTSD. Though the landscape of Cambodia is always present, it is the liminal space, the in-betweenness of diaspora, in which younger generations must reconcile their history and create new rituals. A Nail the Evening Hangs On seeks to reclaim the Cambodian narrative with tenderness and an imagination that moves towards wholeness and possibility.

Review Quote

"The poet is able to offer quiet wisdom without sentimentality. Ultimately this poet refuses to surrender to victimhood. The chapbook ends optimistically in the borough of Brooklyn, where the young speaker lives happily, sometimes seen in the neighborhood eating bagels with friends and writing new poems. She has found her way to 'the healing fields.'" -- Marilyn Chin "Monica Sok's haunting debut collection, A Nail the Evening Hangs On , is about the Khmer Rouge genocide, generational trauma, the work of healing and the shape of memory, and what it means (and feels like) to grow up in diaspora as the child of refugees. The poems unfold in a chorus of voices that is both painful and powerful. This is a book to sit with and reckon with. I can't wait to see what she does next."--Book Riot

Excerpt from Book

Sestina There''s a sister who works so hard she never talks. A sister who screams when she hears dogs bark. A sister whose breasts have grown dry. A sister who always hides. There''s a time comrades come to the hut. They can''t tell who''s who--How many are you? Where''s the other one hiding? That sister stays close, somewhere in a hole, closed off with dirt. Sometimes she sits with the sister whose baby lacked milk. In her place of hiding, she cries, thinks of comforting words but her mouth goes dry. In a far village, where works the sister who never talks: the sunset. Finally, it''s her chance. Time to run back, but this time an owl screeches. She closes her eyes. She disappears, pretends she''s the one who can fly. That sister so quiet. How does that sister stay quiet? Biting her lips she goes into hiding: between her teeth, the skin of a snake, hiding like a chasm in a field, a hole in the door to spy on the time, dark knot high up in a greasy tree, little dry well in a forgotten yard where sounds of smoke and fighting drive close. One sister soils her sarong. To wash it, the sisters search for water but find full of air, a balloon which swollen in the river makes the youngest scream and cry, she who holds hands walking around the open eyes, her own face hiding. Then the sister who never speaks, begins to speak. I want to go home, she says. But home is not close at all. No salty plum juice, no rice, or fish dried. That dream is dry. And tracing with a stick, a sister who closes a circle around them in the dirt, hiding them safely inside--This is a circle, a time warp around us sisters, so we can go back to when we girls were not hiding, when fear didn''t dry us up, and we could be whoever we were, dear sisters. The Weaver for Bun Em She threaded the loom with one strand of her long silver hair, which might have kept growing until she was done, which might have fallen out but I would come in and sit beside her on the cushion, without her noticing, and she would continue. Every day I saw this old woman weaving at her loom, rivers and lakes underneath her hair. The bottom full of silt. I could see it if I reached with a comb and that was when she''d look at me. Under her hair, she kept her oldest son, who was out for a morning swim with swallows swooping down to touch the water. It made her happy as she worked on silk dresses and her hair never ran out. Sometimes, when she was tired, she''d tie it up, and let all the tired animals around her house drink from her head. The Woman Who Was Small, Not Because the World Expanded The elephants came out from the fields each carrying me by their trunks to the back of the parade, heading toward Chambok, toward a village doused in fires, that in the pond fish had fried, and looking at that dead water was a woman I had seen running home each evening with a bucket in her hand. Always her speed was the hair that flew in my face. Always her feet sounding of tanks which made dogs bark and flee, footprints deep as trenches in the grass. This is the woman who had shrunk so small when the planes came, nobody could ever find her. And since more planes, her size stayed small as a spoon, and the world seemed to enlarge though nothing had changed, and when she saw me she hid, threw pebbles at my ankles and another, until I bowed down and easily picked her up folding her inside a banana leaf. She slept. She slept well-- she who is my mother sleeping off the world again, whose person I hold in my hand when she wants to be held.

Description for Sales People

Sok's debut full-length collection Speaks to current political issues such as state-sponsored violence, imperialism, and immigration and refugees Has close professional and personal connections with well-established writers such as Sharon Olds, Chen Chen, and Carl Phillips The poem "Ode to the Loom" was inspired by Sok's grandmother, Em Bun, a master weaver who was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship in 1990, the year Sok was born. As Sok writes, "For me, my artistic lineage begins with Em Bun. I believe I'm a poet today because my grandmother, a survivor 9of the Khmer Rouge], was a weaver always working at her loom. She was my earliest influence, so I wrote this ode to give thanks.

Details ISBN1556595603 Author Monica Sok Short Title NAIL THE EVENING HANGS ON Pages 88 Language English ISBN-10 1556595603 ISBN-13 9781556595608 Format Paperback DEWEY 811.6 Year 2020 Imprint Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Country of Publication United States NZ Release Date 2020-04-09 US Release Date 2020-04-09 UK Release Date 2020-04-09 Publisher Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Publication Date 2020-04-09 Audience General AU Release Date 2020-06-01 Illustrations Illustrations We've got this

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