A Nail the Evening Hangs On

December 16, 2019
Through recurring dreams that demand “You must know. Your history,” as well as her experiences visiting Cambodia, Sok’s reflective debut teases out how the trauma of the Khmer Rouge is remembered and retained in the fabric of the country and within her own family. Sok is a Cambodian-
American child of former refugees, and her poems have the sharp complexity of a person who embodies multiple identities. “The Americans hate me and I hate them,/ but they’re the only students with me and maybe I’m American too,” she admits. In “Self-Portrait as War Museum Captions,” Sok steps outside herself: “A daughter of survivors stands in the grass among tattered military/ tanks. She is the only one in her family who wants to visit the museum. Siem Reap, Cambodia. Nov 2016.” Sok celebrates her grandmother, to whom the collection is dedicated, and who was a master weaver. This is where Sok’s quiet, unexpected turns shine: “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.” Weaving the threads of her family’s stories, history, place, and identity, these poems glimmer with strength and presence.

December 1, 2019
The daughter of refugees from Cambodia, Sok delves into the dark history of her ancestral home while grappling with her identity as an American in her first full-length poetry collection. Sok's haunting lyrics don't shy away from the Khmer Rouge regime, its killing fields, the land mines, and mass graves. In one long poem, the speaker visits Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum?the site of a former execution center?to search for records of a loved one. Her younger brother sees only an old school, and so runs from room to room. Sok brilliantly balances this intensely personal experience with the weighted irony of a Western tourist's complaint: "Does he have any respect for history?" In this way, Sok brings light to the pain, and likewise shares fond snapshots of family, as in "The Weaver" ("She threaded the loom / with one strand of her long silver hair") and "Ode to the Loom" ("You obey the soft sheen / of turquoise, cherry, and gold / wrapped at the body's waist, your gift to the body"). An unsettling, powerful, important debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)