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Root Fractures: Poems
National Book Award finalist Diana Khoi Nguyen’s second poetry collection, a haunting of a family’s past upon its present, and a frank reckoning with how loss and displacement transform mothers and daughters across generations.
In Root Fractures , Diana Khoi Nguyen excavates the moments of rupture in a a mother who was forced underground after the Fall of Saigon, a father who engineered a new life in California as an immigrant, a brother who cut himself out of every family picture before cutting himself out of their lives entirely. And as new generations of the family come of age, opportunities to begin anew blend with visitations from the past. Through poems of disarming honesty and personal risk, Nguyen examines what takes root after a disaster and how we can make a story out of the broken pieces of our lives.
As Terrance Hayes writes, “‘There is nothing that is not music’ for this poet. Poetry is found in the gaps, silences, and ruptures of history.” This astonishing second collection renders poetry into an act of kintsugi , embellishing what is broken in a family’s legacy so that it can be seen in a new light.
In Root Fractures , Diana Khoi Nguyen excavates the moments of rupture in a a mother who was forced underground after the Fall of Saigon, a father who engineered a new life in California as an immigrant, a brother who cut himself out of every family picture before cutting himself out of their lives entirely. And as new generations of the family come of age, opportunities to begin anew blend with visitations from the past. Through poems of disarming honesty and personal risk, Nguyen examines what takes root after a disaster and how we can make a story out of the broken pieces of our lives.
As Terrance Hayes writes, “‘There is nothing that is not music’ for this poet. Poetry is found in the gaps, silences, and ruptures of history.” This astonishing second collection renders poetry into an act of kintsugi , embellishing what is broken in a family’s legacy so that it can be seen in a new light.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2024
20 people are currently reading
3562 people want to read
About the author
Diana Khoi Nguyen
3 books74 followersA poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures (2024) and Ghost Of (2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her video work has been exhibited at the Miller ICA. Nguyen is a MacDowell and Kundiman fellow, and a member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). She's received an NEA fellowship and awards from the 92Y "Discovery" Poetry and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery contests. She teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
February 1, 2024
Such an incredible collection of poetry. In this, Nguyen shows us the moments in time where a family fractures and the lifelong impact those fractures have from generation to generation. This is a collection I urge you to really lean into the format and, if you are able to, read this in physical/digital format. The use of photos, spacing and overlapping text to help tell the story was slightly confusing at first but by the end of the collection, everything clicks. It's beautiful. It's devastating. It's worth it.
Thank you so much to the publisher for the advance reader copy!
Thank you so much to the publisher for the advance reader copy!
February 29, 2024
READING VLOG
Major thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for offering me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:
This one's personal.
Diana, if you are reading this, many years were spent hating my heritage. But here, in the work, in the re-work, in the way memory works, and still figuring out how it works, in these little poems, puzzles, you make the work worth it. You make understanding worth it.
And now, I will understand too. Or try to. What I mean is I've tried to do my best, I'll continue to do my best, but I hope my mother will love me when I'm trying to understand as best I can.
The poems come vague in waves at first, trying to understand the war, the now of her parents, and the loss of her brother, but when the tides tighten, much like the way memory works, time reworks the poems into a kind of understanding by way of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha in Dictee. Repetition smooths out rage, hate, guilt, and shame to become something more. Through words, through images, and even words on images. Over and over again, memory is telling in haunting echoes.
Here, Diana and her history becomes something more. It becomes the very act of becoming. Memory moves from 𝘸𝘢𝘴 to 𝘪𝘴. Or even further than that. It is is-ing.
If you enjoyed this review, please consider ordering the book through my affiliate link here.
Major thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for offering me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:
This one's personal.
Diana, if you are reading this, many years were spent hating my heritage. But here, in the work, in the re-work, in the way memory works, and still figuring out how it works, in these little poems, puzzles, you make the work worth it. You make understanding worth it.
And now, I will understand too. Or try to. What I mean is I've tried to do my best, I'll continue to do my best, but I hope my mother will love me when I'm trying to understand as best I can.
The poems come vague in waves at first, trying to understand the war, the now of her parents, and the loss of her brother, but when the tides tighten, much like the way memory works, time reworks the poems into a kind of understanding by way of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha in Dictee. Repetition smooths out rage, hate, guilt, and shame to become something more. Through words, through images, and even words on images. Over and over again, memory is telling in haunting echoes.
Here, Diana and her history becomes something more. It becomes the very act of becoming. Memory moves from 𝘸𝘢𝘴 to 𝘪𝘴. Or even further than that. It is is-ing.
If you enjoyed this review, please consider ordering the book through my affiliate link here.
Read
March 4, 2024In her stunning poetry collection, Diana Khoi Nguyen explores the fractures in our lives that go straight to the root of our identities. These fractures—cultural, generational, personal—are caused by war, trauma, and suicide. Each fracture has reverberations that echo through the poet, splitting her perception of herself and leading her to question every choice she has made and will make. Interspersed within the collection are art pieces made of images and verse, juxtaposed to show the impact of loss within a family. These poems explore how that loss fractures each family member in unique ways, but ultimately shows how the family grows around that loss as well, making the wound a part of its identity and beauty.
February 11, 2024
Taylor Swift needs to sit down because Diana Khoi Nguyen is the real Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department
February 17, 2025
“What’s the difference between a mirror and a window? You see yourself in one, your ghost in the other.”
April 21, 2024
Thanks to the publisher for a review copy. This came out in January.
This is a poetry collection that deals with some heavy themes, her parents immigrating, their love back in their home country during the war, her brother’s suicide, and just all the generational trauma encompassed in that.
I really really loved the unique format the author did with this book, shaping her poetry around pictures of her family. I also loved the repeating thematic writing she had in here.
This is a poetry collection that deals with some heavy themes, her parents immigrating, their love back in their home country during the war, her brother’s suicide, and just all the generational trauma encompassed in that.
I really really loved the unique format the author did with this book, shaping her poetry around pictures of her family. I also loved the repeating thematic writing she had in here.
February 12, 2026
this piece was so beautifully written, and so heartbreakingly raw. while i think i may have to go back and reread each poem again slowly to truly digest it to its fullest, the experience of reading root fractures itself was one that deeply moved me. while i may not necessarily understand each and every line or message diana was attempting to convey, i can speak to the way her words made me feel, especially when coupled with the many personal images and fractured photographs spread throughout the piece. having had the privilege of speaking to diana directly about her work, i feel so very inspired by her— there is a certain beauty in creating art from pain and trauma and tragedy, and further the utilization of art and play to process said emotions is something that is so deeply personal. i must read more of her work !
May 13, 2024
can't write anything about this deep-water book because all my language fails it (cry cry cry cry cry cry cry). i love you diana khoi nguyen!!!!!!!!!!!
June 3, 2025
The ink blots make the cuts of photographs messy, like cuts of a body. I love Diana Khoi Nguyen.
February 15, 2026
"Your brother is not a moth, but the space through which the moth found its way inside."
Moving examination of family, loss. I adore the way Diana approaches the tapestry.
Moving examination of family, loss. I adore the way Diana approaches the tapestry.
March 5, 2024
What should the relationship be among a poet’s books? A question that might underlie the arc of any poet’s work. For instance, with the two Lisa Fishman books I’ve read, I see her building an artistic position on making, where the poems are explicitly aware of the relationship between poetry as a state of mind and poetry as something written into or amid that state of mind, and poetry as physical artifact published and held in hand. With Nguyen’s second book, however, it’s subject and context that connects the two books. The first book’s written record of her brother’s suicide is inescapable. Not only for the sense of Nguyen’s personal, profound grief, but for the family’s individual reckonings of that tragedy. Root Fractures must start there. Which, I would argue, is not a common starting point for a book of poems. It’s like Ghost Of is the crucible, and Root Fractures is all the people who were in attendance, preceding the tragedy, consequent to it, and in parallel with one another.
There are stylistic ties between the two books, as well. Knowing of Nguyen’s innovative twining together of poem, photograph, and book design in Ghost Of makes the photographs in Root Fractures feel kinetic, like it’s stepping further into a method. Meaning, I know how her poems articulate grief, and the formal gestures in these poems articulate what radiates out from her original poetry of grief (at least as chronicled by her books) while also elaborating on the original. There are so many ties that bind Root Fractures to Ghost Of in subject and form. And these connections serve as a means of exploration, primarily about her mother. How the family’s dynamic was influenced by her, how her mother’s experience with war influenced how she saw family, how her mother’s life has made her a difficult person to continue having a relationship with, even as the mother’s heavy-handed influence on the poet’s life makes it hard to walk away from. All these are incredibly complex points, and how the book refuses an oversimplified sentiment about any of it speaks to its ambition.
It’s a continual back and forth churning throughout this second book. The first book dilates completely on grief. And that grief resonates through this book, and ultimately complicates how to orient the book’s focus outside of that. And in reviewing it, I wonder what that means for reading the book. It’s a formal device that’s not often relied upon so explicitly. Could this book be read without having read the first book? I suppose there are some books that operate kind of like a sequel. John Berryman’s continuation of his 77 Dream Songs: Poems Paperback October 21, 2014 with a subsequent book. Marvin Bell’s continuation of his The Book of the Dead Man poems. Or Anne Carson with the continuation of Geryon’s story. But I don’t know that any of these offer even reasonable juxtapositions to the relationship between Nguyen’s two books. One point in fact, the first book describes how the poet’s mother had to kill a man as they were escaping Vietnam, and the second book makes heavy allusion to this fact without ever stating it again. I would have a very different reading if Root Fractures was my first Diana Khoi Nguyen book!
At the same time, it would be difficult to see the two books merged into one. Ghost Of has a focused intensity that might be incomplete in its address of her brother’s suicide (though it’s likely any poetic account of a tragedy so completely experienced by the poet would be anything but “incomplete,” given there will always be more to tell). I appreciate the distance between the two books. And especially Nguyen’s thoughtful treatment of her mother.
There are stylistic ties between the two books, as well. Knowing of Nguyen’s innovative twining together of poem, photograph, and book design in Ghost Of makes the photographs in Root Fractures feel kinetic, like it’s stepping further into a method. Meaning, I know how her poems articulate grief, and the formal gestures in these poems articulate what radiates out from her original poetry of grief (at least as chronicled by her books) while also elaborating on the original. There are so many ties that bind Root Fractures to Ghost Of in subject and form. And these connections serve as a means of exploration, primarily about her mother. How the family’s dynamic was influenced by her, how her mother’s experience with war influenced how she saw family, how her mother’s life has made her a difficult person to continue having a relationship with, even as the mother’s heavy-handed influence on the poet’s life makes it hard to walk away from. All these are incredibly complex points, and how the book refuses an oversimplified sentiment about any of it speaks to its ambition.
It’s a continual back and forth churning throughout this second book. The first book dilates completely on grief. And that grief resonates through this book, and ultimately complicates how to orient the book’s focus outside of that. And in reviewing it, I wonder what that means for reading the book. It’s a formal device that’s not often relied upon so explicitly. Could this book be read without having read the first book? I suppose there are some books that operate kind of like a sequel. John Berryman’s continuation of his 77 Dream Songs: Poems Paperback October 21, 2014 with a subsequent book. Marvin Bell’s continuation of his The Book of the Dead Man poems. Or Anne Carson with the continuation of Geryon’s story. But I don’t know that any of these offer even reasonable juxtapositions to the relationship between Nguyen’s two books. One point in fact, the first book describes how the poet’s mother had to kill a man as they were escaping Vietnam, and the second book makes heavy allusion to this fact without ever stating it again. I would have a very different reading if Root Fractures was my first Diana Khoi Nguyen book!
At the same time, it would be difficult to see the two books merged into one. Ghost Of has a focused intensity that might be incomplete in its address of her brother’s suicide (though it’s likely any poetic account of a tragedy so completely experienced by the poet would be anything but “incomplete,” given there will always be more to tell). I appreciate the distance between the two books. And especially Nguyen’s thoughtful treatment of her mother.
August 29, 2024
Beautifully written. Personal favs are Again and basically anything from section II. Certainly some of this was lost on me as someone who doesn’t understand Vietnamese and is not the most regular reader of poetry, but I really enjoyed it. There were some poems that I honestly just didn’t get, esp the ones with the phrases in shapes and layered so you couldn’t read. But overall lots of phrases rich with meaning that tickle the brain and the heart!
February 9, 2024
Overall, I found this book of poems to be rather boring. Many concepts were repeated over and over again with no real added value to the poems. Many of the poem structures were difficult for me to read (example: some poems were in the shape of people and had words cut off multiple times).
March 1, 2024
Note: this review appears in the March 2024 issue of the Sullivan University Libraries monthly newsletter. You can access it (and many more) at the SU Library Newsletter Archive via our profile! Special thanks go to Goodreads, Scribner and the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Root Fractures is a tour-de-force collection of poetry that explores the quiet devastation of family dysfunction, grief, and the difficulty of forging a self in the wake of trauma that echoes through generations. Nguyen’s debut Ghost Of was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award, and her work has been widely featured in Poetry, American Poetry, and PEN America, among other publications. Nguyen is also a member of the artist collective She Who Has No Master(s), and her video work has been featured at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Currently, Nguyen teaches creative writing at Randolph College’s Low-Residency MFA program and is an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburg.
Root Fractures dazzles in its excavation of the long-buried history of pain in Nguyen’s parents’ lives, repressed and unmentioned to the point of boiling over in those of their children. The reader is led with silent footfalls through the underground caves where Nguyen’s mother was hidden from the ravages of war as a child, and through her father’s terrifying flight across the Pacific. The poems snake backwards along these paths, finding the places where they break into smaller trails that seem directionless, wandering, ending abruptly. A line from the first of several poems titled “Misinformation” warns of the consequences to come: “War: / an instrument whose sound is absorbed and amplified in the body of a girl / like mercury inside a fish” (6).
The “Beside,” “Tug,” and “Root Fracture” sections are some of the most visually and thematically compelling pieces in the book, taking full, breathless prose-poems and cutting them out in the shapes of family photographs. Each member gets a section, a poem to themselves but one that is incomplete without the full (literal and figurative) picture. The reader is made to sit in the discomfort of missing context, history, reasons why -- evoking the turmoil that led to this collection’s existence. This form of erasure poetry is drawn from the literal; Nguyen’s younger brother painstakingly cut himself out of every photo before his suicide.
Nguyen and her family are left to pick up the pieces, shards of their lives that don’t quite fit together and slice into you no matter how carefully you hold them. What Nguyen does with these poems is press through the pain, bandage the hands, and continue to try. While “Sometimes, to / love your family you have to become a stranger, dead or alive” (84), Nguyen warms toward the possibility of any reconciliation, however imperfect or incomplete, as a new path to healing. “No tree in nature clears a space, setting out to find its own way. It is only a person who thinks to do this. All this time I have been moving in the wrong direction” (102).
Bursting with beauty and quiet brutality, Root Fractures is a work that stays with you long after you reach the final page. You can find it at Carmichael’s, Joseph-Beth, and Bookshop.org.
-Jodi Hooper, Library Assistant
Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Root Fractures is a tour-de-force collection of poetry that explores the quiet devastation of family dysfunction, grief, and the difficulty of forging a self in the wake of trauma that echoes through generations. Nguyen’s debut Ghost Of was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award, and her work has been widely featured in Poetry, American Poetry, and PEN America, among other publications. Nguyen is also a member of the artist collective She Who Has No Master(s), and her video work has been featured at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Currently, Nguyen teaches creative writing at Randolph College’s Low-Residency MFA program and is an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburg.
Root Fractures dazzles in its excavation of the long-buried history of pain in Nguyen’s parents’ lives, repressed and unmentioned to the point of boiling over in those of their children. The reader is led with silent footfalls through the underground caves where Nguyen’s mother was hidden from the ravages of war as a child, and through her father’s terrifying flight across the Pacific. The poems snake backwards along these paths, finding the places where they break into smaller trails that seem directionless, wandering, ending abruptly. A line from the first of several poems titled “Misinformation” warns of the consequences to come: “War: / an instrument whose sound is absorbed and amplified in the body of a girl / like mercury inside a fish” (6).
The “Beside,” “Tug,” and “Root Fracture” sections are some of the most visually and thematically compelling pieces in the book, taking full, breathless prose-poems and cutting them out in the shapes of family photographs. Each member gets a section, a poem to themselves but one that is incomplete without the full (literal and figurative) picture. The reader is made to sit in the discomfort of missing context, history, reasons why -- evoking the turmoil that led to this collection’s existence. This form of erasure poetry is drawn from the literal; Nguyen’s younger brother painstakingly cut himself out of every photo before his suicide.
Nguyen and her family are left to pick up the pieces, shards of their lives that don’t quite fit together and slice into you no matter how carefully you hold them. What Nguyen does with these poems is press through the pain, bandage the hands, and continue to try. While “Sometimes, to / love your family you have to become a stranger, dead or alive” (84), Nguyen warms toward the possibility of any reconciliation, however imperfect or incomplete, as a new path to healing. “No tree in nature clears a space, setting out to find its own way. It is only a person who thinks to do this. All this time I have been moving in the wrong direction” (102).
Bursting with beauty and quiet brutality, Root Fractures is a work that stays with you long after you reach the final page. You can find it at Carmichael’s, Joseph-Beth, and Bookshop.org.
-Jodi Hooper, Library Assistant
December 14, 2023
Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC!
Both haunted and haunting, Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Root Fractures is the epitome of a focused set of poems, and it is one I will revisit often.
It’s a bit of a cliché to say a collection is “about” violence, and I think books with that premise are often counter-productive. How much can you condemn or mourn something you devote your attention to? Nguyen seems to recognize this, which creates a dynamic I’ve never seen in poems before. Violence is present as a disruption rather than a focus, often abruptly cutting into poems with a jarring severity—such as in “Selkie Weaning Young”—or pulsing underneath the text.
The book’s title feels deeply appropriate, as readers are never quite certain when a latent grief will suddenly rupture through and completely destabilize the text.
A great example of this is “A Story About Holes,” which is easily one of the most incredible poems I have ever encountered. Nguyen’s ability to weave sorrow, language, and family into an extended piece on cosmic (in)significance is nothing short of masterful. It’s the type of poem that could easily bloat into a cliché, but the poet’s willingness to broach that space makes it all the stronger.
As much as I harp on how poems should “invite people in,” I think there’s something to be said for work that knowingly creates space for the author and any estrangement they might feel. Some of my favorite pieces in this book circle around the speaker’s relationship to the Vietnamese language, and I thought the navigation of bilingualism and slippery phonosemantic challenges in one of the “Đổi Mới” poems was one of the collection’s highlights. Likewise, I appreciate that the book opens with a piece entirely in Vietnamese. Readers may not be able to understand or pronounce the text, but any alienation they feel cultivates compassion and reminds them—this isn’t all for you. It instead allows Nguyen to explore language as a gentle intimacy—or sometimes lack thereof—with both family and history.
Having said that, this is a collection without a single wasted syllable, so readers will never feel lost. Additionally, many poems share titles, and it creates a rhythm of thematic reiteration that pulls the reader in. I sometimes feel frustrated if it feels like a book of poetry isn’t going anywhere—this one feels intentioned from the start.
Finally, it’s been a while since poems made me cry so much. There are some collections where it feels like a disservice to go into too much detail out of respect for the poet’s openness, and this is one of them. Just read it.
Both haunted and haunting, Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Root Fractures is the epitome of a focused set of poems, and it is one I will revisit often.
It’s a bit of a cliché to say a collection is “about” violence, and I think books with that premise are often counter-productive. How much can you condemn or mourn something you devote your attention to? Nguyen seems to recognize this, which creates a dynamic I’ve never seen in poems before. Violence is present as a disruption rather than a focus, often abruptly cutting into poems with a jarring severity—such as in “Selkie Weaning Young”—or pulsing underneath the text.
The book’s title feels deeply appropriate, as readers are never quite certain when a latent grief will suddenly rupture through and completely destabilize the text.
A great example of this is “A Story About Holes,” which is easily one of the most incredible poems I have ever encountered. Nguyen’s ability to weave sorrow, language, and family into an extended piece on cosmic (in)significance is nothing short of masterful. It’s the type of poem that could easily bloat into a cliché, but the poet’s willingness to broach that space makes it all the stronger.
As much as I harp on how poems should “invite people in,” I think there’s something to be said for work that knowingly creates space for the author and any estrangement they might feel. Some of my favorite pieces in this book circle around the speaker’s relationship to the Vietnamese language, and I thought the navigation of bilingualism and slippery phonosemantic challenges in one of the “Đổi Mới” poems was one of the collection’s highlights. Likewise, I appreciate that the book opens with a piece entirely in Vietnamese. Readers may not be able to understand or pronounce the text, but any alienation they feel cultivates compassion and reminds them—this isn’t all for you. It instead allows Nguyen to explore language as a gentle intimacy—or sometimes lack thereof—with both family and history.
Having said that, this is a collection without a single wasted syllable, so readers will never feel lost. Additionally, many poems share titles, and it creates a rhythm of thematic reiteration that pulls the reader in. I sometimes feel frustrated if it feels like a book of poetry isn’t going anywhere—this one feels intentioned from the start.
Finally, it’s been a while since poems made me cry so much. There are some collections where it feels like a disservice to go into too much detail out of respect for the poet’s openness, and this is one of them. Just read it.
November 13, 2024
Root Fractures is an intriguing collection of poetry by Diana Khoi Nguyen. The poems do a great job of exploring the way families break apart, womanhood, and displacement. All of the poetry is clearly personal, and there are nice lines in many of the poems. I particularly love her creative use of form, and I think her multimedia poems were some of my favorites in this collection. Furthermore, throughout the collection, there is a lot of repetition of titles, and during my reading, I tried to connect the poems of the same name together by modifying the order I read things in, which made for an engaging experience. To me, it does seem that the titles signal the way threads of thought are woven together. Finally, I also really appreciate her use of Vietnamese, blending languages to highlight and enhance the central themes of this collection.
While not every poem in this collection resonated with me, besides the visual poems, I particularly enjoyed the poems in Part 3, like the first “Cage Disappointment” of this section and “Subjunctive.” Additionally, the final “ĐỔi Mới” of Part 3 had some of my favorite lines in the collection, which read as follows: “They name each object and each other, mẹ, cơm, đũa, nước, but in such darkness words can stand for so much more: a tether that threads them through to daylight, hands clasped between each body like beads nestled between tight knots. Isn't this how storytelling works, where one dream stops before another starts? Each day takes us further away from who we once were to who we soon will be.” These lines stood out to me because they epitomize the haunting at the heart of many of these poems.
Unfortunately, one of my primary issues is that I did find the collection to be a bit too repetitive at times, which caused me to struggle with reading her work. Despite this, I still really enjoyed this poetry collection, and I would recommend Root Fractures to anyone wanting to read a creative, personal poetry collection grappling with womanhood and the fractures of family.
While not every poem in this collection resonated with me, besides the visual poems, I particularly enjoyed the poems in Part 3, like the first “Cage Disappointment” of this section and “Subjunctive.” Additionally, the final “ĐỔi Mới” of Part 3 had some of my favorite lines in the collection, which read as follows: “They name each object and each other, mẹ, cơm, đũa, nước, but in such darkness words can stand for so much more: a tether that threads them through to daylight, hands clasped between each body like beads nestled between tight knots. Isn't this how storytelling works, where one dream stops before another starts? Each day takes us further away from who we once were to who we soon will be.” These lines stood out to me because they epitomize the haunting at the heart of many of these poems.
Unfortunately, one of my primary issues is that I did find the collection to be a bit too repetitive at times, which caused me to struggle with reading her work. Despite this, I still really enjoyed this poetry collection, and I would recommend Root Fractures to anyone wanting to read a creative, personal poetry collection grappling with womanhood and the fractures of family.
May 5, 2024
Misinformation
Your brother is lost, my mother says, because we didn't believe
him.
He told us there was loud humming inside the walls—Go to sleep, we said.
And he couldn't
couldn't go to sleep.
Yesterday, your father and I found dead bees inside the attic. Thousands.
Once, when he was still alive, I found a dead bee on the windowsill of our
bathroom.
Not thinking much of it
I swept it into the trash with my palm, a motion captured in the dust
like afterimage.
The next morning: a dead bee on the windowsill
the other still in the bin.
I told no one. (51*)
from Đổi Mới
Beneath a sunburnt lawn, long-gone remnants of the pepper tree two refugees planted as they built their home from the ground up, preparing for the arrival of their first and only son as two young girls played in a cardboard box nearby, where above there thrives an olive tree, as evergreen and tolerant of the Californian drought as its predecessor. These species have been introduced, meaning each are native elsewhere. Regardless of species, fungal threads link nearly every plant via subterranean circuitries. News, need, and supply pass from tree to tree where it is understood that the health of the whole hinges upon that of each neighbor; dying trees offer up their stores to those who still can use them. What connects those living within wooden boxes constructed along the cul-de-sac above? Perhaps the sounds which enter us unregistered, the cry I swallowed dragging sharps across my flesh while down the hallway my still-alive brother wondered if the humming in the walls was real. It has been years since the state's last major earthquake and still the aftershocks arrive. (110)
Your brother is lost, my mother says, because we didn't believe
him.
He told us there was loud humming inside the walls—Go to sleep, we said.
And he couldn't
couldn't go to sleep.
Yesterday, your father and I found dead bees inside the attic. Thousands.
Once, when he was still alive, I found a dead bee on the windowsill of our
bathroom.
Not thinking much of it
I swept it into the trash with my palm, a motion captured in the dust
like afterimage.
The next morning: a dead bee on the windowsill
the other still in the bin.
I told no one. (51*)
from Đổi Mới
Beneath a sunburnt lawn, long-gone remnants of the pepper tree two refugees planted as they built their home from the ground up, preparing for the arrival of their first and only son as two young girls played in a cardboard box nearby, where above there thrives an olive tree, as evergreen and tolerant of the Californian drought as its predecessor. These species have been introduced, meaning each are native elsewhere. Regardless of species, fungal threads link nearly every plant via subterranean circuitries. News, need, and supply pass from tree to tree where it is understood that the health of the whole hinges upon that of each neighbor; dying trees offer up their stores to those who still can use them. What connects those living within wooden boxes constructed along the cul-de-sac above? Perhaps the sounds which enter us unregistered, the cry I swallowed dragging sharps across my flesh while down the hallway my still-alive brother wondered if the humming in the walls was real. It has been years since the state's last major earthquake and still the aftershocks arrive. (110)
January 17, 2024
"Root Fractures" is a poetic excavation, revealing moments of rupture in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon. Nguyen delves into the experiences of a mother forced underground, a father forging a new life as an immigrant in California, and a brother who chose to cut himself out of the family narrative entirely. As new generations emerge, the opportunity for renewal intertwines with echoes of the past, creating a picture of fractured roots and resilient shoots.
Pros:
🌟 Five stars for a deeply personal and emotional journey. Nguyen's verses transcend the page, weaving emotions that resonate with the reader's soul.
😢 The emotional depth of the collection is so heartfelt that tears welled up while reading. It's a testament to the author's ability to capture the raw, unfiltered bits of the human experience.
🖋️ Beautiful prose with layers of meaning. Each word is a brushstroke, painting a vivid portrait of family, culture, and the human spirit's will to endure.
In conclusion, "Root Fractures" is a masterpiece that transcends the boundaries of poetry, becoming an intimate exploration of family, resilience, and the marks left by history. Diana Khoi Nguyen's ability to infuse beauty into brokenness makes this collection a poignant and enriching experience. A standing ovation for this collection of healing and heritage! 👏📚
Disclaimer: A heartfelt thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for this ARC. All opinions are as genuine as the emotions stirred by this poetic journey. 🌹📖
Pros:
🌟 Five stars for a deeply personal and emotional journey. Nguyen's verses transcend the page, weaving emotions that resonate with the reader's soul.
😢 The emotional depth of the collection is so heartfelt that tears welled up while reading. It's a testament to the author's ability to capture the raw, unfiltered bits of the human experience.
🖋️ Beautiful prose with layers of meaning. Each word is a brushstroke, painting a vivid portrait of family, culture, and the human spirit's will to endure.
In conclusion, "Root Fractures" is a masterpiece that transcends the boundaries of poetry, becoming an intimate exploration of family, resilience, and the marks left by history. Diana Khoi Nguyen's ability to infuse beauty into brokenness makes this collection a poignant and enriching experience. A standing ovation for this collection of healing and heritage! 👏📚
Disclaimer: A heartfelt thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for this ARC. All opinions are as genuine as the emotions stirred by this poetic journey. 🌹📖
April 24, 2024
Root Fractures: Poems - A book of poetry in both Vietnamese and English. My curiosity about immigrants and their adjustment to living in the USA led to my interest in this book of poetry and short stories. The author is a first-generation American. Not wordy but very expressive and full of glimpses in the lives of this family in both Vietnam and America. A book worth reading.
While my preference is print over Ebooks, I am disappointed with the paper used in the paperback copy. I love the texture of the pages but dislike that I can read both sides of each page. My copy does state that it is an uncorrected proof. Not fair for me to review since along with the transparency of the paper, what is the final product? So is my complaint valid or not? Source: Won (actually a loan of the proof) a GoodReads giveaway. 4*
While my preference is print over Ebooks, I am disappointed with the paper used in the paperback copy. I love the texture of the pages but dislike that I can read both sides of each page. My copy does state that it is an uncorrected proof. Not fair for me to review since along with the transparency of the paper, what is the final product? So is my complaint valid or not? Source: Won (actually a loan of the proof) a GoodReads giveaway. 4*
October 27, 2023
Ow. This one hit me right in the feelings. I am still very thankful to Scribner, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital and audio access to this bittersweet knife of a collection that cut so deep in such a relatable way that I shed so many tears. This baby hits shelves on January 30, 2024.
Our author details the trials of generational trauma being a first-gen American born in the states after the horrors of the Vietnam war that struck her familial units down with trauma and heartache to then continue passing on. That strife was felt by their children, and after the sudden suicide of our MC's brother, I could feel the pain and the loss and the anger spewing from each character.
This was very well done and I am excited for more collections to come.
Our author details the trials of generational trauma being a first-gen American born in the states after the horrors of the Vietnam war that struck her familial units down with trauma and heartache to then continue passing on. That strife was felt by their children, and after the sudden suicide of our MC's brother, I could feel the pain and the loss and the anger spewing from each character.
This was very well done and I am excited for more collections to come.
June 6, 2024
The title of this book of poems could not have been more accurate. First, let me say that I think Vietnamese is the most beautiful language, so listening to this on audio is lovely. The narrator speaks gorgeous Vietnamese. It kind of makes me want to cry. Anyway, the poems themselves are about the fractured nature of the author's family after their only beloved son commits suicide. The poems are artistically organized to show the grief and anger and confusion and all the ways the author feels. I felt it was so beautiful, and I'm not a fan of poetry. The way she described the fractured nature of her family...I felt it.
August 4, 2025
4.5 rounding up to 5 - this is a wonderful, beautiful poetry collection of a Vietnamese American woman recounting her life, her family's history, and many poems are odes to them or about them, with the collection's true emotional core within the poems to her brother that committed suicide. Some absolutely heartwrenching sequences here, and I loved the experimental form many of the poems took, using some family portraits, blocks of words resembling members of the family, some text being superimposed on other pieces of text, etc.
This is an inventive, fresh collection that I'd widely recommend to anyone wanting to pick up some poetry.
This is an inventive, fresh collection that I'd widely recommend to anyone wanting to pick up some poetry.
November 18, 2025
A collection of poems about family, identity, grief, loss, suicide, inheritance, war, and survival.
from Misinformation: "His children do not know what he has seen. / They wake and sleep to blooming bombs, whistling missiles. / War: / an instrument whose sound is absorbed and amplified in the body of a girl like mercury inside a fish."
from Doi Moi: "A child precedes and follows a war. We use different words for during. /. Hostage, soldier, victim. Shooter, killer, Charlie. Body beside, body below, parts of the body."
from Again: "And if the end of the war wasn't the end of anything, and the war was what it was: another plastic bead on a string of worthless beads."
from Misinformation: "His children do not know what he has seen. / They wake and sleep to blooming bombs, whistling missiles. / War: / an instrument whose sound is absorbed and amplified in the body of a girl like mercury inside a fish."
from Doi Moi: "A child precedes and follows a war. We use different words for during. /. Hostage, soldier, victim. Shooter, killer, Charlie. Body beside, body below, parts of the body."
from Again: "And if the end of the war wasn't the end of anything, and the war was what it was: another plastic bead on a string of worthless beads."
October 12, 2025
Once again, I find myself in inexplicable and unsurprising awe of Nguyen. Everything I loved about Ghost Of was built upon in this collection, pushing forward her experimentation with the page as container for linguistic manipulation & interpretation.
It is confessional poetry pushed to a new level, emphasizing not the accuracy of memory, but the subjective truth of it, offering narratives that are simultaneously emotionally honest while grappling with memory's slippage. Simply put: another banger.
It is confessional poetry pushed to a new level, emphasizing not the accuracy of memory, but the subjective truth of it, offering narratives that are simultaneously emotionally honest while grappling with memory's slippage. Simply put: another banger.
December 29, 2025
This collection was fantastic. Focused a lot about trauma, memory, family and intergenerational trauma. I could listen to Nguyen play with language all day. I listened to the audiobook (read by the author) and also used the PDF to make sense of the visual poems. I'd love to rent a physical copy from the library, because she has several poems named the same thing: for example, "Misonformation," "Tug," and "Cape Disappointment" but in different parts, and I would love to read these poems in tandem to find links to analyze between them.
January 10, 2024
I regret that any review I write of this book will be horribly inept because I will never be able to fully understand the author's experiences. I LOVED how this collection of poetry perfectly wove together her family, their experiences in both American and Vietnam, and how it created an exploration of that part of an immigrant family that becomes untethered between the two countries. (Here is where I hope I did justice. The poems were beautiful, intimate, and full of feeling.)
March 4, 2024
A worthy follow-up to Nguyen's great first poetry collection "Ghost Of," this second collection more thoroughly investigates the aftershocks of those left behind. Whereas the first collection centered on form and image to make its metaphors plain, this collection concentrates more fully on the rigors of language, with precise closing images and turns of phrase. Different and more expansive in ways that testify to Nguyen's continuing power as a writer.
January 2, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for a copy of this eARC.
Wow, what can I say about ROOT FRACTURES? Perhaps a lot more crying and heartache than words can ever describe, but Diana's meditation and capturing of family, cultural and heritage roots, history of all sorts is aching, haunting, and beautiful. I read this book in one read, yearning for more. However, I know I'll definitely be revisiting this poetry book over and over again as, I, too, try to process my own family and cultural history and relationships.
Wow, what can I say about ROOT FRACTURES? Perhaps a lot more crying and heartache than words can ever describe, but Diana's meditation and capturing of family, cultural and heritage roots, history of all sorts is aching, haunting, and beautiful. I read this book in one read, yearning for more. However, I know I'll definitely be revisiting this poetry book over and over again as, I, too, try to process my own family and cultural history and relationships.
August 14, 2025
This book is poetry about the authors life and a family loss.
It’s deep, personal, vulnerable and relatable - especially about her mother.
I listened to the audiobook and i really liked hearing the words from her. The book has some visual art of the poetry that i need to see as well. She gave descriptive explanations as her poetry as art on a page.
It’s deep, personal, vulnerable and relatable - especially about her mother.
I listened to the audiobook and i really liked hearing the words from her. The book has some visual art of the poetry that i need to see as well. She gave descriptive explanations as her poetry as art on a page.
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