Afterland

by Mai Der Vang

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry

The 2016 winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Carolyn Forché

When I make the crossing, you must not be taken no matter what
the current gives. When we reach the camp,

there will be thousands like us.
If I make it onto the plane, you must follow me to the roads
and waiting pastures of America.

We will not ride the water today on the shoulders of buffalo
as we used to many years ago, nor will we forage
for the sweetest mangoes.

I am refugee. You are too. Cry, but do not weep.

―from “Transmigration”

Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture’s ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived.

Genres: Poetry, Asian American, Asia, Contemporary, Unfinished, War, History

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2017

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never have I read such a powerful work that humanizes the Hmong experience so personally. Mai Der Vang takes you by the hand and leads you to very emotional and disturbing places; yet she never leaves you there to dwell on the negativity. A very interesting glimpse into Hmong culture. Highly recommended.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite lines:

"Folio of roads on a hand-woven cape"

"Hem whose pleats are foothills in exile"

"Rain was the old funeral choir that keened of a hemisphere"

"Turn me into starlight lace, riding mud winds at post-thunder."

Favorite poem: Afterland

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll say upfront that I have a complicated relationship with "poetry as witness" (not my expression but one that applies here). I learn so much from those poems as testimony, as information I need to have, as outrage, but I don't always think the poetic aspects are as prominent as the story.

Afterland falls somewhere in the middle of this. Certainly it is a powerful document about the fate of the Hmong people, their country (Laos) destroyed by the United States and our wars. The pain and suffering is powerfully documented in beautiful language.

I found the first half particularly strong as story and the second half stronger as poetry. There were poems that beautifully combined the witness with poems that stood up on their own. There were many poems that I read more than once both to understand better and to appreciate. A favorite is one called "Calling the Lost" that ends with:
He will call for what left
to come back,

and for the found
to never leave.

For me, these lines captured both the witness and the poetry of this collection.

An important book to read, both for the information and the language.

[Robin Hell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I’m not in the right mindset to have read these poems. To be honest I knew nothing about the Hmong people before starting to read this book, and have since done a little bit of research and intend on reading more about the history of the Hmong.

That being said, there were only a handful of these poems that resonated with me. For the most part, Mai Der Vang writes intensely dense poetry, impenetrable lines that don’t give up their meaning easily. To me they read as stiff and academic. Often a line that should’ve been beautiful actually just felt empty upon attempt to analyze. Or I would just have no idea what she was attempting to describe, no frame of reference. The poems I liked most were the ones that were more literal, dealt directly with narrative or invoked specific spirits. These pieces such as Dear Soldier of the Secret War, Mother of People Without Script, Thrasher, Dear Shaman, felt more genuine, more like she was speaking from her heart.

This is a worthy collection of poems but I struggled to get through it. I had a hard time following the thought process even from one line to the next, struggling to find meaning in the density of her language, wishing for even a hint of narrative and finding only disjointed line breaks and vocabulary I had to pause my reading to google the definition of. Maybe that is the point. I’m a stranger to her world, and I should have to work for it.

It just felt as though Mai Der Vang was attempting to write the entire history of her people into poetry. But I wondered more than once whether poetry was the right way to say or show everything she is trying to portray.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Laos to Minnesota, Minnesota to the Central Valley of California, Mai Der Vang chronicles the Hmong refugee experience. From the 18th century to the war that led to their migration, to the varied experiences in the Afterland, America. Loved these immense poems.

[James Huynh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly breathtaking. Mai Der's landscape metaphors evoke deeply provoking thoughts regarding the Hmong peoples.

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, for 2023, I've realized that I need to stop spending ages editing reviews because it only leads to me being behind my reviews. So, here's to shorter reviews with the hope of never missing a review.

Afterland is an excellent poetry book. The usage of words is gorgeous. While reading this, I often found myself just dwelling on the words used, just enjoying how it all fits together. It felt so artistic, so carefully sculptured. I didn't understand many of the poems but I could soak in the aura they created and it was enough for me.

I've been really struggling to read recently. I don't want to look at reading as a chore. If I finished a degree with my love of reading intact, I refuse to let adult life take it away. So I gently forced myself to read this book. I never fully sunk in but I still felt like the world Vang created was one I wanted to stay in, to spend a bit more time in her head.

what I'm taking with me
- the Hmong elements were beautiful, the descriptions of war and refugees were harrowing.
- will this book break my book block?
- I actually hate the updated version of goodreads like ugh, I wish to deny any connection to Amazon.

[Elias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to Graywolf for the ARC.

AFTERLAND is a storm; it is lightning illuminating the night “with the kind of light that can only/ Be found in the dark.” Mai Der Vang’s poems are a reaching-out: to ancestors, to origins. She traces these origins from China, centuries past, to the Hmong exodus from Laos, to her family’s immigration to the U.S., in order to grasp onto a history that cries out with the ”howls” of the “clattering deceased.” In this way her poems are a remembrance, but also a creation story of Hmong refugees in America. She meditates again and again upon people, especially the dead, as Story: "our/ bodies will be books...When the words burn, all that's left is ash." Vang’s poems are an important and timely evocation of so many dead, and so many still living, within a war-torn world, and within a nation that would deny their right to live peaceful lives.

[Pamela Laskin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading the most evocative, powerful poetry collection ever, AFTERLAND by Mai Der Vang. She writes about the Hmong population-the lament of her people and the songs of loss and grief that come with war. Each poem sliced through my skin in its silent, grotesque and powerful imagery as these resilient refugees struggled to escape and survive. Every image is staggering. In the poem "Light from a Burning Citadel she begins:

"now I am a Siamese rosewood on fire.
I am a skin of sagging curtain.
I am a bone of bullet hole.
I am locked in the ash oven of a forest."

So many tears shed for the grief for her people and you, too, will shed those tears. What a powerhouse of language!

[Kendrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2017, Afterland is a collection of poets by the Hmong-American poet Mai Der Vang. The daughter of Hmong refugees who moved to America and settled in the Californian Central Valley, Mai Der writes about the lost memory of the Hmong people who fought in the Laotian civil war of 1959 to 1975, and how her life has been impacted by the war's secret nature.

The collection opens strongly with the poem "Dear Soldier of the Secret War", addressed to a dying Hmong soldier who has been abandoned by his American counterparts as they withdrew from the region. While the American soldier may return to their "new linens / in a warm bed", the Hmong soldier is apologized to for the state their country and family has been left in:

Your Hmong village is a graveyard.

Do you think of your missing wife,
how the Pathet Lao dragged her

naked, screaming, and bleeding
by her long black hair,

deep into the forest shadows.

Or your son's head in the rice
pounder, shell-crumbled...

Obviously, while the war has been declared over, the aftermath falls disproportionately on certain groups who participated in the war. The destruction of family, and communal/linguistic knowledge means that even the 'lucky few' who resettled in America are still living in an 'afterland' where the world has been irrevocably changed, if not haunted by the dead and left behind. This poem effectively sets out what comes next -- poems which proccess the war and explore Hmong stories and spiritual beliefs.

Many of the poems in Mai Der's collection are written with a dense, brocaded style. They feature a strong use of declarative statements (for example in Cipher Song, "When the words burn, all that's left is ash"). The most successful poems occur when the brocading doesn't obscure the context in which the poem is operating. "Late Harvest" with its simple scene, for example, stands out in later reads. "Ear to the Night" on the other hand uses a denser vocabulary and irregular breakage of lines - the style meant that much of the poem's meaning slipped past me. Still, I enjoyed some of the poems here and found them impressively well-written.

However, there is an academic air to the poems and its denseness works against a reader's ability to read the collection as a whole. Moreover, the poems in the second half felt disconnected from the earlier 'war' poems. Perhaps a slower reader, who takes each poem and carefully annotates them, will gain more from this book. I'm afraid though that the arrangement did not really work for me.

[Ronnie Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture’s ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived.

[Ross Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

250420: quarantine buddy read #3 with keagan! 3.5 stars, but taken as a whole this book is very interesting formally (even if some poems are much better than others).

[Jenna]

My review of this book appears on The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2017/07/afterlan...

[Tamcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love poetry and this poet is AMAZING. Every single poem was like watching a dream unfold (or nightmare). Her writing is visual. I adore it. I checked this book out of the library, but I am definitely going to buy a copy. These poems I will read again and again. Mai Der Vang was the winner of the Walt Whitman Award, and she deserves it.
My favorites from this book were: Diadem on Lined Paper, Final Dispatch from Laos

Beautiful.

[Trina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathless from the beauty of this collection.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will climb on the ledge
to peer over,
beggar my eyes
to a view.

Rusted sedan, wire zipline
to stapled roof, retired
shopping cart missing wheel.

My parents fled for this.

from ”Beyond the Backyard”

Mai Der Vang’s Afterland, according to the book jacket, garnered praise and the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. While there are some phenomenal lines and images, the majority of this work is opaque and esoteric. At times, eccentric word choice obscures an image or thought:

She is the charcoal melody
Gorging the abalone song.

She is the monsoon digesting
The laced agate earth.

From ”Thrasher”

In these tainted tropics,

you are more, not medicine of teeth
nor bone that cures.

I will wear your newest splinters,
wake your mask of manna,

and mark you as my pendent leg.

from ”With Animal”

I’ll palm cotton between my prayers
Until the universe has passed,

Waving down jellyfish
To volcano hours.

From ”Last Body”

While reading this collection, I had the distinct sense Vang is not writing for a universal reader, that her focus on Laotian cultural, historical, and refugee experiences remain, under her poet’s pen, niche and inscrutable without serious contextual research. There is some stunning poetry, but there is also the frustration of being privy to a conversation not meant for me. The real issue may not even be context; Mai Der Vang may simply practice intentional obfuscation to make a commonplace point more enigmatic and profound. I can’t be sure, but when meaning and emotional resonance elude me for pages on end, I have suspicions, People.

I’m on the fence on whether to check out Yellow Rain, her other collection, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer. Afterland may not represent Mai Der Vang at her sharpest—or it may represent her quintessential poetic technique. Either way, I cannot recommend starting, as I did, here.

From my kettle tongue,
take my answer as a sun-hatched shadow

slipping to meet your palm
inside the vapor of our moment.

Take this entire autumn of waiting.

Be held by the sense
of an answer

the way an animal can sense
where the rain will fall.

from ”This Heft upon Your Leaving”

[Avery Guess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mai Der Vang’s debut collection Afterland is composed of gorgeous imagery juxtaposed against the horrors of war and what it means to be in exile. It is also a testament to the power of the written word to protect what is under constant threat of erasure. The aftermath of the war in Laos is explored not just in the cost to people who had to flee, but in the cost to the land—“It’s been forty years of debris / turning stale, and submunitions / still hunt inside the patina of my mud.” Afterland is filled with ghosts, spirits who “come to dine / in my kitchen.” Here, the spirit is just as much a refugee as the body. In “The Howler,” a man “howls the clattering deceased, / whose keening voices I hear / in whispers that live” and in “Thrasher,” a “girl-haunt “is the monsoon digesting / The laced agate earth.” Threaded throughout the collection is the importance of words and writing to the poet and to the people and land she is writing about because “When the words burn, all that’s left is ash.” Vang calls on Niam Ntawv—mother of paper or mother of writing—who “when all you had was given // you lined your grave with paper.” In “At Birth I Was Given a Book,” Vang writes: “They say each birth is given pages / that equals the span of its life. // Last breath happens / when last word has been seen.” Thanks to the publication of Afterland, that last word will be seen again and again, allowing the breath to live on in words.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Afterland will be a lasting touchstone for the Hmong American literary tradition, but you don't need to bring identity issues into play to recognize it as a significant debut, rightfully chosen by Carolyn Forche for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. Vang's poems draw effectively on the still mostly-unknown story of the Hmong diaspora, which plunges into some of the uglier aspects of the Vietnam war, specifically the betrayal of the Hmong (in both Laos and Vietnam) who cooperated with the U.S. during the war. The most powerful poems in Afterland grow directly out of that history: the war, the multi-generational traumas connected with exile, and the cultural forces that remain alive in Hmong communities in the U.S., including Madison, Wisconsin, where I live. Vang's not limited to that material; she also has a strong connection with the natural world and issues of consciousness and expression that connect contemporary poets from very different backgrounds. Some of those poems work better than others for me; her strength is in individual images; at times I had difficulties orienting myself to the implied external contexts. Clearly, a poet who'll I'll keep following.

Favorite poems: "Dear Soldier of the Secret War," "Yellow Rain," "The Howler," "Dear Shaman," "Calling the Lost."

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/3.75 stars

I am not sure that "enjoyed" is the right word for a book that challenges the reader like this, but I will say that I enjoyed this collection.

I am torn how to rate it because I felt like there were times that I was struggling up against the poems, against lines that just seemed impenetrable/abstract in a way I wasn't expecting. I often felt stupid because I just could not "get" what the poet was trying to describe.

At other points, I was swallowed whole. The rhythms, the narratives... Such powerful work.

I am not a person that feels that poetry has to always be fully accessible, that it cannot be difficult to process. Some of my favorite poetry is dense in that way. But I occasionally felt at odds with some of the poems here.

I do feel like it is absolutely worth the read and I would love to read more by this poet in the future.

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick, I thought, I’ve gotta read this book before her new one comes out in September. Hah. The first three lines asked something else of me. I am a deep lover of surrealism, and I love thinking about what mind-space different applications of it bring us. In this collection, the ancestors’/family’s past lived in the poet’s bones is a place I’ve needed to come. I needed this surrealism to feel the intensity of this experience. I’m glad my first read of this book was during the Sealey challenge so I could see the whole before coming back to the poems (nearly all of which I’ve dog-eared…the ones I’ve left, I’ve done so so the book will still fit on my shelf :)

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poems from a Hmong author. This gives a unique perspective into the lives of Hmong people and the way the Secret War fractured and changed their lives. A particular favorite of mine was “I am the Whole Defense” which was based on an anecdote of a Hmong woman who single-handedly defended a fort in Southwestern China in the 17th century. The poems are beautifully written with a mix of gritty organic descriptions and more philosophical metaphors. I throughly recommend this collection.

[Liz Mc2]

Mai Der Vang’s Afterland is a collection of poems “about” Hmong history and experience, destruction and resilience, survival in a new land, after war. Sometimes there are recognizable stories here, but I found these poems strange reading, the images often deliberately—abstract? Oxymoronic isn’t the right word, but she creates strange juxtapositions. Here’s one example: “Today’s bees have swallowed / the last milk of lanterns.” Deliberately estranging and alienating, perhaps, to convey something about the strangeness of the refugee experience, of living in the afterland. Some poems make reference to the Hmong having no script, and I wondered if these poems also reflected in some way on the alienation of writing, and writing in English. The images are beautiful and strange, asking the reader to dwell on them. I feel I should re-read this collection, but on the other hand I’m not sure trying to “make sense” is the right way to approach it.

(I don’t rate poetry.)

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was beautiful. The imagery was gorgeous and intense. I actually watched a few interviews and documentaries about the Hmong people’s impact from Laos during Vietnam War that took place largely in secret. I’d never heard about this, but it's very fascinating that we rarely learn these things in school/the news. This book tells a story while evoking so many beautiful and thought provoking images.

[Karis · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!!!!!!!

[Quietly Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haunting collection of poems about Hmong survivors of war.

[ActiveUSCitizen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Afterland is a powerful, essential collection of poetry that recounts with devastating detail the Hmong exodus from Laos and the fate of thousands of refugees seeking asylum. Mai Der Vang is telling the story of her own family, and by doing so, she also provides an essential history of the Hmong culture’s ongoing resilience in exile. Many of these poems are written in the voices of those fleeing unbearable violence after U.S. forces recruited Hmong fighters in Laos in the Secret War against communism, only to abandon them after that war went awry. That history is little known or understood, but the three hundred thousand Hmong now living in the United States are living proof of its aftermath. With poems of extraordinary force and grace, Afterland holds an original place in American poetry and lands with a sense of humanity saved, of outrage, of a deep tradition broken by war and ocean but still intact, remembered, and lived.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To meet the end is to go back
through every dwelling.

return my footfalls
to yesterday’s land.”

::

Hmong American poetry filled with spirit and history. This is a must read for all Asian Americans who love poems. OMG MAI DER VANG IS SO BRILLIANT I CANNOT WAIT TO READ EVERYTHING SHE HAS TOUCHED 🌟

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

This pierced my heart. Devoured it all in one sitting.

[Michael Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two of the three well-known poets (at least in poetry circles) whose remarks grace the back of this book (including the judge of the contest the author won) called this volume "groundbreaking." It may be, but I am not sure. I do like the poems here very much. Mai Der Vang's imagery and turn of phrase is, most often, fresh and engaging. Her command of voice is astounding; the characters haunt the reader.

However, there a handful of moments where a whiff of the academy comes out. Sometimes it is an unnecessarily obtuse word; sometimes it is the kind of phrase that wows grad students in workshops, but which communicates little.

I would not such instances are all over Afterland, but there is just enough of the scent of the McPoem for me to keep from a bigger rating.

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mai der Vang's "Afterland" manages to make surrealistic and visionary poetry accessible. She writes from biography and family history but speaks the universal. Images collide and morph into each other and language and syntax warp away and back into common tongue. I particularly liked:

- Another Heaven
- Original Bones
- After All Have Gone
- Gray Vestige
- This Heft upon YOur Leaving
- Three

Sometimes a poem stretches too far and fails from the surrealism and the warped syntax. But the collection as a whole is a fine one.