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Before We Remember We Dream
Before We Remember We Dream, the new collection of poetry from Bryan Thao Worra and original art by Nor Sanavongsay blends memoir and Southeast Asian history, myth, horror and science fiction to weave a spellbinding meditation on 45 years of the Lao diaspora. These 55 poems focus largely on 1973 to the present from the banks of the Mekong River during the Secret War for Laos to unexpected intersections of Southeast Asian history in the small towns of America and Asian American history. Tragedy, humor, memory and dreams collide to provide readers an understanding of what has been, and what might be.
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Paperback
Published April 11, 2020
31 people want to read
About the author
Bryan Thao Worra
24 books73 followersBryan Thao Worra is the first Laotian American writer to hold a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the award-winning author of several books including DEMONSTRA, On The Other Side Of The Eye, BARROW, Winter Ink, Tanon Sai Jai, Touching Detonations, and The Tuk-Tuk Diaries: My Dinner With Cluster Bombs.
He is the creative works editor for the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement and the Arts and Entertainment Editor for Asian American Press. He works actively to support the work of Lao and Southeast Asian American writers across the country.
He is the creative works editor for the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement and the Arts and Entertainment Editor for Asian American Press. He works actively to support the work of Lao and Southeast Asian American writers across the country.
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May 9, 2020In his latest collection, Lao American poet Bryan Thao Worra projects resistance and resilience, combining savvy swagger and a stalwart elder-brotherly ethnic-community pride with irreverent ebullient humor and an infectious enthusiasm for the empowering flights of fancy endemic in Southeast Asian mythology as well as fantasy, horror, and science fiction cinema. One can't help being exhilarated and inspired by the imaginative license with which he rewrites An American in Paris as an An American in Luang Prabang, the Statue of Liberty in the Big Apple as "a jade Nyakinee Kuan Yin / Watching vigilantly over us from the Big Papaya," and so forth, while at the same time being moved by the ever-present gestures toward an underlying melancholy, a subliminal dysphoria arising from a deracinated childhood spent not seeing one's likeness reflected in pop culture or toystore shelves, perpetually feeling sidelined, unseen or misread.
Although there are lofty abstractions here, there is also plenty of gritty tangible reality, as in "Missoula, 1996," a poem whose speaker visits "the Moua emu farm" and finds himself "arm-deep amid throbbing avian organs," or "Riding the 16," a poem that celebrates carnicerias and noodle houses along an urban street and "wonder[s] how people find poetry / without the bus." One poem cleverly uses empty space to describe seeing "a freshly quartered manta" in a Phnom Penh market. In another poem, a Lao veteran recalls how, during the war, in 1975, he saw
"two men.
He’d grown up with them,
Attended one’s wedding.
In their despair, with old knives,
They’d slit each other’s bellies open,
Trying to get a taste of opium
In the other’s warm fat."
Two poems touch on the suicides of Southeast Asian American acquaintances. In the poem "Ypsilanti, 1982," the speaker remembers how, as a 9-year-old watching the news on TV, he learned of the racist murder of Vincent Chin: "My father said not to take it personally. / We were going to have a barbecue with / Our blue collar neighbor on Saturday, / Once he was done at the Ford factory."
The poem "SEAArching" recounts, "A Khmer poet I knew trained to be a UN diplomat, / Survived the Killing Fields, became a bit of a Casanova. / Had a lovely book of poetry printed in Minnesota. / They asked him to leave out the bits where forest spirits / Saved him from the Khmer Rouge, because it made him / Sound foolish." Through its ironic silences, the poem asks what gets lost when people are told to renounce their myth-fueled interpretations of their own realities. What dimensions of our selves get flattened when a community's dreams and legends are dismissed as silly? What spiritual sustenance could such fantastical fictions provide if they were instead embraced and encouraged? And are they so silly, anyway, in a world where new technologies constantly upend what we previously knew to be real? As the poem goes on to point out drily, "[I]t wasn’t so long past / The Apple Store suggested we might / As well be looking for Martians / Than any app that knew where Vientiane was." That's a kind of optimism we could definitely use today.
Although there are lofty abstractions here, there is also plenty of gritty tangible reality, as in "Missoula, 1996," a poem whose speaker visits "the Moua emu farm" and finds himself "arm-deep amid throbbing avian organs," or "Riding the 16," a poem that celebrates carnicerias and noodle houses along an urban street and "wonder[s] how people find poetry / without the bus." One poem cleverly uses empty space to describe seeing "a freshly quartered manta" in a Phnom Penh market. In another poem, a Lao veteran recalls how, during the war, in 1975, he saw
"two men.
He’d grown up with them,
Attended one’s wedding.
In their despair, with old knives,
They’d slit each other’s bellies open,
Trying to get a taste of opium
In the other’s warm fat."
Two poems touch on the suicides of Southeast Asian American acquaintances. In the poem "Ypsilanti, 1982," the speaker remembers how, as a 9-year-old watching the news on TV, he learned of the racist murder of Vincent Chin: "My father said not to take it personally. / We were going to have a barbecue with / Our blue collar neighbor on Saturday, / Once he was done at the Ford factory."
The poem "SEAArching" recounts, "A Khmer poet I knew trained to be a UN diplomat, / Survived the Killing Fields, became a bit of a Casanova. / Had a lovely book of poetry printed in Minnesota. / They asked him to leave out the bits where forest spirits / Saved him from the Khmer Rouge, because it made him / Sound foolish." Through its ironic silences, the poem asks what gets lost when people are told to renounce their myth-fueled interpretations of their own realities. What dimensions of our selves get flattened when a community's dreams and legends are dismissed as silly? What spiritual sustenance could such fantastical fictions provide if they were instead embraced and encouraged? And are they so silly, anyway, in a world where new technologies constantly upend what we previously knew to be real? As the poem goes on to point out drily, "[I]t wasn’t so long past / The Apple Store suggested we might / As well be looking for Martians / Than any app that knew where Vientiane was." That's a kind of optimism we could definitely use today.
June 29, 2020
This arrived, and I will admit I opened and devoured it immediately. "The Placid Limbo of Frogs" may be one of my new favorite fleeting images.
A Preface to Lao Silences is still with me.
The art is marvelous. I may have a few Lao still to find, but the rewards for doing so are there.
I'm rather terrible at reviews, but delighted to have this book.
A Preface to Lao Silences is still with me.
The art is marvelous. I may have a few Lao still to find, but the rewards for doing so are there.
I'm rather terrible at reviews, but delighted to have this book.
January 7, 2023
Fantastic book of poetry.
October 7, 2023
Brilliant and necessary. I'm grateful to have read it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews