Amnion

by Stephanie Sy-Quia

'A brilliant and beautiful book which wrestles with the scope and ache of lineage, the origin and myth and making of ourselves' - Rachel Long, author of My Darling from the Lions

'Unlike almost anything I've read - so alive it seems to squirm to the touch' - Will Harris , author of RENDANG, winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection

What does it mean to be a person of multitudinous countries and heritages? Amnion excavates migratory histories, colonialism and class, moving from England to France, the United States, Spain, Germany, Libya and the Philippines. In this chronicle of a family's history divided by geography and language, Stephanie Sy-Quia explores the reverberations that the actions of one generation can have on the next, through acts of bravery and resistance, great and small.

Simultaneously mapping and undoing ideas of the self, everything here is contested. Undefinable in form, combining aspects of fiction, epic poetry and the lyric essay, and merging classical thought and contemporary life to show the joy in living and art, Amnion 's broad intellect and undulating emotional landscape is a testament to the families we are given and those that we choose.

A POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION

'Kaleidoscopic... A powerful, hybrid song charged with ferocity and fragility' - the Guardian

Genres: Poetry, Memoir

112 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2021

Reviews

[Kamila Kunda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephanie Sy-Quia’s “Amnion” is classified as poetry but at no time during my reading it did I feel that I am reading a poetry collection. It felt very much like a lyrical memoir in prose.

“Empires are like milk teeth.
They fall.”

The fall of empires, burden of colonialism, often coinciding with personal circumstances, made her parents and herself semi-nomads. Much of the book are beautiful, non-linearly arranged vignettes from her grandparents’ and parents’ lives, telling stories of love and passion, displacement, wealth and extravagance. Combining languages, flavours and scents, traversing the globe from the Philippines to Libya, from the UK to Germany, from France to the US, Sy-Quia’s stories are full of literary, historical, mythological and cultural references and made for an extremely rewarding reading experience. Seeing her emotional and intellectual growth, her confidence with language, her questioning her own and her family members’ sense of belonging and one’s place in the world gave me enormous pleasure and made me ask my own questions. Some reviewers called “Amnion” an example of a redefined Künstlerroman and I very much agree with them. I place it next to “Migritude” by Shailja Patel and will certainly re-read it and discover myself and more of the world between the pages - this is a book to be read many times over a lifetime.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

O my this book is adored going by the ratings on this site & my primary feeling is that this is a text to be retraced & unsettled it seems to bear an affinity with Postcolonial Love Poem & I can't say I'm surprised it's being received spectacularly.

Flipping through it I've really plastered some sections with stars and others are more sparse. Again, rereads will serve me here. I will say entirely that the epilogue was my favourite & beyond well done there SSQ x

[karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a ride (star-eyed emoji), so much love within these pages. it truly felt like a priviledge to dive into her multigenerational family's history
loved:
-'would i too ever be cause for mid-dinner pause'
-'i shall love you in the margins of the day'
-'someday soon, the one i love will bring me a pomelo from a stall along whitechapel road'
-'mozzarella that oozed with the pleasure of being eaten'
-'he smiled up at me./ it tackled me sideways, this smile burning into my memory,/ (...) that flush of love.'
-her grandmothers' answers and rectfications to what was written about them were included
-the alternative vows that end with one of my favourite lines: 'and standing by your sides,/ i feel steadied and prepared/ to face the yawn of years.'
-the very stylish picture of her parents on their wedding day

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good and interesting poetry book that sensemakes its way through the author's relationship to past generations all around the world.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A modern epic triumphant in purging imperialism from the bloodline and suturing the fragments of self into a beautifully introspective work.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My parents collided in that gold and fevered city.” Amnion, the debut book of poetry by Stephanie Sy-Quia, defies all classification — as a long poem, split up into key narrative sections, it also flits between the novelistic, essayistic, epic, lyric. It is a poem that functions both as a memoir and as a deconstruction of memoir, and intersperses more political concerns amongst the personal ones, often intertwining them so that, rightly, the two become inextricable from one another. And, for all of that, Sy-Quia isn’t afraid to play with expectation — early on, after establishing certain key facts, she begins the ‘Summer 1986’ segment with a shocking declaration: “I lied”. This revelation, disrupting a narrative thread that had been establishing itself so far, casts not only what was into doubt but everything yet to come, an extraordinary commentary about how subjectivity is inherent in matters of history, and how history is little more than the stitching together of anecdotes and perspective. Sy-Quia has such a gift for crafting the most striking expressions, within a style that is restrainedly biographical: “Mama, Papa, look / I have torn it all down / to make you a museum!”; “God could be in English. / No one had prepared them for this rupture”; and, one of my favourites: “Empires are like milk teeth. / They fall.” The way Sy-Quia (or her poetic voice, as they are not always the same thing) gets into poetry — literature as “a great fridge in the middle of the night and I was starving” — was so perfectly resonant, as was her articulation of what it means to unfold such a personal history: “And when the stories are shrugged from my shoulders, then I am free.”

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephanie Sy-Quia's genre-defying blend of poetry, essay and memoir looks at her many-faceted family heritage, and creates a rambling house in which she can move from room to room exploring the different aspects of her family. It's been a long time since I've picked up a poetry book without having any preconceptions, and discovered something that was so surprising, gripping and enjoyable. I loved Sy-Quia's narrative voice, as she describes the different generations of her family, which travels from the Philippines to post-war Germany, encompassing Spain, France and England. She looks at the fraught history of the 20th century, and the long-lasting impact colonialism had on her family, as well as the ways men's stories and memories are privileged over women's, and what that means for our sense of self. Her voice is wry, irreverent, and graced with moments of real beauty. The final section convinced me the least: it's a series of meditations on wedding vows, and asks what it means to promise oneself to someone else. I found it lacked the depth of much of the earlier work of the book, and felt trite where her other poems were expansive. However, I'm giving this five stars, because it captured my attention, and is subtle, measured and assured. Recommended.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was unlike any other poetry collection I've ever read... I didn't even know a memoir in verse wasa thing. Perhaps it's not, but it worked here and, unlike my usual experience of poetry, it worked for me. It did lose me at points - here the four-star rather than five-star rating - but was immensely readable overall, fascinating and entirely its own thing, and I loved it for that.

[Cate Van Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

an absolute MUST read… one of the most brilliant modern works I’ve read in a while

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Rob Green · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned this, completely unable to get into it.

[Jungian.Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

good read

[Källa Hums · Rating 4 out of 5]

AMAZING!! A bit too pretentious at times but still enjoyable. The way Stehapnie Sy-Quia uses her words is just so smooth and poetic

[Philip Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really too sure I get the poetics of much of this. But that doesn't really matter. However it is told, the story is strangely compelling.