2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR POETRY
**
**
A collection inspired by Hoa's mother, a stunt motorcyclist in an
all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe, is verse meditation on Vietnam's
diaspora.
Hoa Nguyen's latest collection is a poetic meditation on historical,
personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-"Fall-of-Saigon" and
comprises a verse biography on her mother, Diep Anh Nguyen, a stunt
motorcyclist in an all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe. Multilayered,
plaintive, and provocative, the poems in A Thousand Times You Lose Your
Treasure are alive with archive and inhabit histories. In turns lyrical
and unsettling, her poetry sings of language and loss; dialogues with
time, myth and place; and communes with past and future ghosts.