In 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.

I am a huge fan of Diana Khoi Nguyen’s work, including her first collection, Ghost Of (2019). In this new collection, she revisits many of the same themes and styles—the loss of her brother to suicide and the cracks it sent through her family, the collage poems that fit into cut-up family photos. This isn’t because Nguyen is one-note or low on ideas, but because grief is never resolved—it is impossible not to return to these themes.

This collection also extends Ghost Of in a number of ways. Nguyen puts more of an emphasis on her parents here, both their particular histories and her relationships to them as well as the idea of parenthood more broadly, as the speaker considers becoming a parent herself. The poems often flash back to her parents’ childhoods in Vietnam. Recurring images of roots, as in the title, and bees, as on the cover, characterize this collection (The title and cover are completely perfect).

Many of the poems are titled “Misinformation,” a word that takes on a number of different valences. There’s family misunderstandings, political misinformation, and deliberate lies. A family, Nguyen seems to suggest, can be seen as an uneven series of estrangements: “Sometimes, to love your family you have to become a stranger, dead or alive.” And such self-estrangements are also effects of colonization and immigration. The loss of language; the loss of roots; the creation of new networks.

The digital copy wasn’t the best format for Nguyen’s more visual poems, and in an issue I’ve noticed with a lot of digital ARCs, the Vietnamese words were rendered poorly (Pi and Omega are not letters in the Vietnamese alphabet). Despite these formatting challenges, I was so grateful to read this early and am excited to read it again as a physical copy.

Wow, I can't express enough how profoundly moving this poetry collection is. Nguyen takes us on a deeply personal journey through the fractures within a family, revealing the enduring effects across generations. I implore you to immerse yourself fully in this experience, whether through the tactile feel of a physical book or the immersive nature of a digital format. At first, the use of photos, spacing, and overlapping text may seem bewildering, but as you delve deeper into the collection, everything falls into place, creating a breathtaking and heartbreaking narrative. It's a work of sheer beauty, one that leaves a lasting impact, and trust me, it's absolutely worth every moment spent with it.

Every time I read Nguyen's poems, they make me fall in love with the beauty of language and the written word. There's a magic that can only be done with poetry and consuming it, and I'm glad to have received this copy of ROOT FRACTURES. Having previously read GHOST OF, it shows a through line in the poet's work.

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.

WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: January 31, 2024 with graphic

Yesterday Scribner released Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Root Fractures following her 2018 debut book Ghost Of. Diana once again uses her skills as a visual artist—this time her poems are superimposed on silhouettes of family photos. Her work concerns itself with generational trauma and boundaries—boundaries of countries (Vietnam, after the fall of Saigon, and the U.S.), the boundaries of our bodies (mothers and daughters, the living and ghosts), as well as the very boundaries of poetry itself. An exciting, haunting collection. Here is an example of what she’s up to:

https://www.kwelijournal.org/poetry-1/2018/11/19/beside-by-diana-khoi-nguyen

Congratulations, Diana!

Gorgeous poetry. Root Fractures makes me think of a call & response to Ghost Of. A deepening of investigation, or perhaps an unburying of this past. I appreciate both of Nguyen's poetry collections deeply. I'll have to sit with this for a long time. <3 <3 Thanks for the ARC.

"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. 🌹📖

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.

A stunning, inventive collection that bursts at the seams, expanding a vision of what poetry can be. It's the kind of writing you can return to again and again and always find something new. I hope this one reaches many, many readers!

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.

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.

✨ Review ✨ Root Fractures: Poems by Diana Khoi Nguyen

Not all poetry resonates with me, and most poetry that does, I only feel like I'm absorbing a small percentage of its meaning. This was one of the latter -- an incredible meditation on loss, family, memory, transnational bonds, ancestral trauma, and more. The repetition in titles echo throughout the books along with the holes left by the loss of her brother which repeat through the pages. The use of imagery, photos, and other creative visuals also made this a really cool work of poetry. I was definitely hooked into this one!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: poetry
Pub Date: 30 Jan 2024

Thanks to Scribner and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

Root Fractures had heavy poems. I liked the mixing of first generation children along with the understanding of intergenerational trauma.

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.

A beautiful and harrowing collection of poems about love, loss, grief, depression, and trauma in various forms. Reading about the Vietnamese diaspora and multi-generational conflict and trauma is always difficult, there is so much pain and deeply rooted wounds that are slowly being examined and expressed by the second-generation diaspora. Poems have a way of expressing so much with so few words, and ROOT FRACTURES was no exception.