I bought this book almost a week ago, and I've read it through twice now. the writing is beautiful – dense indeed but lucid and full of intention, never a wasted metaphor (Vuong's experience writing poetry is intensely evident).
in particular I loved the way the narrative is structured, how integrated it all becomes despite its fragmentary surface. toward the end there is a chapter that refers to remembering as "putting back together" – re-membering – memory as a creative, re-constructive, active process. the book proceeds by way of subtle changes between first/second/third person, near-constant shifting between separate threads of memories, stream-of-consciousness episodes "out of time" – as like remembrance – voluntary or involuntary, vague or indelible – of experience, necessarily ephemeral.
how does the memory of trauma – collective or personal – affect how we love and relate with each other? how we see each other, or are seen (or not)? how do we hold on to our lived experiences, and what they mean to us, when so much in the world tries to ignore – or even erase – us? this book is filled with questions, "maybes", and "perhapses" – it is shot through with uncertainty, but also an openness to possibility, a joy for living in the question. some have already called it wonder.
