Yellow Rain: Poems

by Mai Der Vang Narrated by Mai Der Vang

Overview

In this staggering work of documentary and poetry, Mai Der Vang reopens a wrongdoing that deserves a new reckoning. As the US abandoned them at the end of the Vietnam War, many Hmong refugees recounted stories of a mysterious substance that fell from planes during their escape from Laos in the mid-1970s. This substance, known as "yellow rain," caused severe illnesses and thousands of deaths. These reports prompted an investigation into allegations that a chemical biological weapon had been used against the Hmong in breach of international treaties. A Cold War scandal erupted, wrapped in partisan debate around chemical arms development versus control. American scientists argued that yellow rain was the feces of honeybees defecating en masse-still held as the widely accepted explanation. The truth of what happened to the Hmong, to those who experienced and suffered yellow rain, has been ignored and discredited.



Integrating archival research and declassified documents, Vang calls out the erasure of a history, the silencing of a people who at the time lacked the capacity and resources to defend and represent themselves. In poems that sing and lament, that contend and question, Vang restores a vital narrative in danger of being lost, and brilliantly explores what it means to have access to the truth and how marginalized groups are often forbidden that access.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

With Yellow Rain, Vang scores onto the record the previously silenced experiences of Hmong, rupturing the erasures within Western accounts of history, all while holding the US government, media, and scientists accountable. It is revolutionary.”—Poetry

“[Mai Der Vang] transform[s] the impersonal and politically and ethically deceitful into a vivid reclamation of the brutal truth.”—Booklist, starred review

“Vang’s lyrical interventions strike powerful notes of lamentation and rage.”—The New Yorker, Briefly Noted

“Vang memorably reckons with a complex and tragic cultural history.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Mai Der Vang] transform[s] the impersonal and politically and ethically deceitful into a vivid reclamation of the brutal truth.”—Booklist, starred review“Mai Der Vang’s Yellow Rain spoke to a piece of my heart that has yearned for such a work as this to come forth in response to the layered tragedies of our shared history, to establish a record in which our voices cannot be erased, our bodies forgotten, and our names forsaken. . . . An indictment of the highest and most poetic order.”—Kao Kalia Yang

“Mai Der Vang intensifies and innovates documentary poetics in Yellow Rain. It confronts empire's crimes against humanity and the interlocking power of science and military-industrial complex. Yellow Rain is a magnificent textual revolt against historical amnesia.”—Don Mee Choi

“Writing defiantly against the erasure and dismissal of Hmong experience, Mai Der Vang offers an intense condensation of Hmong knowledge and truth in Yellow Rain. This is an impressive accomplishment that blends poetry, archive, history, and polemic in a bravura effort to assert the being and voice of Hmong people.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176519006
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	01/24/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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