Yellow Rain

by Mai Der Vang

Overview

WINNER OF THE 2022 LENORE MARSHALL POETRY PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY
FINALIST FOR THE 2022 PEN/VOELCKER AWARD FOR POETRY COLLECTION
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR POETRY

A reinvestigation of chemical biological weapons dropped on the Hmong people in the fallout of the Vietnam War

In this staggering work of documentary, poetry, and collage, Mai Der Vang reopens a wrongdoing that deserves a new reckoning. As the United States 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 starting 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. And then, to the world’s astonishment, 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, Yellow Rain 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644451571
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	09/21/2021
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	379,559
File size:	28 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Mai Der Vang is the author of Afterland, which won the Walt Whitman Award, was named a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was long-listed for the National Book Award. She teaches at Fresno State University.

Table of Contents

Guide for the Channeling 6

Declassified 8

The Fact of the Matter Is the Consequence of Ugly Deaths 10

Anthem for Taking Back 12

They Think Our Killed Ones Cannot Speak to Us 13

A Body Always Yours 18

111 of the Dubious 20

When the Poison Fell, Before 1979 21

A Daub of Tree Swallows as Aerial Ash 25

Case Studies in Escape, Post-1975 27

Fewer Hmong Are Dying Now Than in the Past 31

Signal for the Way Out 33

Self-Portrait Together as CBW Questionnaire 34

Composition 1 37

Blood Cooperation 47

Specimens from Ban Vinai Camp, 1983 48

Authorization to Depart Ravaged Homeland as Biomedical Sample 51

Arriving as Lost 53

Ever Tenuous 55

Futile to Find You 60

Procedures in Hunt of Wreckage 62

Disfigures 65

Request for Furthermore 67

We Can't Confirm Yellow Rain Happened, We Can't Confirm It Didn't 70

Composition 2 73

Subterfuge 82

This Demands the Vengeance of a Wolf 83

Agent Orange Commando Lava 85

Toxicology Conference Proposal 90

Smear of Petals 92

Syndrome Sleep Death Sudden 94

Skin as a Vehicle for Experimentation 96

A Moment Still Waiting for You 99

For the Nefarious 100

Composition 3 101

The Culpable 110

Sverdlovsk 111

Malediction 114

Never to Have Had Your Song Blessed 116

Notes in Rebuttal: What They May Have Known about the Possibility 117

All of a Sudden, Yellow Spots 120

Recantation for the Quieting 121

Il/Logic, Fully Unvetted: A Makeshift Analysis of the Behavior of Southeast Asian Honeybees 123

Prayer to the Redwood 128

Allied with the Bees 130

Composition 4 133

Noxious 142

Orderly Wrap-Up of CBW Investigation 143

Of the Ash 144

Vigil for the Missing 146

The Shaman Asks about Yellow Rain 147

Refugee, Walking Is the Most Human of All 149

Revolt of Bees 151

Composition 5 153

Burn Copies 162

Diary Notes from Meeting on September 13, 1983 163

For as Long as a Mountain Can Ascend 165

Subject: ROI 166

How Far for the Small Ones 168

Monument 170

Sorrowed 171

Manifesto of a Drum 176

And Yet Still More 180

Notes 183

Acknowledgments 205

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher