Dragon Moon, Rooster Sun

Abstract

This collection of poems aims to interrogate how an individual can process intergenerational trauma. Specifically, these poems focus on the 1st generation Khmer-American experience and how such an individual can access cultural memory (or not) and how this leads to exploring a multitude of ways to reimagine and reinvent the past and present through the work of poetry. The poems move between personal family history and Khmer history in a way that creates a unique space for the speaker to access myth and memory in order to reaffirm their own identity. In the end, the poems are about confronting failure, the various ways in which we survive it, and how we can move forward past it.