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Becoming Ghost: Poetry
The long-awaited sophomore poetry collection by award-winning writer Cathy Linh Che, on familial estrangement, the Vietnam War, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
The follow-up to her acclaimed poetry debut Split, Becoming Ghost documents Cathy Linh Che’s parents’ experiences as refugees who escaped the Vietnam War and then were cast as extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, placing them at the margins of their own story. The poetry collection uses persona, speculation, and the golden shovel form as a means of moving Vietnamese voices from the periphery to the center. The speaker’s disownment raises questions about the challenges of using parents as poetic subjects, telling familial stories to a broader public, and the meaning of forgiveness.
The follow-up to her acclaimed poetry debut Split, Becoming Ghost documents Cathy Linh Che’s parents’ experiences as refugees who escaped the Vietnam War and then were cast as extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, placing them at the margins of their own story. The poetry collection uses persona, speculation, and the golden shovel form as a means of moving Vietnamese voices from the periphery to the center. The speaker’s disownment raises questions about the challenges of using parents as poetic subjects, telling familial stories to a broader public, and the meaning of forgiveness.
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 29, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
February 3, 2025
National Poetry Month 2025 #3
Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day 2025 #5
I. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
We are not your entertainment. Stop using us.
The misogyny, while not surprising, is triggering.
Here for the Steven Yeun mention 🥵
You'd become less than
a feeling, the way every lover
I've known no longer hurts me.
I'm so sick of history
dragging behind me.
I don't want to be sad.
To love my father
is to love his wounds.
II. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
We'd survived a war
to be cast into the margins
of our own story.
To the viewer,
I was dead.
I felt dead.
Not that the first set of poems wasn't depressing, because it was, but this was depressing.
III. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I want to tell you a story
of my body. I did not believe
myself to be beautiful.
Well, that cut.
People are so rude to immigrants. When their families were once immigrants. Have a little respect.
If I had a penny for every time a white man said, "Ni hao," to me, I'd be rich.
My mother says, In Vietnam,
a life means so little.
What does a life mean in America?
Free Palestine
IV. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Plants don't run off
the way daughters do.
I wait to be reanimated.
Love is like that—
resurrecting you from the dead.
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Washington Square Press
Vietnam Book and Reading Culture Day 2025 #5
I. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
We are not your entertainment. Stop using us.
The misogyny, while not surprising, is triggering.
Here for the Steven Yeun mention 🥵
You'd become less than
a feeling, the way every lover
I've known no longer hurts me.
I'm so sick of history
dragging behind me.
I don't want to be sad.
To love my father
is to love his wounds.
II. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
We'd survived a war
to be cast into the margins
of our own story.
To the viewer,
I was dead.
I felt dead.
Not that the first set of poems wasn't depressing, because it was, but this was depressing.
III. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I want to tell you a story
of my body. I did not believe
myself to be beautiful.
Well, that cut.
People are so rude to immigrants. When their families were once immigrants. Have a little respect.
If I had a penny for every time a white man said, "Ni hao," to me, I'd be rich.
My mother says, In Vietnam,
a life means so little.
What does a life mean in America?
Free Palestine
IV. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Plants don't run off
the way daughters do.
I wait to be reanimated.
Love is like that—
resurrecting you from the dead.
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Washington Square Press
February 15, 2026
Becoming Ghost by Cathy Linh Che
Reviewing poetry - especially a really good collection - is a different kind of challenge. I am endlessly fascinated by how humanity is seen, valued, or erased; by how surface façades obscure the work of knowing ourselves and others. It’s in this laziness to dive deep that stereotypes flourish, single stories persist, and lives drift forgotten along the shores of eternity. As Paul Farmer said, “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
In Becoming Ghost, Cathy Linh Che examines erasure - through her own story, her family history, and the broader currents of history - with structured delicate and precise poetry.
“History is being viewed on the television, through the eyes of a white American. The fact is, my parents were barely visible through the veil of that gaze. They were the props of empire. Characters with short time and no lines.”
Time and again, she signals resilience forged from lived experience:
“The tectonic universe shifts and we are forced to move like birds fleeing the seasons. I will not move. Not today.”
The power of poetry lies in its sparsity. It ignites parts of you, fiction would never reach. With fiction, I’m often traveling a road to a destination. We often refer to this road as plot. Even when plotless, we seek a resolve. Unlike fiction, poetry doesn’t take a road, it teleports you to strange and beautiful places - into your soul, into the soul of others, into the unseen spaces between people.
It surprises whimsically, demanding attention and presence. You must bring your wounds, your awareness, your empathy - or risk missing its resonance.
Fiction can entertain and educate without your vulnerability. Poetry asks for it. Even in its fractured, incomplete forms, it insists you fill the gaps. Becoming Ghost asks this, and it delivered beautifully where I was able to meet it. From where I sit, in this moment, this collection was measured, careful, and masterfully executed.
More lines I loved:
“If I must tessellate this aloneness, it is this I most crave, to be done with aubades. I want to stay here, with you, our backs against the water, starlings blotting out the sky.”
“Once I dreamt I was swallowed by a snake. The snake was an immigrant household.”
“My mother says, In Vietnam, a life means so little. What does a life mean in America?”
“Last year, the average American paid $5,109 to the U.S. military.”
“Daughter, I think you embellish what you don’t know. A bomb is nothing like a slammed door. That is just your poetic imagination. Have you seen a tree disappear into flames? That’s what a bomb can do.”
Reviewing poetry - especially a really good collection - is a different kind of challenge. I am endlessly fascinated by how humanity is seen, valued, or erased; by how surface façades obscure the work of knowing ourselves and others. It’s in this laziness to dive deep that stereotypes flourish, single stories persist, and lives drift forgotten along the shores of eternity. As Paul Farmer said, “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
In Becoming Ghost, Cathy Linh Che examines erasure - through her own story, her family history, and the broader currents of history - with structured delicate and precise poetry.
“History is being viewed on the television, through the eyes of a white American. The fact is, my parents were barely visible through the veil of that gaze. They were the props of empire. Characters with short time and no lines.”
Time and again, she signals resilience forged from lived experience:
“The tectonic universe shifts and we are forced to move like birds fleeing the seasons. I will not move. Not today.”
The power of poetry lies in its sparsity. It ignites parts of you, fiction would never reach. With fiction, I’m often traveling a road to a destination. We often refer to this road as plot. Even when plotless, we seek a resolve. Unlike fiction, poetry doesn’t take a road, it teleports you to strange and beautiful places - into your soul, into the soul of others, into the unseen spaces between people.
It surprises whimsically, demanding attention and presence. You must bring your wounds, your awareness, your empathy - or risk missing its resonance.
Fiction can entertain and educate without your vulnerability. Poetry asks for it. Even in its fractured, incomplete forms, it insists you fill the gaps. Becoming Ghost asks this, and it delivered beautifully where I was able to meet it. From where I sit, in this moment, this collection was measured, careful, and masterfully executed.
More lines I loved:
“If I must tessellate this aloneness, it is this I most crave, to be done with aubades. I want to stay here, with you, our backs against the water, starlings blotting out the sky.”
“Once I dreamt I was swallowed by a snake. The snake was an immigrant household.”
“My mother says, In Vietnam, a life means so little. What does a life mean in America?”
“Last year, the average American paid $5,109 to the U.S. military.”
“Daughter, I think you embellish what you don’t know. A bomb is nothing like a slammed door. That is just your poetic imagination. Have you seen a tree disappear into flames? That’s what a bomb can do.”
July 12, 2025
I loved this poem cycle by Cathy Linh Che. She wove together so many different themes: refugee life, family struggles, the different values assigned to boys and girls, even her parents' experiences working as extras for Apocalypse Now. I felt as if Che was offering me all sorts of riches and that I was gathering up as many of them as I could, but was also missing some. This is a book I plane to return to regularly. It will take several more reads for me to absorb it, but even with my incomplete understanding it merits five stars.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own.
April 24, 2025
Thank you to Atria Books for the gifted advanced copy.
“We were cast into a film
about our own apocalypse.”
The ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ poems broke me. The interweaving of zombie narratives with the Apocalypse Now filming experience for being cast as extras in a film after living through the Vietnam War was executed extremely well. It’s difficult to share familial stories and experiences and you can feel that in the relationship/absence with the father, mother, siblings and grandmother.
Also, the golden shovel poem “Heart of Darkness” is an essential read.
This is a really moving collection that I suggest giving a read through. I’m not the best at uncovering details within poetry but I could still feel the emotion that went into this collection.
“We were cast into a film
about our own apocalypse.”
The ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ poems broke me. The interweaving of zombie narratives with the Apocalypse Now filming experience for being cast as extras in a film after living through the Vietnam War was executed extremely well. It’s difficult to share familial stories and experiences and you can feel that in the relationship/absence with the father, mother, siblings and grandmother.
Also, the golden shovel poem “Heart of Darkness” is an essential read.
This is a really moving collection that I suggest giving a read through. I’m not the best at uncovering details within poetry but I could still feel the emotion that went into this collection.
May 21, 2025
A great book of poetry. Cathy Linh Che gives us so much about her and her family’s feelings about the Vietnam War and their refugee and further status in this short book of poetry.
How can anyone “love the smell of napalm?”
Her family were extras in Coppola’s film:
We’d survived a war
Only to be cast into the margins
Of our own story.
She speaks with her parents’ voices too. The pain is never over.
She thinks of the genocide in Gaza, too. And now in Gaza like in Vietnam we watch images and cannot stop the killing and ravaging.
I will never forget a woman I met in Hanoi asking me pointedly. (Her parents disabled and suffering because of the war)—why couldn’t you do more to stop the war?
How can anyone “love the smell of napalm?”
Her family were extras in Coppola’s film:
We’d survived a war
Only to be cast into the margins
Of our own story.
She speaks with her parents’ voices too. The pain is never over.
She thinks of the genocide in Gaza, too. And now in Gaza like in Vietnam we watch images and cannot stop the killing and ravaging.
I will never forget a woman I met in Hanoi asking me pointedly. (Her parents disabled and suffering because of the war)—why couldn’t you do more to stop the war?
March 1, 2025
Analyzing and interpreting poems has never been my forte. Therefore, I struggled with a lot of these poems and the switching of narrators and perspectives. Despite how I struggled with some of these poems, I do find them beautiful and meaningful. I especially appreciate the author’s interweaving of her own life story and her parents as background characters in Apocalypse Now. However, I do wish the author provided more background or context to unpack her poems.
*** We didn’t have lines, we were ‘extras.’ We’d survived a war to be case into the margins of our own story.***
*** We didn’t have lines, we were ‘extras.’ We’d survived a war to be case into the margins of our own story.***
June 5, 2025
This collection powerfully interrogates the politics of narrative ownership, particularly when it comes to war, trauma, and legacy. It asks a fundamental question: Who has the right to shape collective memory, and whose voices are silenced in the process? The often-quoted phrase “history is written by the victors” takes on new meaning in our digital, globalized age, where dominant Western narratives are increasingly challenged by personal, lived experiences from those historically pushed to the margins.
At its heart, this is a deeply personal and poetic account of a family whose life was irrevocably shaped by the Vietnam War. But more than that, it is a reckoning with the ghosts of imperialism and exploitation — both during the war and in the aftermath. The poet explores these intergenerational wounds with an urgency to understand, often by shifting perspectives between her own voice and those of her parents. Through this, we witness not only what they endured, but how their pain was later commodified for Western consumption. A particularly powerful thread running through the collection is its critical engagement with Apocalypse Now, a film celebrated by many in the West yet deeply troubling in its portrayal of the Vietnamese people and their trauma. The poet contrasts her parents’ real suffering with the film’s fictionalized, stylized violence — reminding us of the devastating consequences when trauma is aestheticized and repackaged for entertainment.
Another aspect of this collection that stood out to me was its experimentation. The poet blends narrative, poetry, and even screenplay snippets to blur the line between truth and performance, trauma and reenactment. At times, Cathy Linh Che serves as an acting director — framing, cutting, and spotlighting moments that have long gone unseen. She creates a space for her parents to exist not as archetypes or footnotes, but as fully realized individuals at the center of their own narrative. In the afterword, she reflects on her deliberate choice of structure as a way to reclaim authorship over her family’s story — to turn the camera around and offer a more truthful representation than that of the infamous renderings of the Vietnam War from the Western perspective. The poetic techniques utilized here also capture the disorienting experience of intergenerational trauma: the distance between parent and child, the gaps in understanding, and the quiet work of healing and forgiveness.
While I came to this collection with limited knowledge of Apocalypse Now and an arguably minimal understanding of the Vietnam War, Cathy Linh Che guided me with clarity and purpose through such a complex public and personal history. That said, some historical or cultural context may be necessary for readers unfamiliar with these events to fully grasp the nuances. Even so, this collection offers a profound reflection on legacy, memory, and reclamation — and invites us to consider how we engage with stories that are not our own. My favorite kinds of poetry collections are the ones that teach me something new about the world around me, others' experiences, or lead me to further research about something I may have read. This one ticks all those boxes for me and I hope can do the same for other readers!
Thank you to the publisher, Washington Square Press, for an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions shared in this review are my own!
At its heart, this is a deeply personal and poetic account of a family whose life was irrevocably shaped by the Vietnam War. But more than that, it is a reckoning with the ghosts of imperialism and exploitation — both during the war and in the aftermath. The poet explores these intergenerational wounds with an urgency to understand, often by shifting perspectives between her own voice and those of her parents. Through this, we witness not only what they endured, but how their pain was later commodified for Western consumption. A particularly powerful thread running through the collection is its critical engagement with Apocalypse Now, a film celebrated by many in the West yet deeply troubling in its portrayal of the Vietnamese people and their trauma. The poet contrasts her parents’ real suffering with the film’s fictionalized, stylized violence — reminding us of the devastating consequences when trauma is aestheticized and repackaged for entertainment.
Another aspect of this collection that stood out to me was its experimentation. The poet blends narrative, poetry, and even screenplay snippets to blur the line between truth and performance, trauma and reenactment. At times, Cathy Linh Che serves as an acting director — framing, cutting, and spotlighting moments that have long gone unseen. She creates a space for her parents to exist not as archetypes or footnotes, but as fully realized individuals at the center of their own narrative. In the afterword, she reflects on her deliberate choice of structure as a way to reclaim authorship over her family’s story — to turn the camera around and offer a more truthful representation than that of the infamous renderings of the Vietnam War from the Western perspective. The poetic techniques utilized here also capture the disorienting experience of intergenerational trauma: the distance between parent and child, the gaps in understanding, and the quiet work of healing and forgiveness.
While I came to this collection with limited knowledge of Apocalypse Now and an arguably minimal understanding of the Vietnam War, Cathy Linh Che guided me with clarity and purpose through such a complex public and personal history. That said, some historical or cultural context may be necessary for readers unfamiliar with these events to fully grasp the nuances. Even so, this collection offers a profound reflection on legacy, memory, and reclamation — and invites us to consider how we engage with stories that are not our own. My favorite kinds of poetry collections are the ones that teach me something new about the world around me, others' experiences, or lead me to further research about something I may have read. This one ticks all those boxes for me and I hope can do the same for other readers!
Thank you to the publisher, Washington Square Press, for an e-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions shared in this review are my own!
November 20, 2025
Lyrical and moving, every word is in its right place. Language dances here like a Tiana Clark book and the refugee narrative in a time of war is reminiscent of Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic. A quick and necessary indulgence for language lovers.
July 23, 2025
once i dreamt i was swallowed by a snake / the snake was an immigrant household
cô cathy has an enormous brain, i love being vietnamese even tho we're all fucked up
cô cathy has an enormous brain, i love being vietnamese even tho we're all fucked up
February 5, 2025
4 I was just having a conversation with a friend about the historical elements behind pain and suffering being used for entertainment. Coming across this collection, I felt like it not only tackled that subject but added extra layers to the conversation. This book felt deeply personal—there’s something profoundly powerful about taking a deeper look into our parents, their journeys, their suffering, and what that leaves us with. I especially appreciated the parallels the poetry creates and the deeper contemplation of erasure—who that erasure is ultimately for.
It was deeply saddening to read about how the poet’s parents escaped so much, only to have their darkest experiences used for the enjoyment of white audiences. It’s even more unsettling to know that this is a movie so many people reference as a favorite, a film held in high regard while disregarding the real people whose lives were pushed into the background, turned into caricatures, or silenced altogether. You can really feel the distance between parent and child in these poems, but also the process of understanding, forgiving, and centering. The poet acts as a director of her own, creating a space for her parents to exist beyond an outside narrative—placing them, finally, at the forefront of their own experiences.
Thank you to Netgalley &Washington Square Press for this egalley.
It was deeply saddening to read about how the poet’s parents escaped so much, only to have their darkest experiences used for the enjoyment of white audiences. It’s even more unsettling to know that this is a movie so many people reference as a favorite, a film held in high regard while disregarding the real people whose lives were pushed into the background, turned into caricatures, or silenced altogether. You can really feel the distance between parent and child in these poems, but also the process of understanding, forgiving, and centering. The poet acts as a director of her own, creating a space for her parents to exist beyond an outside narrative—placing them, finally, at the forefront of their own experiences.
Thank you to Netgalley &Washington Square Press for this egalley.
March 12, 2025
This collection is built around the surreal emotionality of the author's parents having both lived through the war in Vietnam and also having served as extras in the film, Apocalypse Now. [For those unfamiliar, Apocalypse Now was a Francis Ford Copp0la film based loosely (and partially) on Joseph Conrad's novel,Heart of Darkness. The film follows a military officer sent upriver to assassinate a rogue Special Operations colonel during the Vietnam War, and shows the war from various perspectives as the would-be assassin travels through the country to complete his mission.]
At times, the poems read like a poem-shaped biography, but that's not all there is to the book. There are points that imagery and language are used to shoot beyond a mere telling of events, in order to create emotional resonance with the core strangeness of living through a traumatic event only to portray a background individual (someone like one's own past self) in a fictional retelling of events based on those through which one lived.
The poetic forms vary somewhat, though all within the modern, free verse style. Most notably, the author uses the golden shovel approach of Terrence Hayes extensively.
This collection grabbed me both with its clever language and its thought-provoking central premise. I'd highly recommend it for readers of poetry.
At times, the poems read like a poem-shaped biography, but that's not all there is to the book. There are points that imagery and language are used to shoot beyond a mere telling of events, in order to create emotional resonance with the core strangeness of living through a traumatic event only to portray a background individual (someone like one's own past self) in a fictional retelling of events based on those through which one lived.
The poetic forms vary somewhat, though all within the modern, free verse style. Most notably, the author uses the golden shovel approach of Terrence Hayes extensively.
This collection grabbed me both with its clever language and its thought-provoking central premise. I'd highly recommend it for readers of poetry.
March 9, 2025
So glad I had the opportunity to read this collection of poetry. I have been long tired of Asian American poets/authors who tell the same "outsider/insider/perpetual foreigner" narrative without additional critical thought on (U.S.) imperialism and ways its affects all peoples globally. I was very intrigued by the poems in this collection for the storyweaving as well as detailed intricacies through changing of perspectives and POV that highlighted the aforementioned critical thought. I will definitely be returning to this to re-read multiple times and I'm sure I'll find something different with each read.
Thank you Maudee Genao and Atria Books for an ARC
Notable quotes and poems:
'They asked me to follow
the script.
My death written
before I was born.' -- Zombie Apocalypse Now: The Walking Dead
'There's a silhouette where
my family will fit. The story I trim
with scissors. My father I cut to scraps.' -- Cargo
"Q&A"
"July is Watermelon Season"
"Dear Child of the Wind"
Thank you Maudee Genao and Atria Books for an ARC
Notable quotes and poems:
'They asked me to follow
the script.
My death written
before I was born.' -- Zombie Apocalypse Now: The Walking Dead
'There's a silhouette where
my family will fit. The story I trim
with scissors. My father I cut to scraps.' -- Cargo
"Q&A"
"July is Watermelon Season"
"Dear Child of the Wind"
September 30, 2025
The author's parents were in a Philippine refugee camp after the Vietnam War--and were cast as extra's in Apocalypse Now. Many of these poems look at that--the sadness, the difficulty, the absurdity of using actual refugees just years removed as extras in your moving. Forcing them to re-live those years.
This book was a fascinating look at all that followed that choice to take those jobs--to relive the fear, but to be paid so well (and that was what made the decision possible), money that enabled their lives in the US. To then see that movie at an American theater. It is so absurd as to be nearly unbelievable. Yet there it is.
"We'd survived a war
to be cast into the margins
of our own story."
This book was a fascinating look at all that followed that choice to take those jobs--to relive the fear, but to be paid so well (and that was what made the decision possible), money that enabled their lives in the US. To then see that movie at an American theater. It is so absurd as to be nearly unbelievable. Yet there it is.
"We'd survived a war
to be cast into the margins
of our own story."
February 22, 2025
A stunning poetry collection using various forms of prose to walk through the author’s parents’ experiences as refugees. Lots of one-liners that punch you in the gut and make you want to hold your family and culture closer. Poetry like this is so important when we find ourselves in an unsteady or scary political environment, and I would encourage people to read with both the past and future in mind.
February 4, 2025
A melancholic and candid collection of poems about the author’s parents’ experience with the Vietnam war and then subsequently being in extras in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, becoming background characters in a fictionalized version of their own history - in a sense, Becoming Ghost in their own stories.
I’m not familiar with the movie Apocalypse Now or the references to Cathy Linh Che’s previous poetry work, but I found each poem to be introspective, reflective, evocative, and emotional. There’s a lot of clever interplay between the parents’ flashbacks of the war and immigration and their experiences working on the movie set, weaving in screenplay references too. I thought it was fascinating how by publishing this work and highlighting the parts her parents were in, they become the main characters rather than continuing to be relegated to background characters.
Che’s structuring of the poems is rather unusual but I appreciate the fluidity, cadence and rhythm of the poems as well as the vivid imagery of a dark history. For instance, the poetry collection is sectioned into multiple parts. From there, some of the poems’ titles have the same titular header but a different subheading. The poem title Becoming Ghost also repeats throughout the collection. I think this would need deeper analysis and I would be interested in listening to a podcast or interview about the author’s intentions.
All in all, a profound and touching tribute to her parents and acknowledgement of their hardships.
Special thanks to Atria Books, Washington Square Press, and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.
I’m not familiar with the movie Apocalypse Now or the references to Cathy Linh Che’s previous poetry work, but I found each poem to be introspective, reflective, evocative, and emotional. There’s a lot of clever interplay between the parents’ flashbacks of the war and immigration and their experiences working on the movie set, weaving in screenplay references too. I thought it was fascinating how by publishing this work and highlighting the parts her parents were in, they become the main characters rather than continuing to be relegated to background characters.
Che’s structuring of the poems is rather unusual but I appreciate the fluidity, cadence and rhythm of the poems as well as the vivid imagery of a dark history. For instance, the poetry collection is sectioned into multiple parts. From there, some of the poems’ titles have the same titular header but a different subheading. The poem title Becoming Ghost also repeats throughout the collection. I think this would need deeper analysis and I would be interested in listening to a podcast or interview about the author’s intentions.
All in all, a profound and touching tribute to her parents and acknowledgement of their hardships.
Special thanks to Atria Books, Washington Square Press, and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.
December 23, 2025
A lot of this collection revolves around the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which I have not seen. All of the movie allusions and elements in the poems didn't hold much meaning for me as a result. What did come through was the meditation on filming lives (who gets to tell other people's stories and how?) and casting Vietnamese people in refugee camps as extras in the movie (Che's parents themselves were cast as extras) in problematic ways.
I do love the form of the golden shovel (ending each line with a word from an external poem or text), though I read this collection on my Kindle so the lines weren't formatted well enough for me to pick up on the golden shovel inspirations. That's my fault for choosing the format I did. The choice to use a highly intertextual form connected to Che's focus on influences and retellings/reimaginings.
The parts of this collection that are about heritage and the experiences of Che's family members and ancestors as a result of the Vietnam War and its ravages were the most intimate.
It seems to me that Che has thought long and hard about the unfolding of the Vietnam War, including its causes and legacies, and is self-assured in her critique of what went down on a national scale and also on a familial one. There's a political commentary thru line in the collection that didn't personally resonate (as I was not alive during the war and have no closeness to it otherwise) but that was compelling in its forcefulness and comparisons to today's conflicts (like Gaza).
I do love the form of the golden shovel (ending each line with a word from an external poem or text), though I read this collection on my Kindle so the lines weren't formatted well enough for me to pick up on the golden shovel inspirations. That's my fault for choosing the format I did. The choice to use a highly intertextual form connected to Che's focus on influences and retellings/reimaginings.
The parts of this collection that are about heritage and the experiences of Che's family members and ancestors as a result of the Vietnam War and its ravages were the most intimate.
It seems to me that Che has thought long and hard about the unfolding of the Vietnam War, including its causes and legacies, and is self-assured in her critique of what went down on a national scale and also on a familial one. There's a political commentary thru line in the collection that didn't personally resonate (as I was not alive during the war and have no closeness to it otherwise) but that was compelling in its forcefulness and comparisons to today's conflicts (like Gaza).
June 26, 2026
Incredible— I am sometimes allergic to “political” poetry, it’s just so hard (in my opinion!) not to be trite and self serving, especially if you are commenting on your frustration with the pain of others. If it is a 1st person perspective it is usually much better, however, sometimes it veers into the confessional for the sake of shock value in a way that turns me off. The best political poems sneak up on you as you read them, they lure you in with beauty and then turn your head toward justice right at the perfect moment, letting the two complement each other without overpowering each other. This collection does that so well. And what a premise! Che rummages through her family’s history of the Vietnam war through the lens of Apocalypse Now, a movie in which her parents—actually Vietnam refugees— played unnamed extras. The movie as a through line of the collection is brilliant.
October 3, 2025
really beautiful collection - something I wish my intro to poetry teacher had made us read instead of generic poems by old white guys. only realized what the golden shovel format was halfway through class which was a big revelation! fantastic motifs and themes throughout (zombie apocalypse, bruised fruit, bombings, etc). took me a longer time than I thought to get through it but really worth it.
July 18, 2025
This was insanely good. Cathy you’re brilliant. So many layers of the act of self versus what it takes to access the self. Performance weaved with sorrow with joy with regret ugh so so good
March 2, 2026
3.5 stars
February 24, 2026
Che writes about her parents’ experiences as refugees and being extras in the film Apocalypse Now. I thought this was a FANTASTIC way of centering Vietnamese voices and exploring family trauma as a means to remember and feel their lived experiences, along with her own.
March 22, 2025
Becoming Ghost by Cathy Linh Che is a poetry collection that explores the fracturing of family, using form, metaphor and point of view. From the book’s summary: “Becoming Ghost documents Cathy Linh Che's parents' experiences as refugees who escaped the Vietnam War and then were cast as extras in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, placing them at the margins of their own story.” Without a strong hold of the Coppola film, some of this reference was lost on me, but Che builds a larger thread about the impact of immigration and the subsequent trauma, that I was engaged.
Poems in the collection move from the narrator to the parents’ point of view, and these poems share some of the most difficult and tender moments. In the poem “Bomb that tree line back about a hundred yards. Give me room to breathe,” which uses the golden shovel form, Che writes: “Daughter, I think you embellish what you don’t know. A bomb/ is nothing like a slammed door. That/ is just your poetic imagination. Have you seen a tree / disappear into flames? That’s what a bomb can do. I taught you, line/ by line, my own poetry.” In that same poem, the parent voice questions if the daughter is afraid of her, questions how the daughter can write her story without being in conversation with her. These poems are filled with moments like this, moments that reach for each other as much as they push away. These poems ask for connection while claiming betrayal.
At the end of three collection, Che shares the inspirations and the form choices in an end note that makes many of the connections I wish I had at the beginning. It adds power to each of her choices.
Poems in the collection move from the narrator to the parents’ point of view, and these poems share some of the most difficult and tender moments. In the poem “Bomb that tree line back about a hundred yards. Give me room to breathe,” which uses the golden shovel form, Che writes: “Daughter, I think you embellish what you don’t know. A bomb/ is nothing like a slammed door. That/ is just your poetic imagination. Have you seen a tree / disappear into flames? That’s what a bomb can do. I taught you, line/ by line, my own poetry.” In that same poem, the parent voice questions if the daughter is afraid of her, questions how the daughter can write her story without being in conversation with her. These poems are filled with moments like this, moments that reach for each other as much as they push away. These poems ask for connection while claiming betrayal.
At the end of three collection, Che shares the inspirations and the form choices in an end note that makes many of the connections I wish I had at the beginning. It adds power to each of her choices.
December 20, 2025
An interesting collection of poems with a strong thematic element and beautiful words. I enjoyed pieces but I often don’t know how to feel about pieces written based on parents’ trauma. I understand the instinct to put forward our immigrant family’s past to bring their stories to light but I also feel conflicted about the way those stories are consumed and at what degree it becomes a spectacle. That being said, the link to Coppola’s film does ground this in a different way.
February 24, 2025
Once this poetry collection came into focus, you notice the finite details within the scope of being long forgotten. Blending into the background of every story.
What these poems did was bring Vietnamese voices to the forefront, making their stories the main event. It unearths questions and realizes familial trauma. It’s a quest and a plead for one’s own ability to forgive.
It’s a great narrative of memory, twisted to bring forth buried voices.
[thank you @atriabooks @washingtonsquarepress @cathylinhche for this gifted copy!]
What these poems did was bring Vietnamese voices to the forefront, making their stories the main event. It unearths questions and realizes familial trauma. It’s a quest and a plead for one’s own ability to forgive.
It’s a great narrative of memory, twisted to bring forth buried voices.
[thank you @atriabooks @washingtonsquarepress @cathylinhche for this gifted copy!]
April 1, 2026
I know Vietnamese refugees and war stories are not unique, but there are so few stories/poems published. Reading someone else's account and seeing it mirror some of my stories touches something deep inside my soul. I cried every time she talked about trying to connect to her dad. I think the legacies of war are profound, and it's hard not to draw parallels to what's going on in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, the list goes on...
April 29, 2025
4.5 ⭐️ I don’t often reads books of poetry, but this was so good! Cath Linh Che writes in a way that left me feeling dreamy & dazed; not in an upbeat way, but I’m a surreal sort. She writes of her family struggles, her parents in Vietnam during the war, and how they were cast as extras in Apocalypse Now. Beautiful & haunting & fresh.
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June 11, 2025Trying to get more into poetry. I do appreciate and prefer this type of writing. The beauty of words. The work it takes for us to understand. It also displays the limitations of language and the difficulty translating the sound of the soul.
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October 16, 2025The smell of napalm in the morning has never been so alive in my eyes, so achingly every day and humane. Wonderful small collection of family, war and everything in between. Beautiful, heartbreaking.
August 5, 2026
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Cathy Linh Che's parents escaped Vietnam by boat. They spent eleven months in a refugee camp in the Philippines. Toward the end of that time, they were recruited as extras in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, the film that would be nominated for eight Academy Awards and become one of the most celebrated works in American cinema. Che's parents played civilian casualties, Vietcong snipers, background scenery. They were used to authenticate the art. They were given no speaking lines. They did not receive closing credits.
Their daughter became a poet. And she took the language of that screenplay, the language that silenced her parents and cast them into the margins of their own story, and used it as the raw material from which to give them back their voices.
The formal instrument she uses is the golden shovel, a poetic form invented by Terrance Hayes in which the last word of each line in a new poem forms a hidden secondary text descending vertically down the page. Che takes lines from Coppola and John Milius's screenplay for Apocalypse Now and builds poems from them in which Vietnamese experience is central, not peripheral. In one of the collection's most striking poems, she takes the famous line spoken by Robert Duvall's Lt. Col. Kilgore, the bravado of napalm and American ownership over everything, and builds from it a new poem in which Vietnamese lives, not American triumphalism, occupy the foreground. The colonizer's language becomes the vessel for the colonized family's experience.
This formal gesture is not just formally clever. It is a genuine act of literary reclamation, and one with real political stakes. Apocalypse Now was received by American critics and audiences as the definitive artistic statement about the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese people whose war it claimed to depict were background scenery. Che's collection insists that the story is not over, and that the tools of the people who told it can be turned against the telling.
The collection works across multiple registers. Che writes in her own voice as daughter, grappling with the estrangement from her father that began while she was researching and interviewing her parents for this project, and with the ethical difficulty of using one's parents as poetic subjects without their full consent. She writes in persona as her parents, imagining their inner lives in the refugee camp, on the film set, in their American lives. And she writes the "Zombie Apocalypse Now" series, ten poems that merge the refugee experience with the zombie-apocalypse genre, an analogy she found while watching The Walking Dead: both are about stateless people moving through a shattered world, searching for safety, unsure of how or where to rebuild.
The father looms over the collection as its most complex presence. His pain is rendered fully alongside the harm he causes, and Che does not allow him to become simply a villain. He is a man who survived a war, performed it for Hollywood, was erased by the film that used him, and carried all of that unprocessed into an American life. One of the collection's most memorable moments has the father's voice pushing back against the daughter's poetic project directly: Daughter, I think you embellish what you don't know. A bomb is nothing like a slammed door. That is just your poetic imagination. Have you seen a tree disappear into flames? That's what a bomb can do. I taught you, line by line, my own poetry.
That last line is the collection's central accusation and its central question. The father claims authorship of his own experience. The daughter is trying to write it. The collection holds the tension between those two claims without resolving it cheaply.
The mother is quieter but no less fully rendered: a woman who survived war, displacement, and a difficult marriage, and who tends a garden of basil, lemongrass, and guava in California, extracts the last value from a copper penny, drinks a single can of beer with her husband on Sundays. She is not a symbol of endurance. She is a person who has endured.
The formal intelligence of Becoming Ghost is extraordinary, and the story at its heart is one I have not encountered anywhere else in poetry. The question of who tells whose story, and what it costs when the answer is wrong, is one of the most urgent questions in American literature, and Che has found a formal argument for it that is both rigorous and beautiful.
For more of my thoughts, check out my video:
https://youtu.be/DPtq2xyaD8E
For more reviews, check out my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/@SpencerReadsE...
Their daughter became a poet. And she took the language of that screenplay, the language that silenced her parents and cast them into the margins of their own story, and used it as the raw material from which to give them back their voices.
The formal instrument she uses is the golden shovel, a poetic form invented by Terrance Hayes in which the last word of each line in a new poem forms a hidden secondary text descending vertically down the page. Che takes lines from Coppola and John Milius's screenplay for Apocalypse Now and builds poems from them in which Vietnamese experience is central, not peripheral. In one of the collection's most striking poems, she takes the famous line spoken by Robert Duvall's Lt. Col. Kilgore, the bravado of napalm and American ownership over everything, and builds from it a new poem in which Vietnamese lives, not American triumphalism, occupy the foreground. The colonizer's language becomes the vessel for the colonized family's experience.
This formal gesture is not just formally clever. It is a genuine act of literary reclamation, and one with real political stakes. Apocalypse Now was received by American critics and audiences as the definitive artistic statement about the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese people whose war it claimed to depict were background scenery. Che's collection insists that the story is not over, and that the tools of the people who told it can be turned against the telling.
The collection works across multiple registers. Che writes in her own voice as daughter, grappling with the estrangement from her father that began while she was researching and interviewing her parents for this project, and with the ethical difficulty of using one's parents as poetic subjects without their full consent. She writes in persona as her parents, imagining their inner lives in the refugee camp, on the film set, in their American lives. And she writes the "Zombie Apocalypse Now" series, ten poems that merge the refugee experience with the zombie-apocalypse genre, an analogy she found while watching The Walking Dead: both are about stateless people moving through a shattered world, searching for safety, unsure of how or where to rebuild.
The father looms over the collection as its most complex presence. His pain is rendered fully alongside the harm he causes, and Che does not allow him to become simply a villain. He is a man who survived a war, performed it for Hollywood, was erased by the film that used him, and carried all of that unprocessed into an American life. One of the collection's most memorable moments has the father's voice pushing back against the daughter's poetic project directly: Daughter, I think you embellish what you don't know. A bomb is nothing like a slammed door. That is just your poetic imagination. Have you seen a tree disappear into flames? That's what a bomb can do. I taught you, line by line, my own poetry.
That last line is the collection's central accusation and its central question. The father claims authorship of his own experience. The daughter is trying to write it. The collection holds the tension between those two claims without resolving it cheaply.
The mother is quieter but no less fully rendered: a woman who survived war, displacement, and a difficult marriage, and who tends a garden of basil, lemongrass, and guava in California, extracts the last value from a copper penny, drinks a single can of beer with her husband on Sundays. She is not a symbol of endurance. She is a person who has endured.
The formal intelligence of Becoming Ghost is extraordinary, and the story at its heart is one I have not encountered anywhere else in poetry. The question of who tells whose story, and what it costs when the answer is wrong, is one of the most urgent questions in American literature, and Che has found a formal argument for it that is both rigorous and beautiful.
For more of my thoughts, check out my video:
https://youtu.be/DPtq2xyaD8E
For more reviews, check out my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/@SpencerReadsE...
April 14, 2025
Thanks to NetGalley & Atria for the ARC!
Cathy Linh Che’s Becoming Ghost is a sparse, severe, and startling collection of poetry about the author’s refugee parents playing extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
The challenge with anti-war poetry is that the form often implicitly romanticizes violence—beautiful language wasted on ugly things. Che resists this impulse by using the barest lexicon possible, employing bluntness to razor-sharp effect. It’s simply impossible for an American reader to deny their complicity by hiding behind the protection of artistic interpretation.
Much of the book is spent upending saccharine, idealized refugee narratives. In “Los Angeles, Manila, Đà Nẵng,” the speaker explicitly rejects the language of metaphor when describing a woman “who will carry bricks for the rest of her life”—refugees are real people, and they deserve the dignity of being seen as just people.
In “In the kitchen, recounting,” we read what could be considered the book’s thesis:
She asks for my story [private].
She asks for my story [public].
Becoming Ghost constantly wrestles with who narrativizes a body under attack, often through polyvocal slippage. Does the public really deserve the truth? Are Americans even entitled to having someone shatter their myth of unquestioned goodness?
Despite these difficult, abstract questions, the intimate, familial focus of Che’s writing animates the whole collection. This is primarily for and about her parents.
Apocalypse Now looms over the book as an extension of the violence against Vietnamese people, with the speaker repeatedly noting how dehumanizing conditions on set were justified with financial restitution. The speaker’s parents collapse into tokens of violence—extras with their humanity made extraneous. What does one do with the knowledge that their parents were paid more to re-enact their own destruction than they were to work in the US? What does it mean that they were more valued as receptacles for violence?
Using the movie as detritus, Che plucks words from its script to form the foundation of poems that critique it and American violence. “Heart of Darkness” is a particularly pointed interrogation of the word “war” itself, as the speaker draws attention to how it neuters the reality of what’s really happening—genocide. By the time we see it named as such late in the collection, it feels like an unquestionable argument.
Becoming Ghost is nothing short of a masterpiece, and Cathy Linh Che demonstrates an incredible attention to the voices that speak when we recognize they don’t speak for us. I’m grateful and excited to revisit this one.
Cathy Linh Che’s Becoming Ghost is a sparse, severe, and startling collection of poetry about the author’s refugee parents playing extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
The challenge with anti-war poetry is that the form often implicitly romanticizes violence—beautiful language wasted on ugly things. Che resists this impulse by using the barest lexicon possible, employing bluntness to razor-sharp effect. It’s simply impossible for an American reader to deny their complicity by hiding behind the protection of artistic interpretation.
Much of the book is spent upending saccharine, idealized refugee narratives. In “Los Angeles, Manila, Đà Nẵng,” the speaker explicitly rejects the language of metaphor when describing a woman “who will carry bricks for the rest of her life”—refugees are real people, and they deserve the dignity of being seen as just people.
In “In the kitchen, recounting,” we read what could be considered the book’s thesis:
She asks for my story [private].
She asks for my story [public].
Becoming Ghost constantly wrestles with who narrativizes a body under attack, often through polyvocal slippage. Does the public really deserve the truth? Are Americans even entitled to having someone shatter their myth of unquestioned goodness?
Despite these difficult, abstract questions, the intimate, familial focus of Che’s writing animates the whole collection. This is primarily for and about her parents.
Apocalypse Now looms over the book as an extension of the violence against Vietnamese people, with the speaker repeatedly noting how dehumanizing conditions on set were justified with financial restitution. The speaker’s parents collapse into tokens of violence—extras with their humanity made extraneous. What does one do with the knowledge that their parents were paid more to re-enact their own destruction than they were to work in the US? What does it mean that they were more valued as receptacles for violence?
Using the movie as detritus, Che plucks words from its script to form the foundation of poems that critique it and American violence. “Heart of Darkness” is a particularly pointed interrogation of the word “war” itself, as the speaker draws attention to how it neuters the reality of what’s really happening—genocide. By the time we see it named as such late in the collection, it feels like an unquestionable argument.
Becoming Ghost is nothing short of a masterpiece, and Cathy Linh Che demonstrates an incredible attention to the voices that speak when we recognize they don’t speak for us. I’m grateful and excited to revisit this one.
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