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A Nail the Evening Hangs On
In her debut collection, Monica Sok uses poetry to reshape a family's memory about the Khmer Rouge regime—memory that is both real and imagined—according to a child of refugees. Driven by myth-making and fables, the poems examine the inheritance of the genocide and the profound struggles of searing grief and PTSD. Though the landscape of Cambodia is always present, it is the liminal space, the in-betweenness of diaspora, in which younger generations must reconcile their history and create new rituals. A Nail the Evening Hangs On seeks to reclaim the Cambodian narrative with tenderness and an imagination that moves towards wholeness and possibility.
88 pages, Paperback
First published February 25, 2020
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About the author
Monica Sok
5 books29 followersMonica Sok is a Cambodian American poet and the daughter of refugees. She is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Her work has been recognized with a "Discovery" Prize from 92Y. She has received fellowships and residencies from Poetry Society of America, Hedgebrook, Elizabeth George Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Saltonstall Foundation, and others. Sok is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and has teaches poetry to Southeast Asian youths at the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California. She is originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
December 28, 2020
This really hurt. I somehow managed to read the book in one sitting but it wasn't easy — there were poems that made my arms shake, and I'd just lie down and stare at my ceiling until I stopped trembling. I don't think I can write an unbiased review. Monica and I share the same intergenerational trauma, grief, and loss, so of course her poems would deeply resonate with me.
"Visitors to Cambodia, who wander around
with crushed limes in their sugarcane drinks,
can say people of this country
suffered so much but are so happy.
[...]
And I think of how my mother,
washing dishes bordered with gray flowers,
sobbed over the sink and spoke.
I don't know what happened to my brother."
In lines like these, I was reading about myself, about my own mother. I saw my mother in our kitchen, her tender hands gripping the dishes over the sink. I saw my four/five year old self playing with my toys on the kitchen floor, and how it was in those moments that I learned that she once had two brothers. I've never felt so seen in my entire life.
I'm honestly not sure how this book/these poems would be received by someone that is not Cambodian or Khmer. I normally review poetry based on how much emotion was evoked in me, but I can't fairly comment on that since I'm inherently shrouded in so much grief/understanding/warmth from Monica's words. I can see some (i.e. non-Cambodians or people without a relationship to Cambodia or genocide) feeling distant from the poetry since you need some history + context to fully grasp most of the poems, but then again, I understand that poetry is always subjective and different things evoke emotion in people. I wouldn't be surprised if readers from other backgrounds feel this same surge of emotion. Monica's writing is so sharp. She doesn't use extravagant, flowery writing because she doesn't need it. Everything is to the point & that is what hurts.
"The tourists are here to stroke black-and-white photographs
of tortured prisoners.
They press closer to look at a picture:
a handcuffed boy
leaning toward them. Walking slow
around the prison,
they crouch in cramped stalls and shut themselves in
to imagine what horrors.
[...]
Now they have been here.
They buy books from the souvenir shops
and silk scarves and krama
and handmade purses.
But we come here to look for someone."
"Visitors to Cambodia, who wander around
with crushed limes in their sugarcane drinks,
can say people of this country
suffered so much but are so happy.
[...]
And I think of how my mother,
washing dishes bordered with gray flowers,
sobbed over the sink and spoke.
I don't know what happened to my brother."
In lines like these, I was reading about myself, about my own mother. I saw my mother in our kitchen, her tender hands gripping the dishes over the sink. I saw my four/five year old self playing with my toys on the kitchen floor, and how it was in those moments that I learned that she once had two brothers. I've never felt so seen in my entire life.
I'm honestly not sure how this book/these poems would be received by someone that is not Cambodian or Khmer. I normally review poetry based on how much emotion was evoked in me, but I can't fairly comment on that since I'm inherently shrouded in so much grief/understanding/warmth from Monica's words. I can see some (i.e. non-Cambodians or people without a relationship to Cambodia or genocide) feeling distant from the poetry since you need some history + context to fully grasp most of the poems, but then again, I understand that poetry is always subjective and different things evoke emotion in people. I wouldn't be surprised if readers from other backgrounds feel this same surge of emotion. Monica's writing is so sharp. She doesn't use extravagant, flowery writing because she doesn't need it. Everything is to the point & that is what hurts.
"The tourists are here to stroke black-and-white photographs
of tortured prisoners.
They press closer to look at a picture:
a handcuffed boy
leaning toward them. Walking slow
around the prison,
they crouch in cramped stalls and shut themselves in
to imagine what horrors.
[...]
Now they have been here.
They buy books from the souvenir shops
and silk scarves and krama
and handmade purses.
But we come here to look for someone."
March 21, 2025
Actual rating: 3.5
I have some conflicting emotions in regards to Monica Sok's poetry collection about Cambodian identity, trauma, family, and belonging - all rooted in history and the Cambodian genocide. Some poems are seemingly autobiographical, while others are influenced by myths and fables.
The poems deal with the (inherited) intergenerational trauma of the Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge, and the widespread effects this has on the Cambodian diaspora in terms of grief, (collective) memory, loss, belonging, and identity.
On one hand, a large part of this collection made me feel like I was too dumb to "get" poetry. I think someone not familiar with Cambodia and its history, specifically how the communist Khmer Rouge party seized power in 1975 and killed an estimated 25% (approx 2 million people) of the country's population during their totalitarian regime between 1975-1979, might have even more difficulty with this collection.
On the other hand, I did find some of the poems, as well as the overall impression of the collection, very evocative and impactful. Particularly, the longest, central poem "Tuol Sleng" wherein disaster tourism was poignantly contrasted with Khmer loss, intergenerational trauma, grief, and history. Other favorites were "Cruel Radiance" and "Ode to the Loom."
From "Tuol Sleng":
"The tourists are here to stroke black-and-white photographs
of tortured prisoners.
[...]
They cry. They write on the walls NEVER FORGET
signing their names.
Now they have been here.
They buy books from the souvenir shops
and silk scarves and krama
and handmade purses.
But we come here to look for someone."
I have some conflicting emotions in regards to Monica Sok's poetry collection about Cambodian identity, trauma, family, and belonging - all rooted in history and the Cambodian genocide. Some poems are seemingly autobiographical, while others are influenced by myths and fables.
The poems deal with the (inherited) intergenerational trauma of the Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge, and the widespread effects this has on the Cambodian diaspora in terms of grief, (collective) memory, loss, belonging, and identity.
On one hand, a large part of this collection made me feel like I was too dumb to "get" poetry. I think someone not familiar with Cambodia and its history, specifically how the communist Khmer Rouge party seized power in 1975 and killed an estimated 25% (approx 2 million people) of the country's population during their totalitarian regime between 1975-1979, might have even more difficulty with this collection.
On the other hand, I did find some of the poems, as well as the overall impression of the collection, very evocative and impactful. Particularly, the longest, central poem "Tuol Sleng" wherein disaster tourism was poignantly contrasted with Khmer loss, intergenerational trauma, grief, and history. Other favorites were "Cruel Radiance" and "Ode to the Loom."
From "Tuol Sleng":
"The tourists are here to stroke black-and-white photographs
of tortured prisoners.
[...]
They cry. They write on the walls NEVER FORGET
signing their names.
Now they have been here.
They buy books from the souvenir shops
and silk scarves and krama
and handmade purses.
But we come here to look for someone."
March 9, 2020
I wrote a review forthcoming about this collection but the tl;dr is this book should be celebrated as one of the best books published this year. It’s utterly remarkable. Not a word is wasted.
Read
May 10, 2020I'd first come across Monica Sok's work years ago, in poetry salons and magazines and conferences, so I was excited to see her debut book published this year. The first lines of the opening poem, "Ask the Locals," are: "Nobody knows: How those so-called revolutionaries / who wanted so-called Year Zero so bad, / turned into mosquitoes. I mean, mosquitoes, right?" These lines set a tone for what is to come, introducing the idea of historical knowledge lost to obscurity and therefore needing to be reconstructed through myth, and also the idea of people and things not equaling the words and names assigned to them ("so-called" twice). The only thing that is axiomatic here, the only thing the speaker and audience are supposed to agree on, is that some people have metamorphosed into mosquitoes; this is the foundation of what follows, a proposition treated as so well-known and universally accepted that it can be discussed breezily in the syntax of stand-up comedy: "I mean, mosquitoes, right?" Already, in these first lines, Sok shakes up the terms of the conversation, upending our conception of what is known and what is real. But the imperative sentence that is this poem's title also helps set the tone: it is "the locals," the people of Cambodia, whose reconstructions of the past we are being advised to attend to when seeking to understand Cambodian history.
Some of the poems are in the voice of a Cambodian American like the author, who confronts her layered identity when visiting her motherland: "The Americans hate me and I hate them, / but they're the only students with me and maybe I'm American too," says the speaker of "Americans Dancing in the Heart of Darkness," the "Heart of Darkness" in the title being the name of a Cambodian nightclub but also an allusion to the Conrad novel exploring racism and imperialism. In some ways, the poem's speaker is indistinguishable from the American students about whom she feels so conflicted -- they all order room service, they all go nightclub-dancing in the wake of a tragedy -- but the country tugs at her via family ties in a way it does not tug at the others: "They laugh. / Meanwhile my mother calls me. My father calls me. My auntie calls me // from Prek Eng. My uncle down the street from the hotel. / My uncle in Kandal. My cousin's uncle in Siem Reap." This theme is echoed in the collection's long central poem, "Tuol Sleng," in which the speaker takes her six-year-old nephew to visit a Khmer Rouge torture prison to seek information about an uncle who disappeared: "My nephew sprints down the halls, ducks his head into every classroom, then off again as though he hears a school bell ring. 'You see that boy running in the halls?' a tourist says to another tourist. 'Does he have any respect for history?'"
Other poems are in the voices of various Cambodians living and fearing under the Khmer Rouge regime: a radio host thrown in prison, an orphan soldier clearing land mines, the wife of a historian murdered by the regime: "[A] spy passes our hut. How is it? They have the many eyes of a pineapple.... I used to make samlar machu, used to cut the skin of a pineapple and toss it in soup." Still other poems, returning to the voice of the refugee in America, curse an American politician who had a hand in the war ("if a spot-billed duck were to lay an egg. / Well. It would be bad for you. // Do you copy? Do you read me? / Blue, speckled egg. Rebirth as revenge.") Other poems express a complicated love for parents and elders, especially the female elders who, sitting at their looms, are community pillars, letting down their hair "not as rain does / but as nails the evening hangs on." There is loss in these poems, but also a belief in the power of writing to sustain life: "and here you are still writing your name / and your brother's name, now your mother's / and father's names, as though writing them / might make your names true."
Some of the poems are in the voice of a Cambodian American like the author, who confronts her layered identity when visiting her motherland: "The Americans hate me and I hate them, / but they're the only students with me and maybe I'm American too," says the speaker of "Americans Dancing in the Heart of Darkness," the "Heart of Darkness" in the title being the name of a Cambodian nightclub but also an allusion to the Conrad novel exploring racism and imperialism. In some ways, the poem's speaker is indistinguishable from the American students about whom she feels so conflicted -- they all order room service, they all go nightclub-dancing in the wake of a tragedy -- but the country tugs at her via family ties in a way it does not tug at the others: "They laugh. / Meanwhile my mother calls me. My father calls me. My auntie calls me // from Prek Eng. My uncle down the street from the hotel. / My uncle in Kandal. My cousin's uncle in Siem Reap." This theme is echoed in the collection's long central poem, "Tuol Sleng," in which the speaker takes her six-year-old nephew to visit a Khmer Rouge torture prison to seek information about an uncle who disappeared: "My nephew sprints down the halls, ducks his head into every classroom, then off again as though he hears a school bell ring. 'You see that boy running in the halls?' a tourist says to another tourist. 'Does he have any respect for history?'"
Other poems are in the voices of various Cambodians living and fearing under the Khmer Rouge regime: a radio host thrown in prison, an orphan soldier clearing land mines, the wife of a historian murdered by the regime: "[A] spy passes our hut. How is it? They have the many eyes of a pineapple.... I used to make samlar machu, used to cut the skin of a pineapple and toss it in soup." Still other poems, returning to the voice of the refugee in America, curse an American politician who had a hand in the war ("if a spot-billed duck were to lay an egg. / Well. It would be bad for you. // Do you copy? Do you read me? / Blue, speckled egg. Rebirth as revenge.") Other poems express a complicated love for parents and elders, especially the female elders who, sitting at their looms, are community pillars, letting down their hair "not as rain does / but as nails the evening hangs on." There is loss in these poems, but also a belief in the power of writing to sustain life: "and here you are still writing your name / and your brother's name, now your mother's / and father's names, as though writing them / might make your names true."
July 3, 2025
I enjoyed this book. There were a lot of points that were deeply moving and left me feeling open. Sok’s prose and references to other media help add depth to the work. I appreciated the listing at the end that identifies what she referenced. I don’t know much about the Khmer Rouge regime, so during some points I had to go research and look up information to bridge that knowledge gap. A very good and deeply moving piece that I’m glad I finally read.
March 3, 2023
Incredible collection of poems reflect on the cost of war.
March 22, 2020
This collection of poetry magnifies the voices of Khmer and Southeast Asian refugees. The pieces here are poignant and bittersweet. I especially liked "Windfall," "In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas," and "Ode to the Loom."
I will definitely keep an eye out for this author's future works.
(I think I learned about Sok by reading a piece she had in a recent collection with several poets but I can't recall the title.)
I will definitely keep an eye out for this author's future works.
(I think I learned about Sok by reading a piece she had in a recent collection with several poets but I can't recall the title.)
Read
July 24, 2022Read this on recommendation from another poet (Danez Smith, I think?) and I had NO CLUE what was going on in these poems. All I know is, horrible things happened in Cambodia, which the US / the West exacerbated??, and I didn't want to look them up / learn more in this Year 3 of the pandemic. Thus, no context for this poetry, other than being a sister to a brother. Those references I understood.
February 2, 2026
The author vulnerably shares her and her family and her country’s experiences of the genocides and loss of the Khmer Rogue regime and its generational impacts. The strengths of the poetry are its relational elements, the transparent rawness of wound found within micro family moments. The structure must support the poetry in a way that I wasn’t privy to or was beyond me.
January 16, 2021
A stunning debut collection that filters her family's memories of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia through poems that are lush and stark at the same time. Particularly telling are the poems set at museums dedicated to the bloody history of the regime which show the behavior of the Western tourists handling weapons vs that of the narrator, who is the child of refugees and searching for evidence that a lost uncle had been there.
Read
February 23, 202220 pgs. need to come back to
November 4, 2024
“There are things in this world we must make one another see.”
February 25, 2025
This took time to sink into. I'm glad I stuck with it because there are some hard hitting images and messages here. Ultimately, it grew and grew in its presence as I read through the collection until I was fully absorbed. I especially appreciation the discussion of dark tourism and the western world's consumption of others' trauma.
content warnings:
Moderate: Confinement, Death, Genocide, and Violence
content warnings:
Moderate: Confinement, Death, Genocide, and Violence
March 28, 2020
A strong debut collection that serves as both tribute and testament — a testament to Sok’s experiences of displacement and inheritance in the Cambodian diaspora, and a tribute to suffering and surviving under the brutal, genocidal reign of the Khmer Rouge.
So much of this collection is about lineage. It is familial, holding in lyric the lives of Sok’s relatives through multiple poems about family members. The book is dedicated to Bun Em, Sok’s grandmother, and the stunning cover art is a photograph of a silk spun by Em. But taken together, the poems feel familial in a more expansive sense: there is a kind of collective storytelling taking place here, too. The result is a collection that feels sweeping and intimate at once.
There are a couple of really lovely & arresting poems in here. “Ode to the Loom” and the “Weaver” are stunning, and feel like twins. “Tuol Sleng” is a haunting vision of genocide / disaster tourism, questioning who these sites are for and how we (different “we”s) relate to them.
I was not taken with every poem in this collection, but there are moments of piercing insight, a powerful sense of witness and inheritance, and real lyrical brilliance. I’m glad I read this and am excited to read what Sok publishes next.
So much of this collection is about lineage. It is familial, holding in lyric the lives of Sok’s relatives through multiple poems about family members. The book is dedicated to Bun Em, Sok’s grandmother, and the stunning cover art is a photograph of a silk spun by Em. But taken together, the poems feel familial in a more expansive sense: there is a kind of collective storytelling taking place here, too. The result is a collection that feels sweeping and intimate at once.
There are a couple of really lovely & arresting poems in here. “Ode to the Loom” and the “Weaver” are stunning, and feel like twins. “Tuol Sleng” is a haunting vision of genocide / disaster tourism, questioning who these sites are for and how we (different “we”s) relate to them.
I was not taken with every poem in this collection, but there are moments of piercing insight, a powerful sense of witness and inheritance, and real lyrical brilliance. I’m glad I read this and am excited to read what Sok publishes next.
March 25, 2020
Having just finished this work, I wanted to quickly write about how stunning it is in both its concept and lyric. The poems herein are riddled with cultural fragmentation, belonging and becoming, collapse and trauma, and family. I think of the grief and the bravery of spirit it took for this work to exist.
"Windfall," "Cruel Radiance," "Ode to the Loom," and "Here is Your Name" are among my favorites within the collection for their evocativeness, directness, and images.
"Windfall," "Cruel Radiance," "Ode to the Loom," and "Here is Your Name" are among my favorites within the collection for their evocativeness, directness, and images.
May 30, 2020
How do you write a trauma your family experienced? How to you express genetic memory? This is how.
March 4, 2021
I do not know a lot about Cambodia - I had read some history, I had read a lot of news from the country (they keep getting there...) and I can find it on a map but I do not know the country or the people and their culture. So I was a bit worried when I picked up this collection - I know how a lot of poetry about my country does not translate well into other languages and this collection may be in English but it is Cambodian (or Cambodian American if you prefer).
Monica Sok is the child of Khmer refugees - they fled the country to save their lives and her longing for the mother country is palpable. A lot of the poem in this debut collection are set in Cambodia - mainly on trips in the present time but some go back in time. Most of them were published in various magazines and journals and anthologies - as usually happens. But assembled here together, they become a single whole.
The book is split into 3 parts, with the middle one consisting of a single poem "Tuol Sheng". That is also the poem that will stay with me for a long time (and which I kept rereading in the last few days) - set in the Genocide Museum of Tuol Sheng, it is full of shadows and ghosts. It used to be a school but in 1975 the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison and an execution center. Thousands of people died in the classrooms where kids used to play and when a child comes to the museum, they want to play - it looks like a school after all. The ghosts of children and dead people and the live child and visitors of the museum merge irrevocably to a point where in places you do not know which one you are reading about; the black board and the torture share the same space. Here is a part of this poem:
"The boy is still inside a classroom.
He raises his hand to answer the teacher's question.
The teacher offers him a turn at the board
and gives him a piece of chalk.
His back is turned to the other students.
Now the teacher is a soldier.
Now the boy has chains on his wrists.
How he's smacked in the face.
Now his glasses break on hos nose bridge.
Now he pretends he cannot spell
or count how many teeth knocked out."
Which does not mean that the rest of the poems were weaker - they build pictures - of loss and longing, of a country in change and sometimes in tragedy. Some of the poems are about her family, some are about one of her countries and a lot of them are about a trip to Cambodia. The poem about her mother (and the mother's sisters) made me stop reading for awhile - there is so much love and longing in it that you need time to just think about it.
The cover of the book is also connected to her family - it is a photograph of traditional Cambodian Silk woven by the author's grandmother Bun Em. Some of the poems worked better than others but they all painted pictures and most of them made me think and feel. And that's what poetry is supposed to be doing.
With all these dark topics, one would expect the whole collection to be dark and repressing. But just like that bright orange cloth on the cover, it somehow manages to sounds hopeful and even the darkest tones seem to be subdued. Tragedies defines lives but they control them only if one allows them to. And Monica Sok refuses to do that. The collection is a love letter to the country her family had to leave - reclaiming the past and finding a way into the future.
Monica Sok is the child of Khmer refugees - they fled the country to save their lives and her longing for the mother country is palpable. A lot of the poem in this debut collection are set in Cambodia - mainly on trips in the present time but some go back in time. Most of them were published in various magazines and journals and anthologies - as usually happens. But assembled here together, they become a single whole.
The book is split into 3 parts, with the middle one consisting of a single poem "Tuol Sheng". That is also the poem that will stay with me for a long time (and which I kept rereading in the last few days) - set in the Genocide Museum of Tuol Sheng, it is full of shadows and ghosts. It used to be a school but in 1975 the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison and an execution center. Thousands of people died in the classrooms where kids used to play and when a child comes to the museum, they want to play - it looks like a school after all. The ghosts of children and dead people and the live child and visitors of the museum merge irrevocably to a point where in places you do not know which one you are reading about; the black board and the torture share the same space. Here is a part of this poem:
"The boy is still inside a classroom.
He raises his hand to answer the teacher's question.
The teacher offers him a turn at the board
and gives him a piece of chalk.
His back is turned to the other students.
Now the teacher is a soldier.
Now the boy has chains on his wrists.
How he's smacked in the face.
Now his glasses break on hos nose bridge.
Now he pretends he cannot spell
or count how many teeth knocked out."
Which does not mean that the rest of the poems were weaker - they build pictures - of loss and longing, of a country in change and sometimes in tragedy. Some of the poems are about her family, some are about one of her countries and a lot of them are about a trip to Cambodia. The poem about her mother (and the mother's sisters) made me stop reading for awhile - there is so much love and longing in it that you need time to just think about it.
The cover of the book is also connected to her family - it is a photograph of traditional Cambodian Silk woven by the author's grandmother Bun Em. Some of the poems worked better than others but they all painted pictures and most of them made me think and feel. And that's what poetry is supposed to be doing.
With all these dark topics, one would expect the whole collection to be dark and repressing. But just like that bright orange cloth on the cover, it somehow manages to sounds hopeful and even the darkest tones seem to be subdued. Tragedies defines lives but they control them only if one allows them to. And Monica Sok refuses to do that. The collection is a love letter to the country her family had to leave - reclaiming the past and finding a way into the future.
January 19, 2023
Great example of something I would not have known about, much less picked up and read, if it were not for book groups.
Sok is the 1990-born daughter of Cambodian refugees who settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when they came to the States. She has spent her life trying to figure out who she is and where she comes from. This slim volume of 22 poems is her answer.
Sok made several trips to Cambodia for her research, seeking out and living with family members while there along with exploring landmarks and museums.
These are not traditional rhyming poems, but rather vivid images strung together in interesting and startling juxtaposition. Throughout the collection, she pays homage to family members and rages against Khmer Rouge, against its long-time dictator Pol Pot and against Nixon and Kissinger for their devastating bombing.
Her resume from Asian American Writers Workshop: "She has received fellowships and residencies from Poetry Society of America, Hedgebrook, Elizabeth George Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Saltonstall Foundation, and others. Currently, Sok is a 2018-2020 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has taught poetry to Southeast Asian youths at Banteay Srei and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California."
Sok is the 1990-born daughter of Cambodian refugees who settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when they came to the States. She has spent her life trying to figure out who she is and where she comes from. This slim volume of 22 poems is her answer.
Sok made several trips to Cambodia for her research, seeking out and living with family members while there along with exploring landmarks and museums.
These are not traditional rhyming poems, but rather vivid images strung together in interesting and startling juxtaposition. Throughout the collection, she pays homage to family members and rages against Khmer Rouge, against its long-time dictator Pol Pot and against Nixon and Kissinger for their devastating bombing.
Her resume from Asian American Writers Workshop: "She has received fellowships and residencies from Poetry Society of America, Hedgebrook, Elizabeth George Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Saltonstall Foundation, and others. Currently, Sok is a 2018-2020 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has taught poetry to Southeast Asian youths at Banteay Srei and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California."
March 12, 2022
This was a beautiful but tough collection of poems to read. Sok’s poetry is lyrical, unflinching, and intimate in the way they reflect on history and memory; how the Cambodian diaspora makes sense of themselves and the trauma they have inherited; feeling the resonances of their family’s love and survival.
Divided into three sections, the second section in particular was difficult to get through and was just one poem, “Tuol Sleng.” It was not only the content that made it so hard but also just... realizing that I knew so little about Cambodian history and culture. And, really, I have to admit that I didn’t have a full grasp of most of these poems because I simply don’t know enough. This was an important realization for me to have and confirmed that I need to return to this collection after educating myself some more.
I really loved the way she approached temporality throughout this collection and the way it can’t be linear when dealing with memory and trauma. She interwove the personal with the historical in such a powerful way. Again, I wish I could appreciate this collection more, and I think I will after learning more.
Some favorite poems: “The Weaver,” “Recurring Dreams,” “In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas,” “Ode to the Loom,” and “Here Is Your Name.”
Divided into three sections, the second section in particular was difficult to get through and was just one poem, “Tuol Sleng.” It was not only the content that made it so hard but also just... realizing that I knew so little about Cambodian history and culture. And, really, I have to admit that I didn’t have a full grasp of most of these poems because I simply don’t know enough. This was an important realization for me to have and confirmed that I need to return to this collection after educating myself some more.
I really loved the way she approached temporality throughout this collection and the way it can’t be linear when dealing with memory and trauma. She interwove the personal with the historical in such a powerful way. Again, I wish I could appreciate this collection more, and I think I will after learning more.
Some favorite poems: “The Weaver,” “Recurring Dreams,” “In a Room of One Thousand Buddhas,” “Ode to the Loom,” and “Here Is Your Name.”
May 26, 2023
These are very political poems, and it was hard for me to find my way through them since I'm not very familiar with the issues she writes about.
The Death of Henry Kissinger
Bubbles children blow toward the sky
burst bombs into jasmine.
Anything that flies on anything that moves.
You got that? Got that. Roger that.
And a mother’s golden lotus bud
orbiting her daughter’s neck?
Perhaps a giant kite to block B-52s?
Balloons from my birthday party
to bring on your jets? Go ahead.
I dare you to send submarines too.
To add: Anything that swims. Your idea
of swimming is not dreaming is not flight.
But in Takeo, at the edge of the forest,
if a spot-billed duck were to lay an egg.
Well. It would be bad for you.
Do you copy? Do you read me?
Blue, specked egg. Rebirth as revenge.
It’s an order. It’s to be done. Over. And out.
January 9, 2021
Too early to say my favorite read of 2021?
The way Sok balances grief and memory and identity among the family's turmoil during the Khmer Rouge regime (imagined and real) in the waves of sparkling verse had me. The poet is living in this space where they are reimagining memories and reinventing themselves to comprehend a history of genocide and inheritance to family trauma and how it can haunt. I did not look away, I can't even remember breathing. I can only remember this:
"At night the radio/ crackled, and someone dimmed the volume/ so fast you might have thought/ the sound of static was grass growing./ In the dark, I listened closely. I thought/ I heard escape. I thought I heard Thailand./ I thought I heard the soldier asking me/ if I wanted to run away with him/ and five others tonight. If I wanted to eat.
The way Sok balances grief and memory and identity among the family's turmoil during the Khmer Rouge regime (imagined and real) in the waves of sparkling verse had me. The poet is living in this space where they are reimagining memories and reinventing themselves to comprehend a history of genocide and inheritance to family trauma and how it can haunt. I did not look away, I can't even remember breathing. I can only remember this:
"At night the radio/ crackled, and someone dimmed the volume/ so fast you might have thought/ the sound of static was grass growing./ In the dark, I listened closely. I thought/ I heard escape. I thought I heard Thailand./ I thought I heard the soldier asking me/ if I wanted to run away with him/ and five others tonight. If I wanted to eat.
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February 20, 2025Surely it is not allowed to rate a memoir about one’s trauma???
Two new things I learned from this book:
1) There is a word in Cambodian, "Aneakajun," that roughly translates to a traitor or someone who has abandoned their roots.
2) Tuol Sleng is a former secondary school that was used as Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until its collapse in 1979. At Tuol Sleng (S-21), it is estimated that around 14,000 to 20,000 people were imprisoned, and only a handful survived. Most of those imprisoned were tortured and then executed, making the total number of people killed at the prison estimated to be around 17,000 to 20,000.
Follow up google search information: The Cambodian Genocide was the murder of between 1,500,000 and 3,000,000 Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge regime.
Two new things I learned from this book:
1) There is a word in Cambodian, "Aneakajun," that roughly translates to a traitor or someone who has abandoned their roots.
2) Tuol Sleng is a former secondary school that was used as Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until its collapse in 1979. At Tuol Sleng (S-21), it is estimated that around 14,000 to 20,000 people were imprisoned, and only a handful survived. Most of those imprisoned were tortured and then executed, making the total number of people killed at the prison estimated to be around 17,000 to 20,000.
Follow up google search information: The Cambodian Genocide was the murder of between 1,500,000 and 3,000,000 Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge regime.
September 2, 2025
A collection of poems about Khmer Rouge regime, identity, immigration, and heritage.
from Sestina: "There's a sister who works so hard she never talks. / A sister who screams when she hears dogs bark. / A sister whose breast have grown dry. A sister who always hides. / There's a time comrades come to the hut. / They can't tell who's who—How many are you? / Where's the other one hiding?"
from The Radio Brings News: "When I told lies, he says, the grass grew / so fast, it hid the whole field. The river / drowned the men with guns / and flowers wilted over their bodies / in apology. But nothing happened / if the lie wasn't good enough, like / when I said I love my country, I love / my people, I want to be a communist too."
from Sestina: "There's a sister who works so hard she never talks. / A sister who screams when she hears dogs bark. / A sister whose breast have grown dry. A sister who always hides. / There's a time comrades come to the hut. / They can't tell who's who—How many are you? / Where's the other one hiding?"
from The Radio Brings News: "When I told lies, he says, the grass grew / so fast, it hid the whole field. The river / drowned the men with guns / and flowers wilted over their bodies / in apology. But nothing happened / if the lie wasn't good enough, like / when I said I love my country, I love / my people, I want to be a communist too."
February 6, 2024
"The tourists are here to stroke black-and-white photographs of tortured prisoners.
They press closer to look at a picture:
a handcuffed boy
leaning towards them. Walking slow
around the prison,
they crouch in cramped stalls and hut themselves in to imagine what horrors.
They walk around the metal bed frame,
cover their mouths at rusted chains,
the hammer and toolbox in the corner,
and the walls the color.
They cry. They write on the walls NEVER FORGET
signing their names.
Now they have been here.
They buy books from the souvenir shops
and silk scarves and krama
and handmade purses.
But we come here to look for someone."
They press closer to look at a picture:
a handcuffed boy
leaning towards them. Walking slow
around the prison,
they crouch in cramped stalls and hut themselves in to imagine what horrors.
They walk around the metal bed frame,
cover their mouths at rusted chains,
the hammer and toolbox in the corner,
and the walls the color.
They cry. They write on the walls NEVER FORGET
signing their names.
Now they have been here.
They buy books from the souvenir shops
and silk scarves and krama
and handmade purses.
But we come here to look for someone."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 25, 2024
4 stars 🌟
I liked this poetry collection though unfortunately I can't recall much but would recommend.
Review written on 18th November, 2024.
DISCLAIMER-All opinions on books I’ve read and reviewed are my own, and are with no intention to offend anyone. If you feel offended by my reviews, let me know how I can fix it.
How I Rate-
1 star- Hardly liked anything/was disappointed
2 star- Had potential but did not deliver/was disappointed
3 stars- Was ok but could have been better/was average/Enjoyed a lot but something was missing
4 stars- Loved a lot but something was missing
5 stars- Loved it/new favourite
I liked this poetry collection though unfortunately I can't recall much but would recommend.
Review written on 18th November, 2024.
DISCLAIMER-All opinions on books I’ve read and reviewed are my own, and are with no intention to offend anyone. If you feel offended by my reviews, let me know how I can fix it.
How I Rate-
1 star- Hardly liked anything/was disappointed
2 star- Had potential but did not deliver/was disappointed
3 stars- Was ok but could have been better/was average/Enjoyed a lot but something was missing
4 stars- Loved a lot but something was missing
5 stars- Loved it/new favourite
June 22, 2021
3.5. Only a handful of these poems stood out for me (Ode to the Loom, The Weaver, I am Rachana, Americans in the Heart, Song of an Orphaned Soldier, etc.). Monica’s poems touch on a disturbing and importing history, and for that they are worth reading, but I (a Westernized Chinese person) am clearly not the audience for this, and that is okay. I did enjoy Monica’s very subtle use of rhyme throughout the collection, though, and the good poems are beauties. I will definitely check out her work in the future again.
May 23, 2025
No, I did not bury the bodies
nobody had prayed for.
There are things in this world
we must make one another see.
rating: 3.5
This poetry collection is sad and visceral, which makes it difficult to read. Sok doesn't mince words. A lot of the events and places referenced flew over my head because I was unfamiliar with Cambodia and the atrocities committed there. However, after doing my research, I'm left without words but with a lot of heartache.
January 6, 2021
beautifully written. i'm not a reader of poems but this compilation struck me in the heart. these are written for Khmer Americans and rightfully so. We own our stories and she crafts her poems in a way that gives our stories legitimacy without the need for the western approval. non apologetic and spitfire.
July 3, 2020
Monica Sok weaves voices and places, her and her family's heritage of trauma and displacement, with such tenderness and ease. I imagine not unlike her grandmother, the master weaver of beautiful cloth. And maybe not incidentally, the most lyrical poems are dedicated to her grandmother.
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