A Nail the Evening Hangs On
By Monica Sok
2020
First Published
4.35
Average Rating
73
Number of Pages
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.
Avg Rating
4.35
Number of Ratings
424
5 STARS
52%
4 STARS
33%
3 STARS
12%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
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Author
Monica Sok
Author · 3 books
Monica 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.
