Thousand Star Hotel

June 26, 2017
Phi (Sông I Sing), National Poetry Slam finalist and multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry winner, deconstructs the nature of Americanness from his perspective as a first-generation Vietnamese-American. It’s a timely collection full of stunning images and language. Exploring what it means to be American, who gets to be American, and why, Phi acknowledges the painful family history that has shaped him. In “Cookies,” a familial memory of war functions as an example of generational trauma: “I want to say I am made of war and that means so are you. I want to say I was born inside a halo of gunpowder.” In “Kids,” Phi shows that the demonization of the other is taught at an early age, realizing that his “daughter is not yet five when she learns to be scared of racists.” Phi’s poems illuminate how white privilege encourages complicity in white supremacy and how white supremacy dehumanizes and demonizes its victims: “you infesting this place.” With equal parts quiet reflection and hip-hop prowess, Phi’s collection showcases the melding of the deeply personal and the fiercely political.

August 1, 2017

Phi (Song I Sing) is a multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry champion and National Poetry Slam finalist seen on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and it shows in his forthright, declamatory style, as if he were in direct conversation with his readers. It's a style that fits his heritage, for as the opening poem says, "Vietnamese people have always been spoken word poets." Yet throughout he worries about his ability to voice what really matters ("And I wonder/ if I ever will find a language/ to speak of the things/ that haunt me the most?"). How will he tell his daughter about the war or challenge the racism he has encountered in this country? Still, he does so, with simple eloquence: "How much blood and history can one last name hold./ ...The opposite of history is erasure." Phi speaks broadly of social abuses while focusing on the Asian and particularly the refugee experience in America, disclosing fraught, tender scenes of family life (as when he regrets buying his daughter a Barbie Dreamhouse). And as the title poem shows, his fluid, open writing is frequently shot through with moments of lyricism. VERDICT Accessible, accomplished, and troubling, this should intrigue many readers.

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