The exploration of identity and existence takes center stage in this poetic work, blending themes of yearning, regret, and indignation. The author reflects on their experiences as a brown individual navigating predominantly white spaces, alongside the contrasting perspectives of a white friend. This introspective journey delves into the complexities of morality, loss, and the shared human experience of mortality. Through vivid imagery and profound musings, the author grapples with personal and societal struggles, ultimately seeking understanding in a world marked by oppression and grief.
A furious, multiform examination of the devastation wrought by anti-Asian racism in America Truong Tran's provocative collection of poetry, prose and essays is a stunning rebuttal to the idea of anti-Asian racism as a victimless crime. Written with a compulsion for lucidity that transforms outrage into clarity, Book of the Other resists the luxury of metaphor to write about the experience of being shut out, shut down and othered as a queer, working-class teacher, immigrant and refugee. What emerges from Tran's sharp-eyed experiments in language and form is an achingly beautiful acknowledgment of the estrangement from self forced upon those seduced by the promise of color-blind acceptance and the rigorous, step by step act of recollection needed to find one's way home to oneself. Truong Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1969. He is the author of six previous collections of poetry, The Book of Perceptions, Placing the Accents, Dust and Conscience, Within the Margins, Four Letter Words and 100 words (coauthored with Damon Potter). He also authored the children's book Going Home Coming Home, and an artist monograph, I Meant to Say Please Pass the Sugar. He is the recipient of the Poetry Center Prize, the Fund for Poetry Grant, the California Arts Council Grant and numerous San Francisco Arts Commission Grants. Tran lives in San Francisco where he teaches art and poetry.
Written as a conversation, 100 Words is an exchange of ideas, dialogues, burdens, and ideals between someone White and someone Brown. Two poets, Damon Potter and Truong Tran, write to each other about one hundred powerful words--like "proximity, "shame," and "hope"--each of which is an abstraction rife with socially inscribed beliefs and denials. They turn to each other in an exchange, a negotiation, and a series of discoveries as they write of their individual histories, share their burdens, and learn to carry weight together. Tran explains this project, saying "it is occurring to me even as I am writing this now that this is not an experiment, or case study or collaboration or partnership. Damon is not the subject nor am I. This is a shared endeavor, a lived experience between two very different lives trying to understand what it means to be, to see the other."
