{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1644453266?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"1644453266","authors":["Mai Der Vang"],"book_id":"9781644453261","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/primordial-9781644453261","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781644453261.jpg?v=aa600ad2cb1d4f3e","description":"Mai Der Vang’s poetry—lyrically insistent and visually compelling—constitutes a groundbreaking investigation into the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants. Primordial is a crucial turn to the ecological and generational impact of violence, a powerful and rousing meditation on climate, origin, and fate. With profound and attentive care, Vang addresses the plight of the saola, an extremely rare and critically endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam. The saola looks like an antelope, with two long horns, and is related to wild cattle, though the saola has been placed in a genus of its own. Remarkably, the saola has only been known to the outside world since 1992, and sightings are so rare that it has now been more than a decade since the last known image of one was captured in a camera trap photo in 2013. Primordial examines the saola’s relationship to Hmong refugee identity and cosmology and a shared sense of exile, precarity, privacy, and survival. Can a war-torn landscape and memory provide sanctuary, and what are the consequences for our climate, our origins, our ability to belong to a homeland? Written during a difficult pregnancy and postpartum period, Vang’s poems are urgent stays against extinction.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9781644453261","publication_date":"20250304","publisher":"Graywolf","slug":"primordial","subtitle":"Poems","title":"Primordial"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.7665,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Family Poems","score":0.735,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Nature Poetry","score":0.7342,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.7665,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Family Poems","score":0.735,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Nature Poetry","score":0.7342,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"POE005010","confidence_band":"high","label":"American Poetry","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"high","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POE009000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Asian Poetry","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.7665,"slug":"asian-american-poetry"},{"label":"Family Poems","score":0.735,"slug":"family-poems"},{"label":"Nature Poetry","score":0.7342,"slug":"nature-poetry"}],"reader_fit":["For readers interested in Hmong refugee identity and cosmology","For readers drawn to poetry on climate and the ecological impact of violence"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Mai Der Vang"],"book_id":"9781644450659","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781644450659.jpg?v=610581b84d7c18a6","score":0.6887,"title":"Yellow Rain","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781644450659"},{"authors":["Diana Khoi Nguyen"],"book_id":"9781668031308","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781668031308.jpg?v=b4bc4d9a6b565dc9","score":0.6856,"title":"Root Fractures","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781668031308"},{"authors":["Hinnah Mian"],"book_id":"9781771682596","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781771682596.jpg?v=2e8204b9b03f2d56","score":0.6789,"title":"Pangaea","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781771682596"},{"authors":["Emily Jungmin Yoon"],"book_id":"9780593801185","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593801185.jpg?v=7bc7b824c65d5043","score":0.6745,"title":"Find Me As the Creature I Am","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593801185"},{"authors":["Brandon Kilbourne"],"book_id":"9781644453674","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781644453674.jpg?v=8cbec9736f2d7265","score":0.6529,"title":"Natural History","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781644453674"},{"authors":["Ocean Vuong"],"book_id":"9780593300237","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593300237.jpg?v=6125f520bea86d9b","score":0.6514,"title":"Time Is a Mother","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593300237"},{"authors":["Brandy Nalani McDougall"],"book_id":"9780816548354","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780816548354.jpg?v=18d53371a0725c86","score":0.6471,"title":"Aina Hanau / Birth Land","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780816548354"},{"authors":["R.A. 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