Thank you Netgalley for this arc book of poems. I enjoyed it. I was very different from other poem books I've read in the past but in a good way. It read more like a story and I appreciated that. Some were sad and I felt it.

This is the exact kind of poetry that scratches my brain: smart, accessible, provocative without being incendiary, and memorable. I love being able to access other POV's via poetry, and Cathy Linh Che has done it to extraordinary effect here.

It is, as it will likely always be, incredibly timely. Something about the poems is so visceral and forces the reader to consider the grim realities of war and its victors.

I don't know, I am just a person, but I loved this collection. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I was just having a conversation with a friend about the historical elements behind pain and suffering being used for entertainment. Coming across this collection, I felt like it not only tackled that subject but added extra layers to the conversation. This book felt deeply personal—there’s something profoundly powerful about taking a deeper look into our parents, their journeys, their suffering, and what that leaves us with. I especially appreciated the parallels the poetry creates and the deeper contemplation of erasure—who that erasure is ultimately for.

It was deeply saddening to read about how the poet’s parents escaped so much, only to have their darkest experiences used for the enjoyment of white audiences. It’s even more unsettling to know that this is a movie so many people reference as a favorite, a film held in high regard while disregarding the real people whose lives were pushed into the background, turned into caricatures, or silenced altogether. You can really feel the distance between parent and child in these poems, but also the process of understanding, forgiving, and centering. The poet acts as a director of her own, creating a space for her parents to exist beyond an outside narrative—placing them, finally, at the forefront of their own experiences.

A melancholic and candid collection of poems about the author’s parents’ experience with the Vietnam war and then subsequently being in extras in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, becoming background characters in a fictionalized version of their own history - in a sense, Becoming Ghost in their own stories.

I’m not familiar with the movie Apocalypse Now or the references to Cathy Linh Che’s previous poetry work, but I found each poem to be introspective, reflective, evocative, and emotional. There’s a lot of clever interplay between the parents’ flashbacks of the war and immigration and their experiences working on the movie set, weaving in screenplay references too. I thought it was fascinating how by publishing this work and highlighting the parts her parents were in, they become the main characters rather than continuing to be relegated to background characters.

Che’s structuring of the poems is rather unusual but I appreciate the fluidity, cadence and rhythm of the poems as well as the vivid imagery of a dark history. For instance, the poetry collection is sectioned into multiple parts. From there, some of the poems’ titles have the same titular header but a different subheading. The poem title Becoming Ghost also repeats throughout the collection. I think this would need deeper analysis and I would be interested in listening to a podcast or interview about the author’s intentions.

All in all, a profound and touching tribute to her parents and acknowledgement of their hardships.

Special thanks to Atria Books, Washington Square Press, and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest, independent review.

Poems that interrogate perspective and voice--who is allowed to "direct", who is allowed to speak--and the risks, too, of wresting that perspective back for onesself, the ways in which it will always be in conversation with the entities who have silenced the speaker's speech. Thought-provoking, beautiful, and had some cool formal stuff going on. Strongly recommend to readers of contemporary asian american poetry, especially those interested in the reverberations of the vietnam war on vietnamese american literature.