Split

de Cathy Linh Che

"Split crosses borders, exposing truths and dreams, violations of body and mind, aligning them until the deep push-pull of silence and song become a bridge. And here we cross over into a landscape where beauty interrogates, and we encounter a voice that refuses to let us off the hook"--Yusef Komunyakaa. In this stunning debut, we follow one woman's profoundly personal account of sexual violence against the backdrop of cultural conflict deftly illustrated through her parents' experiences of the Vietnam War, immigration, and its aftermath. By looking closely at landscape and psyche, Split explores what happens when deep trauma occurs and seeks to understand what it means to finally become whole.From "The German word for dream is Traum": "When my mother whispered, Has anyone touched you there? I had to pick. Alan, I said. I was seven. The training wheels were coming off. Between the couch and wall, the ceiling was white with popcorn bits. The boys stood and watched. I lay there, my eyes open like a doll's. Someone said, Let me try. He rode on top then abruptly stopped. The boys laughed, and then they stood me up." Cathy Linh Che is a poet from Los Angeles, California. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, Kundiman, Poets & Writers, Inc., and Poets House. She is currently co-editor of an anthology called Inheriting the War and a founding editor of Paperbag. She lives and teaches in Brooklyn, New York.--