diaspora

John A. Williams reads poems from an early manuscript that would eventually come to form his collection Safari West (1998). He then reads from his novel !Click Song (1982), investigating issues of race, colonialism, and diaspora. Both books are winners of the American Book Award.

Poetry Center Summer Resident Lehua M. Taitano gives an interactive reading of poems from her collection Inside Me an Island (2018). She also presents her latest work, a video poem created for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center's "A Day in the Queer Life" project. This reading was originally given alongside Bojan Louis.

Hala Alyan opens with excerpts from her 2024 essay "'I am not there and I am not here': a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity." She then reads from her poetry collection The Moon That Turns You Back (2024) alongside recent, uncollected poems.

Divya Victor reads poems from Curb (2021), her book focused on the experiences of South Asian immigrants in the United States and the violence routinely directed against them in public spaces. Those public spaces include suburban neighborhoods and the documents of the U.S. immigration system. Victor closes with a new poem that celebrates girlhood.

Susan Nguyen reads from her debut poetry collection, Dear Diaspora (2021), which investigates her family's experiences as Vietnamese refugees from the perspective of a young girl. She closes with recent poems that engage with her mother's 1990s English-language workbook titled Hooray for English! This reading was originally given alongside Andrew Grace.