Description
ISBN: 9781556596568
Format: Trade paperback (US)
Year: 2023
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Description:
National Book Award,2023Longlist
* "Elegiac and shot through with righteous anger, this essential collection demands a national reckoning."-Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
* "A must-have for libraries." -Booklist,STARRED REVIEW
"A remarkable collection offering history not typically told in textbooks."-Library Journal
Punctuated by historical images and told through multiple voices, languages, literary forms and documents, West: A Translationexplores what unites and divides America, drawing a powerful, necessary connection between the completion of the transcontinental railroad and the Chinese Exclusion Act.
In 2018, Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal was commissioned to write a poem commemorating the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. The result is West: A Translation-an unflinching hybrid collection of poems and essays that draws a powerful, necessary connection between the railroad's completion and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943). Carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station, where Chinese migrants to the United States were detained during the Chinese Exclusion Act, is a poem elegizing a detainee who committed suicide. As West translates this anonymous Chinese elegy character by character, what's left is a haunting narrative distilled through the history and lens of transcontinental railroad workers, and a sweeping exploration of the railroad's cultural impact on America. Punctuated by historical images and told through multiple voices, languages, literary forms and documents, We