An earnest, compact set of poems from a fresh and important voice making their debut. Tran's varied pieces and individual verses play with format and bring a lot of feel. I had strong reactions to a few of them, and for that I'm glad, as they made me uncomfortably though candidly return to some of my own youthful experiences.

Tran's poems center the survivors (including themself) of sexual violence, racism and ethnophobia, and American imperialism. In some of them, the writing gets a bit repetitive; perhaps a handful of poems blurred together for me. In ways that diverge from how Ocean Vuong relays similar experiences and posits similar thoughts, Tran puts down blunt lines that reveal they are working out some of the intergenerational traumas and other kinds of abuse even as they write. Sometimes delivering the work can be its own deliverance.