Book
This Body Mystery
This Body Mystery is a 2012 book of poems and paintings by the Cambodian American poet and artist Chath pierSath.[1] Its poems tell of people living with HIV and AIDS in Cambodia during the 1990s.[1]
About the book
The poems are written in the voices of people with HIV and AIDS.[1] PierSath has said the book is about people learning to accept their sickness and their fate.[1] The poems are portraits of figures from everyday life.[1] About twenty of pierSath's paintings appear alongside them, giving visual form to loss, suffering and recovery.[1] PierSath has said that although the book is small, it took him more than ten years to make.[1]
Background
PierSath was born in Battambang Province, Cambodia; Rain Taxi gives his birthplace as Banteay Meanchey Province.[2][1] He crossed the Thai border in 1979, at the end of the Khmer Rouge years, and emigrated to the United States in 1981.[3] He later went back to Cambodia as a volunteer with the Cambodian American National Development Organization.[4] The artist Mary Hamill, who worked with him, has said that he worked with people in need on AIDS.[2] In his poems and paintings he draws people from memory and shows the social and economic gaps among Cambodians.[2][3]
Publication
Abingdon Square Publishing issued the book in 2012 as a collection of paintings and poems.[1][5] It followed pierSath's 2009 collection After and came before his 2020 collection On Earth Beneath Sky.[6] It is available in paperback.[7] The book is on the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association's #myLowellbooklist reading list.[7][8] Two works from it appear in the anthology Out of the Shadows of Angkor.[5]
See also
References 8
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Rain Taxi, Intersections: an interview with Chath pierSath (March 11, 2014)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 WHYY, Recounting stories of genocide helps Cambodians find hope (September 10, 2015)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Southeast Asia Globe, 'There are many ways to be Cambodian': The poetry of Chath pierSath (May 13, 2021)
- ↑ Cambodian Contemporary Arts, Chath pierSath (undated)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Out of the Shadows of Angkor, Related books
- ↑ Poetry Northwest: Part of That Secret
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Bookshop.org: CALAA Lowell book list
- ↑ CALAA: Cambodian writers book list
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