Year-End News and Notice
Finalist for a Governors General’s Award for Literature, end-of-year lists, and other notice of excellence for A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure named Finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry on this incredible list of 2021 poetry books
Named Best Gift for Poetry Lovers
In NYMag’s The Strategist, writer Erin Taylor “calls Hoa Nguyen ‘a poetry icon,’ adding that this book — Nguyen’s latest, shortlisted for a 2021 National Book Award — would be a great gift for longtime fans and new readers alike.”
from the VOX guide to the must-read 2021 National Book Award winners and finalists by Terry Nguyen
“Nguyen’s work spans across time, continent, trauma, and language, but the book’s opening and closing images are that of Hoa’s mother, frozen in her youth. They are an ode to Diệp’s adrenaline-packed memories and her past life, one stuffed with secrets, tangled love affairs, and rapturous adventures that the writer outlines in ‘words [that] hang in sinew and care.’”
“With linguistic and stylistic flourishes, Nguyen powerfully considers her relationship with her mother and her homeland of Vietnam. Nguyen’s attention to language, both on the line level and as a larger motif, makes this a rich meditation on power, historical and cultural inheritance, and the past’s impact on the present.”
— Maya C. Popa
The Best Poetry of 2021 by Barbara Hoffert of Library Journal
“With steel-ribbed delicacy, Nguyen portrays Vietnam before and after the war by recalling her mother, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-women Vietnamese circus troupe in the 1950s and 1960s. Her intimate portrait blends seamlessly with large-scale loss, with bombs ‘burn[ing] at// 1,500–2,200°F (1/5th as hot/ as the surface of the sun)’ to tell a ‘Mekong moon story/ write water on water// Write country.’”
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure is also noted on the following lists*:
CBC Books Best Canadian Poetry of 2021
NPR Books Poetry Books We Love 2021 via Jeevika Verma
The Globe and Mail Poetry Books We Loved 2021
Entropy Magazine Best Poetry of 2020-2021
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Best of 2021 via Benjamin
And in a recent interview for UK’s iNews, writer Lydia Davis shares that she is reading A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure in one of her book clubs.
*including this The Best Poetry Books of 2021 (A Year-End List Aggregation) which missed a few