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The land baron's sun : the story of Ly Loc and his seven wives / Genaro Ky Ly Smith.
LIBRA PS3619.M5859 L36 2014
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Smith, Genaro Kỳ Lý, 1968- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Vietnam--Poetry.
- Vietnam.
- Genre:
- Poetry.
- Fiction.
- Physical Description:
- 98 pages ; 24 cm
- Other Title:
- Story of Lý Loc and his seven wives
- Place of Publication:
- Lafayette, LA : University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2014.
- Summary:
- The Land Baron's Sun chronicles through poetry the life of Lý Loc, the son of an affluent Vietnamese landowner who was thought to own the sun by his children, wives, servants, and tenant farmers because it had always shone favorably upon him. Lý Loc lived just as prosperous a life, one in which he rose to the rank of major commander for the South Vietnamese Army and was attended to by seven wives who bore him twenty-seven children. On April 20, 1975, the day Saigon fell, fate took a cruel turn for Lý Loc, as the sun, a symbol of the divine love, refused to shine. His capture by the Viêt Công and incarceration in a reeducation camp marked only the beginning of the sun recouping all that it had bestowed upon Lý Loc and his family. Smith's poems delve into Lý Loc's childhood and adult life, his years spent in the reeducation camp, and his wives and children's fate-both in Vietnam and, for those who were fortunate enough to escape, in America. The poems expose the beauty and freedom of the human spirit and the lushness that was once Vietnam; likewise, they show the undeniable oppression of a country divided on itself and the struggle its people went through to survive. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- I In Our House of Forever
- View from the Veranda: An Elegy for Chan 7
- The Abduction of Chan 9
- The Collection Process 14
- Our Daily Bread 16
- Repletion 18
- Dreaming of Yên 20
- Grasping 21
- Raise the Day, Lower the Night 23
- II The Land South of the Clouds
- Vacation 27
- The Land Baron's Sun 31
- The Portraitist 35
- Communion 37
- Where God Sleeps: The Genesis of Michelle Jolibois' Sexual Awakening 39
- Errand Boys 44
- Moth Songs 46
- Her Thousand Lovers 48
- Intermission
- Providence 53
- The False Flight of Angels 55
- The Bone Orchard 57
- III What of My Wives and Children?
- On a Bed of Salt: Van 61
- Propaganda: The Reeducation of Yen 64
- A Fairy Tale: Yên 66
- Ghost Stories: Ái 69
- The Letter Readers 73
- Blind 75
- The Fisherman's Wife 76
- A Museum of Trees 78
- The Land of Dead Children 80
- The Bottom Dreamers; Tú Dúc, Minh, Thanh, and Båo 82
- Fidèle 84
- The Shape of Things 87
- Yên's Interlude 91.
- ISBN:
- 9781935754350
- 1935754351
- OCLC:
- 871820822
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