SubText Books and East Side Freedom Library are pleased to present a  virtual event to celebrate the release of "Yellow Rain" by Mai Der Vang  (Graywolf Press) on Friday, October 1st at 7:00 PM. Mai Der Vang will be  in conversation with Kao Kalia Yang.  

About:  In this staggering work of documentary, poetry, and collage, Mai Der  Vang reopens a wrongdoing that deserves a new reckoning. As the United  States abandoned them at the end of its war in Vietnam, many Hmong  refugees recounted stories of a mysterious substance that fell from  planes during their escape from Laos starting in the mid-1970s. This  substance, known as “yellow rain,” caused severe illnesses and thousands  of deaths. These reports prompted an investigation into allegations  that a chemical biological weapon had been used against the Hmong in  breach of international treaties. A Cold War scandal erupted, wrapped in  partisan debate around chemical arms development versus control. And  then, to the world’s astonishment, American scientists argued that  yellow rain was the feces of honeybees defecating en masse—still held as  the widely accepted explanation. The truth of what happened to the  Hmong, to those who experienced and suffered yellow rain, has been  ignored and discredited.   

Integrating archival research and declassified documents, Yellow Rain  calls out the erasure of a history, the silencing of a people who at the  time lacked the capacity and resources to defend and represent  themselves. In poems that sing and lament, that contend and question,  Vang restores a vital narrative in danger of being lost, and brilliantly  explores what it means to have access to the truth and how marginalized  groups are often forbidden that access.   

Mai Der Vang is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’  Circle. Her poetry has appeared in the New Republic, Poetry, and the  Virginia Quarterly Review, and her essays have been published in the New  York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post. Her debut  collection, Afterland, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy  of American Poets. She lives in California.   

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer, teacher and public speaker.  Born in the refugee camps of Thailand to a family that escaped the  genocide of the Secret War in Laos, she came to America at the age six.  Yang holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Her  works of creative nonfiction include The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family  Memoir, The Song Poet, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on  Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Indigenous Women and Women of  Color, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang has also written  multiple children's books such as A Map Into the World, The Shared Room,  and The Most Beautiful Thing, Yang Warriors, and the forthcoming From  the Tops of the Trees. Her work has won numerous awards and recognition  including multiple Minnesota Book Awards, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor, an  ALA Notable Children's Book Award, Dayton's Literary Peace Prize, and a  PEN USA Award in Nonfiction.

View the video: https://youtu.be/Wu2-CoXNeH0