Name: This Way to the Sugar
ISBN: 9781938912443

Hieu Nguyen

Hieu Nguyen's bruising collection of poems, This Way to the Sugar, puts a blade and a microscope to nostalgia, tradition, race, apology, and sexuality, in order to find beauty in a flawed world. His work has been described as "an astounding testament to the power and necessity of confession." This powerful book asks whether it might be better "to leave the blade inside the body," whether "forgiveness will bleed you thin."

This Way to the Sugar

helia

elif sinem

I didn't get it at the start, but this is a wonderful, cold, beautifully written collection of growing up and sexuality and the immigrant experience (Vietnamese-American in his case). There's a series that describes child sexual abuse in here (Teacher's Pet) and it was absolutely harrowing. Nguyen is amazing at recollection and the best poems made great use of it. I'll be looking out for his future works.

Alexia Cambaling

This Way To The Sugar is the first poetry collection I read in full. While I love poetry, I don’t frequently seek out poetry collections and prefer to read poetry on their own. The poems in This Way To The Sugar, I think, are best enjoyed in a collection, each of them adding to other. It is LGBTQ+ poetry mixed with the experience of being part of a diaspora and the complicated family dynamics that many Asian families could relate to. It is excellent and some of my favorites include Buffet Etiquette, The Hand That Fed, Stubborn Inheritance, Visiting Hours, and Nostophobia.

This Way to the Sugar

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