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Machine generated contents note:The Fact of the Matter Is the Consequence of Ugly Deaths --Anthem for Taking Back --They Think Our Killed Ones Cannot Speak to Us --A Body Always Yours --Ill of the Dubious --When the Poison Fell, Before 1979 --A Daub of Tree Swallows as Aerial Ash --Case Studies in Escape, Post-1975 --Fewer Hmong Are Dying Now Than in the Past --Signal for the Way Out --Self-Portrait Together as CBW Questionnaire --Composition 1 --Blood Cooperation --Specimens from Ban Vinai Camp, 1983 --Authorization to Depart Ravaged Homeland as Biomedical Sample --Arriving as Lost --Ever Tenuous --Futile to Find You --Procedures in Hunt of Wreckage --Disfigures --Request for Furthermore --We Can't Confirm Yellow Rain Happened, We Can't Confirm It Didn't --Composition 2 --Subterfuge --This Demands the Vengeance of a Wolf --Agent Orange Commando Lava --Toxicology Conference Proposal --Smear of Petals --Syndrome Sleep Death Sudden --Skin as a Vehicle for Experimentation --A Moment Still Waiting for You --For the Nefarious --Composition 3 --The Culpable --Sverdlovsk --Malediction --Never to Have Had Your Song Blessed --Notes in Rebuttal: What They May Have Known about the Possibility --All of a Sudden, Yellow Spots --Recantation for the Quieting --Il/Logic, Fully Unvetted: A Makeshift Analysis of the Behavior of Southeast Asian Honeybees --Prayer to the Redwood --Allied with the Bees --Composition 4 --Noxious --Orderly Wrap-Up of CBW Investigation --Of the Ash --Vigil for the Missing --The Shaman Asks about Yellow Rain --Refugee, Walking Is the Most Human of All --Revolt of Bees --Composition 5 --Burn Copies --Diary Notes from Meeting on September 13, 1983 --For as Long as a Mountain Can Ascend --Subject: ROI --How Far for the Small Ones --Monument --Sorrowed --Manifesto of a Drum --And Yet Still More. 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 the Vietnam War, 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. --amazon.com
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