Split by Cathy Linh Che

Paperback.

“Cathy Linh Che’s first collection, Split, is a brave, delicate, and terrifying account of what we do to each other. Here’s a voice that has to speak. Split crosses borders, exposing truths and dreams, violations of body and mind, aligning them until the deep push-pull of silence and song become a bridge. And here we cross over into a landscape where beauty interrogates, and we encounter a voice that refuses to let us off the hook.”
—Yusef Komunyakaa

“In her debut collection Cathy Linh Che summons forth a daughter-self that jolts, blazes. It’s a voice that orbits a harrowing girlhood and a war-torn Vietnam. It’s a voice that veers into tenderness and ferocity. It’s an exquisite voice. Line after line burns with pictorial verve, melodic grace. This voice, this daughter-self, is a stunning and scorching performance.”
—Eduardo C. Corral

“Cathy Linh Che’s debut examines the complex ways in which the past imperils our present. In these heartbreaking poems, rape and abuse are not private traumas, but a terrible inheritance that continues through generations. Here, the Vietnam War becomes a psychic backdrop against which one family still struggles to heal, reliving past cultural wounds that traumatize, yet never define it.”
—Paisley Rekdal