Not Here
published by Coffee House Press 2018
Not Here is a flight plan for escape and a map for navigating home; a queer Vietnamese American body in confrontation with whiteness, trauma, family, and nostalgia; and a big beating heart of a book. Nguyen’s poems ache with loneliness and desire and the giddy terrors of allowing yourself to hope for love, and revel in moments of connection achieved.
Winner of the Publishing Triangle Thom Gunn Award in Gay Poetry
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry
Finalist for the 2019 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry
Entropy, “Best of 2018: Best Poetry Books & Poetry Collections”
“Nguyen attempts a courageous exorcism of shame in his brilliant and disquieting second collection, exposing the baggage of living as a queer person of color in a white-supremacist, classist, heteronormative society. . . . Nguyen communicates with stunning clarity the ambivalence of shame, how it can commandeer one’s life and become almost a comfort.” —Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
