LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
For fans of Diane Seuss and Victoria Chang, a coruscating collection that eloquently invokes the perseverance and myth of the Filipino diaspora in America.
Broken into three parts—"The Implacable West," "Landscape with Work, Rest, and Silence," and "Dwelling Music"—The Diaspora Sonnets eloquently invokes the perseverance and bold possibilities of de la Paz's displaced family as they strove for stability and belonging. In order to establish her medical practice, de la Paz's mother had to relocate often for residencies. As they moved from state to state his father worked to support the family. Sonnets thus flit from coast to coast, across prairies and deserts, along the way musing on shadowy dreams of a faraway country.
The sonnet proves formally malleable as de la Paz breaks and rejoins its tradition throughout this collection, embarking on a broader conversation about what fits and how one adapts—from the restrained use of rhyme in "Diaspora Sonnet in the Summer with the River Water Low" and carefully metered "Diaspora Sonnet Imagining My Father's Uncertainty and Nothing Else" to the hybridized "Diaspora Sonnet at the Feeders Before the Freeze." A series of "Chain Migration" poems viscerally punctuate the sonnets, giving witness to the labor and sacrifice of the immigrant experience, as do a series of hauntingly beautiful pantoums.
Written with the deft touch of a virtuoso and the compassion of a loving son, The Diaspora Sonnets powerfully captures the peculiar pangs of a diaspora "that has left and is forever leaving."
