The title of this debut collection, Nothing Follows, is reappropriated from a government document
establishing the beginning of a refugee family's time in the United States. At
every coordinate of their lives, the refugee family provides affidavits,
letters, and reams of paperwork as they work to beseech those in power to grant
them "family reunification" visas for those they had to leave behind in 1975
after the fall of Saigon.
Nothing Followsdraws from the genres of memoir and poetry. Written from a young girl's
perspective, the center of this world is a military father, an absent mother,
sisters who come and go, broken brothers, and friends she meets in San José.
With each place the book travels through--from Butler,
Pennsylvania, to San José, California--we see that racism, objectification, and
sexual violence permeate the realities of the narrator and those close to her.
In marking the journey, Lan Duong recreates the portraits of the girl's friends
and family and maps out refugee girlhoods.
Spiked with violence, pleasure, and longing,
these refuges are questionable sanctuaries for those refugee girls who have
grown up during the 1980s in the aftermath of war.
