Google translates Tripas from Spanish to English as "guts" or viscera. His grandmother worked on an assembly line creating the "guts" of computers. If our ancestry and/or cultural heritage (or lack thereof) form the "guts" of who we are, then this title is appropriate if inelegant. Maybe he chose an inelegant word because his beginnings and his parents' beginnings were not elegant. In any case, I don't think it quite fits the book as he has created it with its interlinking of culture and language.
Som is of Hispanic and Chinese heritage and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. These poems attempt to trace or create circuits between these three things. Along the way he pays tribute to the difficulties of prior generations and to the admixture of cultures and languages he grew up with. Electronic metaphors rise and fall away from poem to poem.
I would call this an ambitious and interesting book and yet I also found it on the sleepy side. I’m honestly not sure why. Som does a better job than many other poets at giving us some guidance when he uses non-English words, so I didn’t feel lost in that regard. He can use language in interesting ways so I wasn’t bored with his style of writing. I wasn’t bothered by leaning on science for metaphor (in fact, I found it interesting). I’ve taught English as a Second Language to adults so I have sympathy for the difficulties that immigrants face. So I’m not sure why it was difficult for me to get through this. During a time when I will pretty quickly leave off a book that doesn’t grab me, it’s to Som’s credit that the interesting and ambitious aspects of this work kept me coming back until I was finished.
I will say that I liked the second half of it, which focused more on family history, more than the first half. I’m sure that there are aspects of this book that were lost on me, as is true of any complex book on the first reading. I do understand why it was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award and the Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
Som is of Hispanic and Chinese heritage and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. These poems attempt to trace or create circuits between these three things. Along the way he pays tribute to the difficulties of prior generations and to the admixture of cultures and languages he grew up with. Electronic metaphors rise and fall away from poem to poem.
I would call this an ambitious and interesting book and yet I also found it on the sleepy side. I’m honestly not sure why. Som does a better job than many other poets at giving us some guidance when he uses non-English words, so I didn’t feel lost in that regard. He can use language in interesting ways so I wasn’t bored with his style of writing. I wasn’t bothered by leaning on science for metaphor (in fact, I found it interesting). I’ve taught English as a Second Language to adults so I have sympathy for the difficulties that immigrants face. So I’m not sure why it was difficult for me to get through this. During a time when I will pretty quickly leave off a book that doesn’t grab me, it’s to Som’s credit that the interesting and ambitious aspects of this work kept me coming back until I was finished.
I will say that I liked the second half of it, which focused more on family history, more than the first half. I’m sure that there are aspects of this book that were lost on me, as is true of any complex book on the first reading. I do understand why it was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award and the Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize.