PRAISE
“Koan Khmer takes us to the edges of interbeing. We travel with an orphan child named Samnang Sok, who has survived genocide—as legions of children around the globe do, and do not—as he tries to piece together a story strong enough to hold his life. With the generosity of a poet of witness, Tuon carefully and lovingly opens the space of refugee long enough for us to bear witness to the full brutal and beautiful experiences of Cambodian Americans. I feel like I have a new heart tattoo. I am grateful.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust and The Chronology of Water
“Koan Khmer gives light to the Cambodian immigrant/refugee experience, which is unlike any other, and challenges the easy narratives we are fed by mainstream media about the immigrant experience. Transcending the survival narrative, Bunkong Tuon’s debut novel presents to readers a narrator who is not merely the keeper of stories but also the one who seeks, who endeavors, who is more than witness. This is not a book about survival. It is a book about striving.” —Ira Sukrungruang, author of Buddha’s Dog & other Meditations
What Is Left
“With stirring clarity, modesty, and understatement, Tuon shares the feeling of what it must have been like at one end and what words can light up the next mystery. Most of all, he finds a place for himself under the law of love, its duties and deferrals to the other, its sanctifying power. In images that will last, the poems reimagine personal experience as our most civilizing act.” David Rigsbee, curator Greatest Hits series.
What Is Left is the fifth in Jacar Press's Greatest Hits series that includes poets and writers like Kathryn Stripling Bye, Cornelius Eady, Eavan Boland, Joseph Millar, and Dorianne Laux.
GRUEL
(NYQ Books, 2015)
“Gruel is a book that goes beyond courage to a willingness to let fire mesh with skin in order to make the journey inside what we call the American. Carried across the back of his grandmother through the mountains as they fled the Khmer Rouge, the poet puts the reader on the back of universal human trauma to travel toward the deepest commonality of the human, a willingness to love despite the dangers of attachment.” Afaa Michael Weaver, Author of The Plum Flower Trilogy
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And So I Was Blessed
NYQ Books, 2017
“And So I Was Blessed combines songs of innocence with songs of experience, sometimes in the same poem. They take us on a journey with an Asian American speaker in search of a lost home, but along with discovering his Americanness abroad, we sense his depth of humanity no matter where he lands.” Floyd Cheung, Professor of English, Smith College
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The Doctor Will Fix It
Shabda Press, 2019
"Bunkong Tuon is saying something new and important in The Doctor Will Fix It. Exploring uncharted territory: How to raise his dazzling, bi-racial daughter to her fullest potential in today's America. The infatuated father, himself an outsider, searches for answers in these astonishing and tender poems which ponder gender and racial identity, and create a roadmap of what it means to love. This book is honest, frustrated, tender, and human." Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of Junkie Wife and poetry editor emerita of Cultural Daily
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Dead Tongue (Yes Poetry, 2020)
Poetry by Bunkong Tuon, Art by Joanna C. Valente
"Brief does not mean lacking in substance and depth. Quite the opposite. This tight chapbook collects a group of compact poems revealing a wide range of emotion and concerns, from exile, to marriage, to night fishing. As always, poet Tuon captures the essence of the moment. Dead Tongue's is ably illustrated by Joanna C. Valente with ink line drawings evocative of Picasso, a child’s playroom, moments of whimsy, and more, as the poetry suggests." Alan Catlin, poetry and review editor at Misfit Magazine
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