Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Lai Mi Ka Si (I Am Lai Mi): A Poetry Collection, Thang C. Lian

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

In this poetry collection, I combine oral history with official Burmese history to trace my family’s diasporic journey from the mountains of Myanmar to Kentwood, Michigan in 2008. To do so, I conducted interviews with my mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather over Zoom and accumulated dozens of hours of material. A rumination on refugee grief and displacement, this creative work expresses and investigates the multi-layered ritual of grief refugees conduct internally and externally—an intentional and powerful foray into the “affective.” Finally, this creative work intends to sift through the complications of transnational grief: how, when, and why do we grieve?