Full Description
Lake Tahoe: home of the Washoe Tribe, a shining blue jewel that crowns the Sierra Nevada, and a beloved American vacation destination made accessible by the transcontinental railroad built largely by Chinese laborers. This gorgeous location forms the site from which Caroline M. Mar's stunning collection, Water Guest, attempts to reconcile issues of identity, ownership, and place. The poems wander through Mar's attempts to locate herself geographically, genealogically, and etymologically. A direct ancestor was a railroad laborer; is that why her love for the land feels older than herself? Or is it the siren call of the deep, clear water?
Raising questions of inheritance, the conundrum of land ownership, and the violence of history, Mar gives voice to the lost writing of Chinese laborers and silent communion to those of us still here—immigrant and Indigenous, settler and resister. This beautiful collection finds acceptance, if not resolution, through the questions themselves.
Contents
Failed Translations
Dream of the Lake
Mythology
Stage 1: Cold Shock / Threat No. 1 Loss of Breathing Control
Stage 1: Cold Shock / Threat No. 2 Heart and Blood Pressure Problems
Stage 1: Cold Shock / Threat No. 3 Mental Problems
With a surface area of 191.6 square miles and a depth of 1,645 feet, Lake Tahoe is the largest and the second-deepest alpine lake in the United States
Naming
Intelligible
Burials
Stage 2: Physical Incapacitation
Portraits of the Ancestor
1870 census; Truckee, CA: Ah John, male, 18; occupation: prostitute
Stage 3: Hypothermia
S---- Valley
Fire Control
Stage 4: Circum-rescue Collapse
Catalog of Writings Left by Chinese Railroad Laborers of the C.P.R.R.
A Correspondence
Tragedy
Mercy
Guest: First Translation
Swim Team Outer Space
Song for Great-Grandfather
Tie
Guest: Second Translation
Property
John Chinaman
Celestials
Guest: Third Translation
Certainty
Being Away from the Lake
Distinctions
The Ghost Ship
Song for Great-Great-Grandfather
Lake of the Sky
Acknowledgments
Notes
