Becoming Ghost - by Cathy Linh Che (Paperback)

About the Book

"The long-awaited sophomore poetry collection by award-winning writer Cathy Linh Che, on familial estrangement, the Vietnam War, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now"--

Book Synopsis

2025 National Book Award Finalist Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Finalist 2026 APALA Literature Awards - Asian American Poetry Winner Ms. Magazine's Best Poetry of 2024 and 2025 Electric Literature's Best Poetry Collections, 2025 NPR's Books We Love 2025 2026 ALA RUSA Notable Poetry List The long-awaited sophomore poetry collection by award-winning writer Cathy Linh Che, on familial estrangement, the Vietnam War, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.The follow-up to her acclaimed poetry debut Split, Becoming Ghost documents Cathy Linh Che's parents' experiences as refugees who escaped the Vietnam War and then were cast as extras in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, placing them at the margins of their own story. The poetry collection uses persona, speculation, and the golden shovel form as a means of moving Vietnamese voices from the periphery to the center. The speaker's disownment raises questions about the challenges of using parents as poetic subjects, telling familial stories to a broader public, and the meaning of forgiveness.

Review Quotes

"In 1976, the author's parents, then Vietnam War survivors living in a refugee camp in the Philippines, were able to earn relatively good wages by becoming extras in Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now. They mostly played civilian casualties or Vietcong snipers who were background scenery or 'ghosts' in the director's operatic but ultimately hollow Vietnam parable. Cathy Linh Che restructures lines in Coppola's filmscript to create dramatic monologues that lend texture and corporeality to her parents' cinema-worthy history. Her approach is both poignant and humble. While wishing to rectify the past by serving as a vessel for her parents' voices, Che is fully aware that such an attempt at capturing their elusive narratives is still a scripted effort." -Thúy Ðinh, NPR

About the Author

Cathy Linh Che is a Vietnamese American writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Split, winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies, An Asian American A to Z: A Children's Guide to Our History, and Becoming Ghost. Her writing has been published in The New Republic, The Nation, and McSweeney's and she has received awards from MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Tin House, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She currently lives in New York City.