"Alive with ancestral pain and steadfast in its dispossessed ferocity Hauntie's first collection of poems radiates with a wise rage transferred from generations before. By reattaching vocal chords to the spirit of the Hmong auntie-mother Hauntie honors the trauma and eternal grieving of the woman who sees and experiences all from a war littered with its many ghosts to a land of childhood summers in Fresno. That this powerful work comes to us from a Hmong woman poet attests to the continued springing of literature in the Hmong American community along with its necessity and importance. These words that experiment with form and voice soar in their need to speak back to the self the other and the adversary in order to re-scribe its own vengeance. A remarkable debut each poem howls back like a wolf far from being tethered." -Mai Der Vang

HAUNTIE is a persona derived from the experiences of May Yang a first-generation Hmong American woman. Her writing is shaped from life within the Hmong diaspora the teachings of her grandmothers aunts and single-mother Maumtsov. She is influenced by the work art and magic of Frantz Fanon June Jordan Octavia E. Butler Adrian Piper Ana Mendieta Carrie Mae Weems Lil' Buck and David Blaine. She believes in using the power of language to simultaneously explore and test our freedoms as human beings.

"To Whitey and the Cracker Jack will look directly into your eyes and will not blink. It will speak the lives of people you don't know you've forgotten -- unless you too have been visited by Hauntie "the one with ninja stars and chopstick flies." May Yang's poetry pierces the silence in which the history of Hmong women has been blanketed with indecorous wordplay unruly rhymes and evocative unequivocal images. This book begins by naming names (America global capitalism) and ends by revivifying the poetic epigram. I am drawn to these poems like a moth to flame -- drawn by their heat by their light." -Evie Shockley

"Alive with ancestral pain and steadfast in its dispossessed ferocity Hauntie's first collection of poems radiates with a wise rage transferred from generations before. By reattaching vocal chords to the spirit of the Hmong auntie-mother Hauntie honors the trauma and eternal grieving of the woman who sees and experiences all from a war littered with its many ghosts to a land of childhood summers in

Fresno. That this powerful work comes to us from a Hmong woman poet attests to the continued springing of literature in the Hmong American community along with its necessity and importance. These words that experiment with form and voice soar in their need to speak back to the self the other and the adversary in order to re-scribe its own vengeance. A remarkable debut each poem howls back like a wolf far from being tethered." -Mai Der Vang