Every dialogue in this anthology shares ache and joy, emotional and intellectual poignancy, a tender agony: for art, for Việt Nam, for place, space, and scale. The Cleaving is an exhibition of what the purest academic scholarship can achieve: art.--Lily Hoàng, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, University of California, San Diego Perhaps The Cleaving's most significant contribution is in contextualizing the work of these artists as part of a remarkably diverse community, as adept practitioners of craft, and as members of a diaspora whose political orientations toward their former and current homelands do not tidily align. This collection compels recognition of the rich aesthetic and creative aspects of such work beyond 'ethnography to be harvested, ' to borrow from Ocean Vuong's conversation with Kim Thúy. Simply riveting--I can't think of anything comparable.--Daniel Kim, author of The Intimacies of Conflict: Cultural Memory and the Korean War
