Yellow Rain

Mai Der Vang's book mixes documentary material, verse and collage to revisit the yellow rain episode. Hmong refugees fleeing Laos from the mid-1970s, after the United States withdrew from Vietnam, described a strange substance dropping from aircraft. It sickened many people and caused thousands of deaths.

Those accounts led to inquiries into whether a chemical or biological weapon had been used against the Hmong, in violation of international treaties. The affair grew into a Cold War scandal, entangled in debates over developing chemical arms versus controlling them. American scientists then proposed that the substance was honeybee waste, released in huge swarms, and that explanation is still the most widely accepted. Vang contends that the Hmong testimony has been ignored and discredited.

Drawing on archival research and declassified documents, the book examines how the Hmong, who lacked the resources to speak for themselves at the time, were pushed out of the historical record. Its poems sing, mourn, argue and question in turn, and the collection considers who gets access to the truth and why marginalized groups are so often denied it.