Amnion (Granta Poetry)
This poetic book traces how the self is formed by stitching together family history, migration, class, and colonialism. Personal memory overlaps with histories that stretch across several countries and languages.
Work Information
It excavates the outline of the self by tracing multiple origins and histories of movement.
Amnion follows a history of origin that cannot be contained within a single English-language frame through a sequence of poems. Its structure asks about the boundaries of language, memory, and community with quiet force.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Granta Books
- Published
- 2026-07-01
- Pages
- 128 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.1 x 1.1 x 19.7 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781783787746
- ISBN-10
- 1783787740
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American
An extraordinary debut, book-length poem from a significant young thinker on migratory histories, race and colonialism. What does it mean to be a person of multitudinous countries and heritages? Amnion excavates migratory histories, colonialism and class, moving from England to France, the United States, Spain, Germany, Libya and the Philippines. In this chronicle of a family's history divided by geography and language, Stephanie Sy-Quia explores the reverberations that the actions of one generation can have on the next, through acts of bravery and resistance, great and small. Simultaneously mapping and undoing ideas of the self, everything here is contested. Undefinable in form, combining aspects of fiction, epic poetry and the lyric essay, and merging classical thought and contemporary life to show the joy in living and art, Amnion 's broad intellect and undulating emotional landscape is a testament to the families we are given and those that we choose. A POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION
Stephanie Sy-Quia was born in 1995 in California and now lives in London. She studied English at Oxford and currently works as a freelance journalist. Her writing has appeared in the FT Weekend , the TLS , the Economist , the Spectator and TANK magazine, and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay prize.
Reviews
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In the past I have found Granta collections to have a whiff of the pseud. This though, is an effective analysis of the effects of globalised communities, the legacy of colonialism and cross-cultural identities Also a moving portrayal of one family’s movement through geographical and social boundaries. The collection wears it lyricism lightly but still turns heads.
Related Literary Awards
- Forward Prizes for Poetry Edition 31 (2022) ・Excellence Award