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Burnings
Burnings is a collection of poetry by Vietnamese American poet and essayist Ocean Vuong.

Published in 2010 by Sibling Rivalry Press, the collection is Vuong's first published work and was released whilst he was an undergraduate English Major at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

In 2012, the chapbook was selected by the American Library Association for their "Over the Rainbow" book list.

Content
The first half of the chapbook is concerned with Vietnam, the country which Vuong and his family fled when he was two years old. Vuong writes about the Vietnam he and his family remember; in the poem "Kissing in Vietnamese" Vuong describes his grandmother's kisses as being imbued with the feeling of Wartime Vietnam.

The second half of the book sees Vuong write about confronting his sexuality. The poem "The touch" details Vuong's experience sleeping with a woman despite knowing, deep down, that he is gay.

Rarity
Burnings is listed as a rare book in the Library of Congress Catalog. Due to it's rarity, and the popularity of Vuong's subsequent work, the collection has been listed for sale at prices over £500.

Critical Reception
The chapbook received limited attention in the press, and the reviews it did receive were mixed.

Krystelle Bamford in PANK magazine wrote that "Vuong does his poems’ dramatic moments a certain disservice by not allowing them to breathe a bit more" and that "[Vuong’s Vietnam] lacks the interesting ambiguity, the nuanced quality that remembered, reconstructed places take on when you're no longer there".

Roger Bonair-Agard, on the other hand, wrote that "you will not leave these poems dissatisfied" because "Ocean manages to imbue the desperation of his being alive, with a savage beauty."