Pulitzer Prize Poetry Winner

Tripas

by Brandon Som

Summary

Som listens for the overlapping rhythms of his Mexican and Chinese family histories, set against the labor and language of the American Southwest. Drawing on the maquiladora work of his grandmother and the family corner store, he treats sound, code, and circuitry as kinds of inheritance. The poems are densely sonic, finding in puns and bilingual echoes a way to honor unrecorded lives.

Historical Context & Significance

Som's work is deeply sonic, focusing on how languages overlap in the American borderlands.