The Georgia Review is ecstatic that Tripas by Brandon Som has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Tripas was published in March 2023 under Georgia Review Books, The Georgia Review’s imprint with the University of Georgia Press.
The poems in Tripas are built out of a multicultural, multigenerational childhood home, in which Som celebrates his Chicana grandmother, who worked nights on the assembly line at Motorola, and his Chinese American father and grandparents, who ran the family corner store. Enacting a cómo se dice poetics, a dialogic poem-making that inventively listens to heritage languages and transcribes family memory, Som participates in a practice of mem(oir), placing each poem’s ear toward a confluence of history, labor, and languages, while also enacting a kind of “telephone” between cultures. Invested in the circuitry and circuitous routes of migration and labor, Som’s lyricism weaves together the narratives of his transnational communities, bringing to light what is overshadowed in the reckless transit of global capitalism and imagining a world otherwise.
“Som’s poems refuse to confine themselves or their forms to any one thing,” as Stephanie Burt wrote in her review for the London Review of Books. “All of them enfold and link multiple topics, injustice among them. He writes, as well, to honour people who endured, who made their own way.”
Gerald Maa, our editor and director, was ecstatic about the news. “We’re very excited for Brandon’s triumph. Reading these poems feels like being part of a lively, intimate conversation. I’m thrilled that this award will bring even more readers to this book.”
Lisa Bayer, director of the University of Georgia Press, expressed her enthusiasm. “The act of literary book publishing—of making public the word—is deeply collaborative and hopeful. We are grateful to have partnered with the extraordinary poet Brandon Som and the brilliant team at The Georgia Review on this remarkable collection.”
Brandon Som is the author of The Tribute Horse, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the chapbook Babel’s Moon. He lives on the unceded land of the Kumeyaay Nation and is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California San Diego.
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