This short essay from the National Security Archives introduces Mai Der Vang, her research into documents created on the Hmong people during the Secret War in Laos of the 1960s and 1970s, her collages and poetry from that research. There is an introduction to her poetry, followed by PDFs of documents she used in writing poems, and a link to a conversation between her and Viet Nguyen posted from the University of Chicago Program for Creative Writing. The piece also addresses the mission of the National Security Archives.
In Yellow Rain, Mai Der Vang writes poems using the words she found in documents about chemical warfare and displacement. She writes to from and against historical silences. She includes personal history as well as that which emerges from the materials she can locate.
See also this poem and an introduction from the Poetry Foundation.
Keeping (and Telling) the Past 