THE DIASPORA SONNETS Reviewed in RHINO Poetry

The Diaspora Sonnets by Oliver de la Paz
Liveright, 2023; 112 pp.
Reviewed by Karen Llagas

Overseas migration of skilled Filipino professionals and middle-class families is often underarticulated, and yet, class and material resources do not cushion them from the uncertainty of re-establishing themselves in the United States. Oliver de la Paz’s The Diaspora Sonnets, Winner of the New England Book Award for Poetry, explores the many facets of this experience—from imagining a family’s departure from the Philippines at the onset of martial law in 1972, to moving across the vast landscape of the American West to search for opportunities and to create a home.