ABOUT THIS BOOK

Lake Tahoe: home of the Washoe Tribe, a shining blue jewel that crowns the Sierra Nevada, and a beloved American vacation destination made accessible by the transcontinental railroad built largely by Chinese laborers. This gorgeous location forms the site from which Caroline M. Mar’s stunning collection, Water Guest, attempts to reconcile issues of identity, ownership, and place. The poems wander through Mar’s attempts to locate herself geographically, genealogically, and etymologically. A direct ancestor was a railroad laborer; is that why her love for the land feels older than herself? Or is it the siren call of the deep, clear water?

Raising questions of inheritance, the conundrum of land ownership, and the violence of history, Mar gives voice to the lost writing of Chinese laborers and silent communion to those of us still here—immigrant and Indigenous, settler and resister. This beautiful collection finds acceptance, if not resolution, through the questions themselves.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Caroline M. Mar is the great-granddaughter of a railroad laborer and the author of Special Education and the chapbook Dream of the Lake. A high school health educator in her hometown of San Francisco, she is getting to know her new home of Oakland. A member of Rabble Collective, she has been granted residencies at Storyknife, Ragdale, and Hedgebrook, among others.

REVIEWS

“Mar contends with the white-gloved history of the American West, forcing us to hold our breaths, to keep our eyes open, to face what has been hidden, to dive into the murkiness beneath our feet. She doesn’t hold her tongue in this searing collection. ‘What is the melting point of history?’ she dares. Incendiary—so hot—this book; it just might burn shit down.”

— Tommye Blount

“In a probing search for lost connection, through powerful poems centered on Tahoe’s icy lake, Mar resists the erasure of her Chinese ancestors who labored there (not an ink stroke left in their own hand), inquiring into their silence in eloquent language of unstoppable invention, evocative lyricism, and historical correction.”

— Eleanor Wilner

“Whether meditating on the natural world, interrogating the personal life, or excavating history, the waters in this collection are vast, ancient, and powerful. Mar writes with a fine lyrical precision and a stirring range of feeling to connect the world of the reader to the world of the poem. In each of these pages you’ll find something human, something of yourself, as the poems call out: ‘Here you are, reflected / in the water’s depths.’”

— Matthew Olzmann

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Valley

The Ghost Ship