Home › Poetry › Staying Still

Staying Still

by Hieu Minh Nguyen

Longing, belonging, and the difficulty of staying still

Regular price $16.46 USD
Regular price $27.44 USD Sale price $16.46 USD
Save 40%

Paperback New

Delivery to your door
In stock·Dispatches in 1–2 business days
Standard shipping* from $4.35
Standard shipping transit* 5–8 business days after dispatch

Faster options are available.

Rates and delivery estimates depend on your destination and item quantity. Estimates are informational only; the final shipping method and rate are selected at checkout.

Secure checkout
American Express Apple Pay DiscoverGoogle Pay Mastercard PayPalVisa
30-day eligible returns Returns & refunds policy

AlbakiReads Editorial

Longing, belonging, and the difficulty of staying still

Hieu Minh Nguyen’s poetry collection connects private longing with the pressures carried across generations. Its poems consider queer boyhood alongside the expectations placed on children of refugees, tracing how questions of belonging intersect with family fracture, love, desire, rejection, grief, and violence. The collection’s central tension is between seeking a place in the world and confronting the anxieties that can create distance from it. Staying Still brings these personal and collective concerns into a shared exploration of what it means to face oneself.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in contemporary poetry about queer experience, desire, and longing.
  • Readers seeking poetry that engages with refugee-family expectations and generational loneliness.

Themes

Belonging and alienationGenerational lonelinessQueer boyhood and desireFamily fracture, grief, and rejection

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Stegner and NEA Fellow Hieu Minh Nguyen's visionary poetry collection about generational loneliness, desire, and longing.

"I am in the passenger seat heading wherever this poet wants to take me." --Danez Smith


The highly anticipated follow-up to the award-winning poetry collection Not Here, Hieu Minh Nguyen's Staying Still centers on the question of how How do our anxieties around the idea of belonging estrange us from the very world we seek to belong in? How impossible does it feel to stay still and face ourselves? From the intimate longing of queer boyhood to the collective expectations imposed upon children of refugees, these poems face head-on the rejections, grief, and violence we fear in fractured family dynamics, love, and desire as we search for our place in this world.
Shipping & returnsShipping options, delivery timing, and our return policy.

In-stock items normally dispatch within 1–2 business days. The ZIP-code estimator on this page is informational only; the final shipping method, price, and availability are confirmed at checkout for your full order.

For the initial delivery estimate we use these transit windows after dispatch: Standard 5–8 business days, Expedited 2–4 business days, and Priority 1–2 business days. Holiday delays are not included.

Eligible items can be returned within 30 days in accordance with our return policy.

Customer reviews