BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
BITTER CREEK
An Epic Poem
In September of 1885, the Chinese coal miners who were brought into Wyoming as strikebreakers were ambushed and driven out of the town of Rock Springs at gunpoint by white coal miners. Bitter Creek revisits this dark episode—known today as the Rock Springs Massacre—revealing the stories beneath this violent, decade-long culmination of labor struggles and racial hostilities in the Union Pacific Coal Mines.
Through the eyes of the struggling railroad workers, their families, and the corporation working them to the bone, Teow Lim Goh creates an ode to buried history that blends epic tradition with modern composition and astonishing empathy to ask the question, “What turns ordinary people into monsters?”
“Bitter Creek weaves a polyphony of voices at odds with one another driven by conflicting motivations such as profit, labor, survival, and disputes over space. Set in a harsh and unforgiving time and place, these poems explore a past so brutal that it’s tempting to want to forget. However, Goh urges us to remember and honor these voices by keeping their stories alive.”
—LISA BICKMORE, Utah poet laureate