Home › Books › Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief
by
76/99
Critics
70/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
75/99
Rating
77/99
Volume
95/99
Rating
44/99
Volume
—
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
A collection of literary letters and mementos on the art of remembering across generations. For poet Victoria Chang, memory "isn't something that blooms, but something that bleeds internally." It is willed, summoned, and dragged to the surface. The remembrances in this collection of letters are founded in the fragments of stories her mother shared reluctantly, and the silences of her father, who first would not and then could not share more. They are whittled and sculpted from an archive of family relics: a marriage license, a letter, a visa petition, a photograph. And, just as often, they are built on the questions that can no longer be answered. Dear Memory is not a transcription but a process of simultaneously shaping and being shaped, knowing that when a writer dips their pen into history, what emerges is poetry. In carefully crafted missives on trauma and loss, on being American and Chinese, Victoria Chang shows how grief can ignite a longing to know yourself.
Preview
Reviews
"Chang brings a poet's lyricism to considering grief and memory in this powerful collection of letters."
"Dear Memory is ontology as much as it is ontogeny."
"This book is moving in a way that transcends story and message; it captures a pure sense of another person's heart."
"A groundbreaking collage of epistles, mementos, poetry, and literary criticism ..."
"In a series of letters addressed to those who play a part in her memories, she explores with tenderness and compassion the ways that all of us construct our stories of what lies both in our family's past and in our own lives ..."
"Where the letters in the book are searching and digressive, written without expectation of an answer, the interview is a formal, real-time exchange ..."
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!