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Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief
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.
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.
136 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 2021
About the author
Victoria Chang
26 books365 followersVictoria Chang's books of poems, With My Back to the World, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2024. Her most recent book is The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her prose book, Dear Memory, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. Her recent book of poems, OBIT, was published in 2020 by Copper Canyon Press. It was named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a TIME, NPR, Publisher's Weekly, Book of the Year. It received the LA Times Book Prize, the PEN Voelcker Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award. It was also a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the NBCC, and long listed for the NBA. She is the Bourne Chair of Poetry and the Director of Poetry@Tech at Georgia Tech.
Her website is www.victoriachangpoet.com. Twitter: @VChangPoet.
Her website is www.victoriachangpoet.com. Twitter: @VChangPoet.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 141 reviews
April 10, 2022
Though classified by the publisher as a book of essays, Dear Memory might better be called epistolary lit. with a poetic bent, which would only be natural, as Victoria Chang is a poet first and foremost.
The letters tackle memory and grief, together addressing people no longer alive or compromised or swallowed by the past. Many letters are to her dead mother, others are to her father, victim of a stroke who is unable to communicate with her and is in a home.
In addition, there are letters to past literature and writing teachers (focus: poetry), fellow poets, past schoolyard tormenters, her daughters, the Ford Motor Company (Dad’s one-time employer), and even her body (and go ahead, sit down and write a letter to your body… you’ll probably have more to say than you think).
Growing up Chinese-American in Michigan was not easy for a girl whose mother was from Northern China and father was from Taiwan. Chang exorcises the pain of those years via these letters. The parent letters address cultural issues as well as matters of gender and race and silence, and while I enjoyed these, I especially liked her letters to past teachers who made deep impressions on her ambitions to become a poet.
Here are some excerpts from one letter to a teacher:
“I still remember how excited you seemed the day you told us that your book would be published. At that very moment, I decided that I, too, wanted to publish a book, just one book of poems in my life. If someone who looked like me could publish a book of poems, then maybe I could do the same. How little I knew at the time, that both writing and publishing could be relentlessly unforgiving…
“I still remember the joys of my first book. It’s true, except in the rarest of circumstances, a first book most likely won’t change one’s life in immediate, external ways. But I know my first book changed me. I never stopped wanting after that. Not only books, but to be surprised again and again by the possible collusions of language. And the more I read, the more I realized how hard writing really was. The more I read, the better I wanted to write.
“Each book isn’t just a book, but a period of a life, a period of learning how to write. Each book has its own hair color, its own glasses, its own favorite mug, its own computer, its own shirt and pants, its own tears.
“Sometimes I think that writers are too self-absorbed. I often think about what Sylvia Plath wrote: ‘I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I mustn’t say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.’ I think writing requires one’s full attention, but for me, that attention and obsession is toward language. As I write, more and more of my cells are replaced by language. When they burn a writer’s body, the smoke will be shaped like letters.”
Although cremation is not a pretty image to ponder, alphabetical smoke is. I wonder what each of ours will say?
The letters tackle memory and grief, together addressing people no longer alive or compromised or swallowed by the past. Many letters are to her dead mother, others are to her father, victim of a stroke who is unable to communicate with her and is in a home.
In addition, there are letters to past literature and writing teachers (focus: poetry), fellow poets, past schoolyard tormenters, her daughters, the Ford Motor Company (Dad’s one-time employer), and even her body (and go ahead, sit down and write a letter to your body… you’ll probably have more to say than you think).
Growing up Chinese-American in Michigan was not easy for a girl whose mother was from Northern China and father was from Taiwan. Chang exorcises the pain of those years via these letters. The parent letters address cultural issues as well as matters of gender and race and silence, and while I enjoyed these, I especially liked her letters to past teachers who made deep impressions on her ambitions to become a poet.
Here are some excerpts from one letter to a teacher:
“I still remember how excited you seemed the day you told us that your book would be published. At that very moment, I decided that I, too, wanted to publish a book, just one book of poems in my life. If someone who looked like me could publish a book of poems, then maybe I could do the same. How little I knew at the time, that both writing and publishing could be relentlessly unforgiving…
“I still remember the joys of my first book. It’s true, except in the rarest of circumstances, a first book most likely won’t change one’s life in immediate, external ways. But I know my first book changed me. I never stopped wanting after that. Not only books, but to be surprised again and again by the possible collusions of language. And the more I read, the more I realized how hard writing really was. The more I read, the better I wanted to write.
“Each book isn’t just a book, but a period of a life, a period of learning how to write. Each book has its own hair color, its own glasses, its own favorite mug, its own computer, its own shirt and pants, its own tears.
“Sometimes I think that writers are too self-absorbed. I often think about what Sylvia Plath wrote: ‘I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I mustn’t say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.’ I think writing requires one’s full attention, but for me, that attention and obsession is toward language. As I write, more and more of my cells are replaced by language. When they burn a writer’s body, the smoke will be shaped like letters.”
Although cremation is not a pretty image to ponder, alphabetical smoke is. I wonder what each of ours will say?
January 22, 2023
❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief is a deeply affecting work that struck me for its beauty and empathy. Victoria Chang’s lyrical writing is not only aesthetically pleasing but it demonstrates admirable emotional intelligence, sensitivity, and insight. Not only I found myself highlighting every-other sentence, but I was completely spellbound by Chang’s voice and her ability to articulate with precise yet poetic language thoughts, feelings, and things that are, to me at least, so difficult to express/address. Enriching her reflections are her and her family’s experiences as well as the words of numerous writers, poets, and activists. The many quotes that make their way into Chang’s letters added further depth and nuance to her own remembrances and observations. Family mementoes, such as photos, letters, postcards, and certificates are interspersed throughout Dear Memory, and often appear in a fragmented way or combined with Chang’s own poetry, resulting in a collage of sorts.
Within these letters—addressed to Chang’s grandparents, parents, and children, as well as a teacher, her body, and memory itself—Chang interrogates grief, language and silence, generational trauma, cultural dissonance, displacement, invisibility, the notion of belonging, poetry & creativity, her Chinese American identity and her relationship to her family. Many of the episodes and histories that inform her reflections appear to us in fragments, so that we often ‘only’ gain brief and incomplete glimpses into her family’s and her own experiences. This works really well stylistically as the letters never feel bogged down by too many dates & facts. Within these letters, Chang’s voice possesses a beautiful lightness that in many ways belies her subject matter, as Chang discusses death, ageing, and trauma. She also talks about her experiences with racism, how many of the offensive words and gestures were very much normalized in American media and classic literature, as well as her eating disorder.
Regret & longing permeate most of these letters, as Chang is writing to people who are no longer alive or able to find meaning in her words. But Chang never spirals into hopelessness, and her lyrical language mitigates the sorrow of her and her family’s experiences. There is an open-endedness to her enquiries and recollections, one that invites the reader to contribute to the discussion, and I really appreciated that.
“Maybe our desire for the past grows after the decay of our present.”
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief is a deeply affecting work that struck me for its beauty and empathy. Victoria Chang’s lyrical writing is not only aesthetically pleasing but it demonstrates admirable emotional intelligence, sensitivity, and insight. Not only I found myself highlighting every-other sentence, but I was completely spellbound by Chang’s voice and her ability to articulate with precise yet poetic language thoughts, feelings, and things that are, to me at least, so difficult to express/address. Enriching her reflections are her and her family’s experiences as well as the words of numerous writers, poets, and activists. The many quotes that make their way into Chang’s letters added further depth and nuance to her own remembrances and observations. Family mementoes, such as photos, letters, postcards, and certificates are interspersed throughout Dear Memory, and often appear in a fragmented way or combined with Chang’s own poetry, resulting in a collage of sorts.
“Maybe all of our memories are tied to the memories of others.”
Within these letters—addressed to Chang’s grandparents, parents, and children, as well as a teacher, her body, and memory itself—Chang interrogates grief, language and silence, generational trauma, cultural dissonance, displacement, invisibility, the notion of belonging, poetry & creativity, her Chinese American identity and her relationship to her family. Many of the episodes and histories that inform her reflections appear to us in fragments, so that we often ‘only’ gain brief and incomplete glimpses into her family’s and her own experiences. This works really well stylistically as the letters never feel bogged down by too many dates & facts. Within these letters, Chang’s voice possesses a beautiful lightness that in many ways belies her subject matter, as Chang discusses death, ageing, and trauma. She also talks about her experiences with racism, how many of the offensive words and gestures were very much normalized in American media and classic literature, as well as her eating disorder.
“In some ways, being born Chinese in America means not being born at all”
Regret & longing permeate most of these letters, as Chang is writing to people who are no longer alive or able to find meaning in her words. But Chang never spirals into hopelessness, and her lyrical language mitigates the sorrow of her and her family’s experiences. There is an open-endedness to her enquiries and recollections, one that invites the reader to contribute to the discussion, and I really appreciated that.
“A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under.”
June 20, 2021
Beautiful and evocative. Also, lots of memstud references. Marianne Hirsch and Paul Ricoeur? It’s been a minute.
November 29, 2021
Absolutely incredible. A gift, to me specifically
February 8, 2022
Great meditation on memory and family history.
December 28, 2022
Wow. These letters are achingly beautiful and filled with so much wisdom. Chang is obviously just so well read, and I made so many notes about digging into a lot of the sources she cites in these letters. I highly recommend this if you have lost anyone or are interested in memory as a way of both grieving and learning to know yourself. Beautiful book.
May 24, 2022
I always love how Victoria Chang utilizes different forms of writing in her work. This one was great and the collage pages literally 🥲
September 2, 2022
well, this unexpectedly wrecked me! i think it’s partially because so many of my own unintelligible thoughts and emotions are often wrangled into letters. of course, chang does this so much more eloquently, but the desperation, the struggle, the emergent growth takes on a very familiar shape. threaded through these epistles is an honest push-and-pull with identity and culture and language, but most of all i appreciated the humanness of her uncertainty. “i hope life has not been lost on me.” ahhhh, me too, me too.
chang praises writers who “write with an intimate intensity but also a generous capaciousness”. i think she accomplishes this quite well; her voice is as far-reaching as it is penetrative.
chang praises writers who “write with an intimate intensity but also a generous capaciousness”. i think she accomplishes this quite well; her voice is as far-reaching as it is penetrative.
November 19, 2021
There's so much truth and beauty in this book!
from a letter titled Dear Silence:
"Do I want to risk going into you in order to come out with words? To let the words build into something that is no longer me?
...
Last night, I went to a talent show at the children’s school. Kids dressed as sharks running around in circles. Popular girls with matching ripped jeans and long flat-ironed hair singing pop songs and dancing unenthusiastically. A magic show, piano players, ukulele players, joke-tellers…
Then a boy got up and the music began. He sang “Never Enough” from the film The Greatest Showman. I didn’t remember the song or the film, but his opening breath was so quiet, it was Ruefle’s rack.* That was poetry. I think that is why I write. That is why I want to make art.
After he finished to a standing ovation, I remembered that this was the boy who was recently outed at school. This small seventh-grader sent his insides out, through his mouth, in small envelopes.
(That image of the boy just really gets to me; here’s to being brave and being met kindly when we are.)
Dear Teacher:
Each book isn’t just a book, but a period of a life, a period of learning how to write. Each book has its own hair color, its own glasses, its own favorite mug, its own computer, its own shirt and pants, its own tears.
Dear Teacher
Gertrude Stein: “You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in thought or afterwards in a recasting.
I like the idea of writing slightly ahead of thought. The way the moon always seems to be chasing a whale.
From Dear C:
Some days, I want to tell everyone I meet that my mother died. Sometimes I do tell them, just to see who reacts. Most people don’t. Most people probably wonder why I am still writing about my mother. I want to tell them that it is because my mother is still dead.
Dear Father
I know you haven’t read H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, because you can’t read, but she writes about the death of her father so well: The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.
When someone has dementia, or any brain disease, grief is multidimensional. You grieve them while you are wiping their nose or cutting their food into small limbs. Part of them is dead, part of them is dying. But so much of them is still alive. It’s like Macdonald’s earth, but that person is only partially buried. Every time you turn the spade, you poke them and they try and get up, wander around until you have to rebury them, tuck them back into the earth. I have had so many funerals for you, Father. I hide my hands in my pockets because they are always covered with dirt.
from a letter titled Dear Silence:
"Do I want to risk going into you in order to come out with words? To let the words build into something that is no longer me?
...
Last night, I went to a talent show at the children’s school. Kids dressed as sharks running around in circles. Popular girls with matching ripped jeans and long flat-ironed hair singing pop songs and dancing unenthusiastically. A magic show, piano players, ukulele players, joke-tellers…
Then a boy got up and the music began. He sang “Never Enough” from the film The Greatest Showman. I didn’t remember the song or the film, but his opening breath was so quiet, it was Ruefle’s rack.* That was poetry. I think that is why I write. That is why I want to make art.
After he finished to a standing ovation, I remembered that this was the boy who was recently outed at school. This small seventh-grader sent his insides out, through his mouth, in small envelopes.
(That image of the boy just really gets to me; here’s to being brave and being met kindly when we are.)
Dear Teacher:
Each book isn’t just a book, but a period of a life, a period of learning how to write. Each book has its own hair color, its own glasses, its own favorite mug, its own computer, its own shirt and pants, its own tears.
Dear Teacher
Gertrude Stein: “You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in thought or afterwards in a recasting.
I like the idea of writing slightly ahead of thought. The way the moon always seems to be chasing a whale.
From Dear C:
Some days, I want to tell everyone I meet that my mother died. Sometimes I do tell them, just to see who reacts. Most people don’t. Most people probably wonder why I am still writing about my mother. I want to tell them that it is because my mother is still dead.
Dear Father
I know you haven’t read H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, because you can’t read, but she writes about the death of her father so well: The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.
When someone has dementia, or any brain disease, grief is multidimensional. You grieve them while you are wiping their nose or cutting their food into small limbs. Part of them is dead, part of them is dying. But so much of them is still alive. It’s like Macdonald’s earth, but that person is only partially buried. Every time you turn the spade, you poke them and they try and get up, wander around until you have to rebury them, tuck them back into the earth. I have had so many funerals for you, Father. I hide my hands in my pockets because they are always covered with dirt.
August 2, 2021
what the heck I have no words
December 26, 2021
Lovely, rich, wise. A book to read again and again forever.
July 19, 2023
amo la no-ficción y la meta-literatura y este libro es ambas. terriblemente devastador, no es una lectura ligera para nada, pero es hermoso. destaqué un millón de frases. me hubiese gustado leer el libro físico; los recortes, los documentos, las fotos familiares hacen que sea un trabajo super especial. disfruto mucho leer sobre los límites del lenguaje, pelear con él. la autora va resolviéndolo a través del texto, encuentro. no le doy 5 estrellas solo porque algunas frases se me hicieron clichés de repente, y otros detalles-mañas. pero es un muy sólido y cicatrizante 4.5. también hace referencia a muchísimos autores, fue muy loco leer los nombres Vallejo y Neruda entre letras gringas-chinas.
November 25, 2023
I was crying probably 2 pages into this book. It sits as a lump in my throat bringing up feelings about my immigrant mother I hadn’t thought about or have chosen not to. Beautifully and painfully written. Love that it’s letters to different people in her life.
July 11, 2022
RATING: 5 STARS
Dear Memory is a difficult book to put in a genre. While these are mostly in letter form, they have a poetic essay feel, as well as photographs with some poetry. I wasn't sure what to expect, but as Chang was recommended by a good friend, I knew it would be good. It blew me away. I can't explain what exactly made me love this so much, but the writing was so vulnerable and powerful. There are many issues - silence, grief, writing, family, etc - that I related so well to that it felt like having a conversation with a friend.
Dear Memory is a difficult book to put in a genre. While these are mostly in letter form, they have a poetic essay feel, as well as photographs with some poetry. I wasn't sure what to expect, but as Chang was recommended by a good friend, I knew it would be good. It blew me away. I can't explain what exactly made me love this so much, but the writing was so vulnerable and powerful. There are many issues - silence, grief, writing, family, etc - that I related so well to that it felt like having a conversation with a friend.
April 22, 2022
A thoughtful intersection of so many different pieces of Chang's life especially the death of her Mother and the decline of her Father that she has addressed in OBIT and The Boss, their life as immigrants, but also her childhood as well as some poems on writing. This book features beautiful collages in between the epistolatory poems that use family photos and texts from/about her parents.
November 20, 2021
In this haunting and luminous work, Victoria Chang gives us a series of epistles and found collages to address the melancholic remembrances of things past. Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief (Milkweed Editions, 2021) is an elegy and lament for the dead and gone: her ancestors, her teachers, and friends. She quotes poet Mary Jo Bang: “What is an elegy but the attempt / To rebreathe life / Into what the gone once was…” The book is filled with light and shadow, the pneuma of humanity and the human condition. More poetry than prose, the book is a connotative tour de force of what it means to be alive and to live with the breath of memory and regret.
Chang is a poet, a teacher, and program chair in the Creative Writing Department at Antioch University. She believes in writing that puts language at risk, allowing words to build into something beyond the self. She asks: “Can I be the hawk and the storm that tries to murder the hawk?” The question is fraught with danger. She confronts and sifts through memory and goes directly to how our lives often play out in the blood, the DNA of who we are, and what we do with our brief time in this human epoch. She documents the sorrow and grace of her existence, both visually and in words. “Perhaps something never happened if no one remembers it,” she writes. “Perhaps there’s no truth. Just memory and words.”
Coupled with her words are these haunting collages, many composed of documents and paper fragments of her past. She writes dialogue with her mother directly in the spaces on each picture as if conducting an interview. Other collages are family photographs, some with faces etched out as if demonstrating how they dwell in the shadows of her history. Collectively, the collages tell the parallel story; they weave into and out of the word-epistles. The letters and the collages are rare jewels. They both enhance and magnify the threads that bind the story together from word to image. Her poet’s sense of the spare and lyrical is ever-present in the art and the words.
Often, Chang’s language stuns us with its beauty and insight. “Maybe our desire for the past grows after the decay of our present, she writes. “When the present is more than we can hold, it turns into history. And the future turns into water. The water between your countries.” It is this water that her family journeyed over to find their destiny. Chang feels her place in America, but the book she creates also pays homage to those who made that journey and who, in turn, made her a unique part of a new nation, a new home. This is an immigrant story, and Chang pays artful attention to this most American of ideas. She wonders if memory is different for immigrants, “for people who leave so much behind. Memory isn’t something that blooms but something that bleeds internally, something to be stopped. Memory hides because it isn’t useful.” It is clearly the calling of the poet-artist to bring the memory forward, to shine light, muted or harsh, to illuminate the darkness of experience, of grief, of sorrow, of regret.
There are gaps in her family history that she does not fully understand and wants to explore. Memories, dreams, reflections, all kaleidoscope together in the form of questions she did not ask at the time, or did not find the answers to later. “The things that didn’t matter at the time are often the most urgent questions after someone has died,” she writes.
She devotes much to a discussion of silence and grief. What is not said speaks volumes. It is silence that cannot be undone, and in that way, Chang tells us, it is like death. The story ends when no one remembers the words, the people in the photographs, the significance of things. But the dead are wise. They know things. “By the time we die,” Chang writes, “we know everything we need to know.” Those of us left behind must wonder what the dead have taken with them. It is up to the living to remember the strands of the story and continue it.
Chang circles back to writing at the end. She recognizes that dragging a “not-yet-ready memory” into the light is often painful. It is difficult and lacerating. “More and more,” she writes, “I think writing is not a choice but an act of patience. An act of listening to silence, into silence.” It is in silence that, paradoxically, we hear voices. In silence, we communicate with the dead, with our own souls, and where the world is still enough to hear our own breath rushing in and out of our lives. It takes bravery and courage to listen to the silences and become aware. Victoria Chang models such heroism for us, and the result is a shimmering and beautiful book.
Chang is a poet, a teacher, and program chair in the Creative Writing Department at Antioch University. She believes in writing that puts language at risk, allowing words to build into something beyond the self. She asks: “Can I be the hawk and the storm that tries to murder the hawk?” The question is fraught with danger. She confronts and sifts through memory and goes directly to how our lives often play out in the blood, the DNA of who we are, and what we do with our brief time in this human epoch. She documents the sorrow and grace of her existence, both visually and in words. “Perhaps something never happened if no one remembers it,” she writes. “Perhaps there’s no truth. Just memory and words.”
Coupled with her words are these haunting collages, many composed of documents and paper fragments of her past. She writes dialogue with her mother directly in the spaces on each picture as if conducting an interview. Other collages are family photographs, some with faces etched out as if demonstrating how they dwell in the shadows of her history. Collectively, the collages tell the parallel story; they weave into and out of the word-epistles. The letters and the collages are rare jewels. They both enhance and magnify the threads that bind the story together from word to image. Her poet’s sense of the spare and lyrical is ever-present in the art and the words.
Often, Chang’s language stuns us with its beauty and insight. “Maybe our desire for the past grows after the decay of our present, she writes. “When the present is more than we can hold, it turns into history. And the future turns into water. The water between your countries.” It is this water that her family journeyed over to find their destiny. Chang feels her place in America, but the book she creates also pays homage to those who made that journey and who, in turn, made her a unique part of a new nation, a new home. This is an immigrant story, and Chang pays artful attention to this most American of ideas. She wonders if memory is different for immigrants, “for people who leave so much behind. Memory isn’t something that blooms but something that bleeds internally, something to be stopped. Memory hides because it isn’t useful.” It is clearly the calling of the poet-artist to bring the memory forward, to shine light, muted or harsh, to illuminate the darkness of experience, of grief, of sorrow, of regret.
There are gaps in her family history that she does not fully understand and wants to explore. Memories, dreams, reflections, all kaleidoscope together in the form of questions she did not ask at the time, or did not find the answers to later. “The things that didn’t matter at the time are often the most urgent questions after someone has died,” she writes.
She devotes much to a discussion of silence and grief. What is not said speaks volumes. It is silence that cannot be undone, and in that way, Chang tells us, it is like death. The story ends when no one remembers the words, the people in the photographs, the significance of things. But the dead are wise. They know things. “By the time we die,” Chang writes, “we know everything we need to know.” Those of us left behind must wonder what the dead have taken with them. It is up to the living to remember the strands of the story and continue it.
Chang circles back to writing at the end. She recognizes that dragging a “not-yet-ready memory” into the light is often painful. It is difficult and lacerating. “More and more,” she writes, “I think writing is not a choice but an act of patience. An act of listening to silence, into silence.” It is in silence that, paradoxically, we hear voices. In silence, we communicate with the dead, with our own souls, and where the world is still enough to hear our own breath rushing in and out of our lives. It takes bravery and courage to listen to the silences and become aware. Victoria Chang models such heroism for us, and the result is a shimmering and beautiful book.
April 19, 2022
I’ll read any of Chang’s poetry, Obit was one of my fave collections ever. This isn’t necessarily a poetry collection, but an epistolary with poetic letters written to family or characters from Chang’s past. I love to read anyone writing beautifully abt grief and losing parents. This collection also includes collages with images and artifacts and handwritten poems on them. It’s like an updated version of the photo spread in the middle of memoirs and they appear between every few letters and it is fantastic.
May 29, 2024
"If I press the button,I imagine the large hot water dispensers common in Asia. We don't want to know our family's history, but we must for it is all around our lives.
hot water will burn me.
The water is history.
I don't press it but why
am I still soaking wet? p.9 Dear Grandmother.
"Working on these letters and listening to the interviews made me think that grief and memory are related. That memory, trying to remember, is also an act of grieving. In my mother's case, sometimes forgetting or silence was a way to grieve lost lands and to survive. In my case, trying to know someone else's memories even if it's through imagination and within silence, is also a form of grieving." p.144 Dear Reader
Writing: a way to shape one's story, to know one's self.
Silence: holds answers in and of itself
Grief: digs up memories
Maybe these weren't Victoria Chang's intended meanings for these concepts, but they are what I felt after reading her book.
I enjoyed the uniqueness of this form of writing. Chang shares an intimate journey into how she learned about her mother and her family roots after her mother and father's deaths. She composes letters written to them, to her sister, to her daughter, to friends, to teachers, and even to the company her father worked at as a way of exploring grief. Within the letters, she quotes other writers whose lines resonated with her and her response to them using context from her own life.
Between these letters, there's mixed media art from documents like birth certificates and old family photos that have Chang's handwritten notes cut and pasted in a way that felt like poetry. She includes an interview with her mother in these lines as well, talking about her past moving from China to Taiwan to America.
I felt sad to learn in that interview that her mom regretted coming to America because they would never been seen as American, only Chinese. That is the reality that so many immigrants to America face.
This was my favorite passage:
"At mother's funeral, a bony Chinese man said, Your mother was always a bit chubby. I was always worried about her health. As if her weight had caused her lungs to fail. He didn't mean any harm, just as Father never meant any harm. But harm is rarely about intention. I remember all the times aunties would say to me, You've lost weight. Or, You've gained weight. Stand up so we can see you better.
A month before Mother died, she was so frail. She had lost all the weight of seventy-four years. I don't think she was finally happy. She looked small and beautiful in a baggy old dress with blue flowers that she could finally fit into. I was secretly happy that she would never have to worry about her body again. That the weight of caring for father was gone, that the weight of her countries was gone, that she was finally the weight of light. p. 33 Dear Body
Other thoughts I came away with:
-School yard bullies tend to stay with us longer than we expect.
-A personal history is intricately linked to your family's past, but what does that look like when your parents are immigrants with a history that is hard to talk about?
-Wanting to write and have your writing resonant with or impact others reminds me of how I keep a journal, only for myself, but sometimes I want to share that journal with others
-I remembered when my granny died and we kept her angels she collected from us as presents over the years. Chang's words helped me remember that. "When she died, I threw most things away, except for the teapots. When a mother dies, everything you've given to her comes back to you. Now the teapots line up on my mantel like grief." p. 101 Dear Father
-Dementia has its own sort of grief where you are grieving the loss of the person while they are technically still living.
-I think the letters would be great to use as reading passages for older ESL students and adults.
-I love that the book is red. From the book cover, to the hardback book underneath itself, Chang is purposely using this color that represents so much of her heritage.
"I used to hate red.
The color of meat and
shame. Now I paint my
lips red so I don't disappear."p. 43 Dear L
July 5, 2022
“I think writing is not a choice but an act of patience. An act of listening to silence, into silence.”
It is no disaster when someone we love day as every day passes, we get closer to meet them again, that what someone once told me. I never really wondered what to do during these days where we wait as I am just going from one day to the next, just reading and writing. Reading is becoming my identity as I am not only reading books but myself, others, and the whole universe. But I never saw writing or reading as an act of patience and listening to the silence those who died left behind.
Grief is very astonishing for the things that it will make you do; I remember “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov where she considered grief as her own dog.
“(…), you need
The right to warn off intruders
To consider
The house your own
My house your own”
Victoria Chang says about memory and silence: “trying to remember, is also an act of grieving. (…) maybe silence is not something to interact with, to be filled in, but rather to let wash over you, to exist within. Maybe silence is its own form of language. Maybe silence is also a life lived. Maybe the unspoken can lead to the widest imagination. Maybe it's the most open text. The loudest form of speaking we have.”
Maybe that what grief does best; grief bring memory as a way to warn you of forgetting, of shame, of guilt, and through indulging into memories, one takes silence as worshiping those who left, to never forget them: silence as another way of breathing. I remember back in middle school; there was a girl in class with me, she always had the greatest grades but she never every spoke in class, never participated, even when the teacher brings her Infront of the class and ask her she stood there in silence! I never wondered why back then, maybe because we wonder about those who talk not those who take silence as a language. I never heard that girl voice, I don’t think anyone did. Going through grief and loss, I now believe that girl is lucky, even though for her not to speak at all it must been hard as maybe it is a trauma response, but silence is what heals. Silence is always the answer. Perhaps silence is the act of patience, maybe all the words we write is nothing but the language of silence.
“Maybe our final memory will be of our mothers.”
It is no disaster when someone we love day as every day passes, we get closer to meet them again, that what someone once told me. I never really wondered what to do during these days where we wait as I am just going from one day to the next, just reading and writing. Reading is becoming my identity as I am not only reading books but myself, others, and the whole universe. But I never saw writing or reading as an act of patience and listening to the silence those who died left behind.
Grief is very astonishing for the things that it will make you do; I remember “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov where she considered grief as her own dog.
“(…), you need
The right to warn off intruders
To consider
The house your own
My house your own”
Victoria Chang says about memory and silence: “trying to remember, is also an act of grieving. (…) maybe silence is not something to interact with, to be filled in, but rather to let wash over you, to exist within. Maybe silence is its own form of language. Maybe silence is also a life lived. Maybe the unspoken can lead to the widest imagination. Maybe it's the most open text. The loudest form of speaking we have.”
Maybe that what grief does best; grief bring memory as a way to warn you of forgetting, of shame, of guilt, and through indulging into memories, one takes silence as worshiping those who left, to never forget them: silence as another way of breathing. I remember back in middle school; there was a girl in class with me, she always had the greatest grades but she never every spoke in class, never participated, even when the teacher brings her Infront of the class and ask her she stood there in silence! I never wondered why back then, maybe because we wonder about those who talk not those who take silence as a language. I never heard that girl voice, I don’t think anyone did. Going through grief and loss, I now believe that girl is lucky, even though for her not to speak at all it must been hard as maybe it is a trauma response, but silence is what heals. Silence is always the answer. Perhaps silence is the act of patience, maybe all the words we write is nothing but the language of silence.
“Maybe our final memory will be of our mothers.”
February 22, 2024
Well, Chang made me cry. She knows how to say the truth. Her final epistle is to the reader, and she mentions post-memory, and everything in this book just felt even more precious to me, even more important after reading the last few pages.
Throughout the book I was writing down notes, marking pages, but I realize now it was a useless exercise. I will read this again, I must read this again. The whole book is meant to be read not in clips or highlighted quotes, it's meant to be read as one.
The idea of memory and post-memory is not a common idea. It is similar to "inherited trauma" but I feel that post-memory is more specific, because not all memories are traumatic, but all memories can be passed down from one generation to the next.
Post-memory is probably why I am a poet, why Chang is a poet. We had or have someone in our life, someone important, who had bad things happen to them, traumatic things happen. Those memories are not our memories, but they are post-memories. They are apart of us, just as our own memories, but it causes a liminalness in our identities, always seeking and seeking and seeking. I feel I have found a doppelganger in Chang, we are the ones who are tired and go and go and go, but are still restless, reliving memories that are not our own.
Dear C.
Thank you for writing this book, it means more to me than I can write here.
Thank you.
Throughout the book I was writing down notes, marking pages, but I realize now it was a useless exercise. I will read this again, I must read this again. The whole book is meant to be read not in clips or highlighted quotes, it's meant to be read as one.
The idea of memory and post-memory is not a common idea. It is similar to "inherited trauma" but I feel that post-memory is more specific, because not all memories are traumatic, but all memories can be passed down from one generation to the next.
Post-memory is probably why I am a poet, why Chang is a poet. We had or have someone in our life, someone important, who had bad things happen to them, traumatic things happen. Those memories are not our memories, but they are post-memories. They are apart of us, just as our own memories, but it causes a liminalness in our identities, always seeking and seeking and seeking. I feel I have found a doppelganger in Chang, we are the ones who are tired and go and go and go, but are still restless, reliving memories that are not our own.
Dear C.
Thank you for writing this book, it means more to me than I can write here.
Thank you.
November 27, 2021
Yo creo que Victoria Chang es sin duda mi nueva escritora favorita. Ya en Obit me había impresionado la manera en que se aproxima a los espacios del duelo. Este libro es una colección de cartas que la autora escribe a familiares, amigues, profesores, hijas, memoria, cuerpo, escritura sobre escritura. Cada carta es una búsqueda y un descubrimiento, una confesión, un duelo por lo que se fue o lo que nunca se tuvo. En tanto forma este, además es un híbrido pues acompaña a cada carta un collage que entre fotografía y texto nos relata fragmentadamente sobre esos, valga la repetición, fragmentos que de la familia nos quedan.
Las cartas, además, no solo son desde el yo, sino son además una meditación sobre el yo que nos construye desde antes de que naciéramos, clase, raza, lengua, nos atraviesan -parece decir Chang- y por tanto atraviesan nuestra escritura.
Un libro hermoso, conmovedor, un libro al que hay que volver para guardar el silencio que se nos asigna.
Las cartas, además, no solo son desde el yo, sino son además una meditación sobre el yo que nos construye desde antes de que naciéramos, clase, raza, lengua, nos atraviesan -parece decir Chang- y por tanto atraviesan nuestra escritura.
Un libro hermoso, conmovedor, un libro al que hay que volver para guardar el silencio que se nos asigna.
August 20, 2022
“After I shut the book, I grieved all the details of our lives that disappear like geese” (190).
Today is a difficult day to live, in the destruction of expectation, the tearing down of old dreams once communally spun, the should-have-beens, the crushing weight of raw grief in the absence of regret. Grateful for writers who sit in that space, too, and lean into the beauty of language to help piece it all together: “The language of poetry reminded me to stay alive” (75).
“Maybe our desire for the past grows after the decay of our present” (40).
“…memory, trying to remember, is also an act of grieving” (205).
Today is a difficult day to live, in the destruction of expectation, the tearing down of old dreams once communally spun, the should-have-beens, the crushing weight of raw grief in the absence of regret. Grateful for writers who sit in that space, too, and lean into the beauty of language to help piece it all together: “The language of poetry reminded me to stay alive” (75).
“Maybe our desire for the past grows after the decay of our present” (40).
“…memory, trying to remember, is also an act of grieving” (205).
September 20, 2023
"I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a family where everyone spoke the same language. The only language we had wholly in common was silence."
"I agree I am American, but don't believe it. I agree that I am Chinese, but don't believe it."
This book has brought me so close to tears way too many times, and I felt my soul shake. The way a woman I've never met and probably never will could write about her own experiences and for me to see myself in them. Victoria wrote what I've been trying to articulate as a daughter of an immigrant parent; about the silence we master so well. I'm so glad this book exists.
"I agree I am American, but don't believe it. I agree that I am Chinese, but don't believe it."
This book has brought me so close to tears way too many times, and I felt my soul shake. The way a woman I've never met and probably never will could write about her own experiences and for me to see myself in them. Victoria wrote what I've been trying to articulate as a daughter of an immigrant parent; about the silence we master so well. I'm so glad this book exists.
October 27, 2023
I was very moved by Victoria Chang’s book Dear Memory. It spoke to me about grief, about immigrant parents and about being the child of immigrants. Thank you for this poetic and thought-filled gift, Victoria.
““. I realized I had to tell my stories in order to reflect on theirs [my parents’] because, while I had always thought our stories were separate, they were actually intimately connected. I realized my parents’ histories not only shaped them, but also shaped me in ways that I only began to consider after they could no longer speak to me.”
““. I realized I had to tell my stories in order to reflect on theirs [my parents’] because, while I had always thought our stories were separate, they were actually intimately connected. I realized my parents’ histories not only shaped them, but also shaped me in ways that I only began to consider after they could no longer speak to me.”
January 26, 2022
Wow.
Victoria Chang is brilliant. She so easily guides the reader from poetry to prose to photograph to poetry again. I often feel intimated by poetry, especially poetry that is more formless and ambiguous, but each letter in this book held me. Whether Chang was writing to her mother, grandmother, or a teacher, I felt my own experiences as a diasporic human come to the surface. A book that gets me to grapple with my own shit is a book that is doing the WORK. Highly recommend!
Victoria Chang is brilliant. She so easily guides the reader from poetry to prose to photograph to poetry again. I often feel intimated by poetry, especially poetry that is more formless and ambiguous, but each letter in this book held me. Whether Chang was writing to her mother, grandmother, or a teacher, I felt my own experiences as a diasporic human come to the surface. A book that gets me to grapple with my own shit is a book that is doing the WORK. Highly recommend!
January 18, 2022
"How does one interact with silence? How does one not die of silence? Maybe my thinking has been wrong all along. Maybe silence is not something to interact with, to be filled in, but rather to let wash over you, to exist within. Maybe silence is its own form of language. Maybe silence is also a life lived. Maybe the unspoken can lead to the widest imagination. Maybe it's the most open text. The loudest form of speaking we have.”
June 15, 2024
Beautiful prose/poetry/ and images from lived experiences documenting the intergenerational challenges of immigration.
March 4, 2022
Brilliant. Poignant. Her words are shaped with silence and beauty, stabbing you in the heart.
September 6, 2022
Victoria Chang's prose wades through the tough, murky skeins of postmemory with a stunning delicacy.
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