A Kirkus Best Book of October 2021
From poet Victoria Chang, a collection of literary letters and
mementos on the art of remembering across generations.
For 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 collages and
missives on trauma, loss, and Americanness, Victoria Chang grasps on to
a sense of self that grief threatens to dissipate.
In letters to family, past teachers, and fellow poets, as the
imagination, Dear Memory offers a model for what it looks like to find
ourselves in our histories.
Other Honors for Dear Memory:
An Electric Literature Favorite Nonfiction Book of 2021
A TIME Magazine Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021
A Los Angeles Times Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2021An NPR Most Anticipated
Book of October 2021
