ObitPaperback, 9 February 2023

When someone you love dies, everything dies. Her blue dress dies. Empathy dies. Friendships die. You, having survived, die. Obit is a stunning lyrical distillation of grief, written by Victoria Chang after the death of her mother. Initially refusing to write elegies for fear of cliché, Chang heard the word "obit" and was moved by the strength of its sound, the long O and the hard T. She began writing obituaries for the many casualties of death-one long, skinny rectangle to chronicle each person, experience, object gone-and this became a new form with which to study sorrow. Chang's poetic obituaries are punctuated by formal interruptions, including a series of tankas that reflect on the emotional paradox of parenting while grappling with parental loss. In writing a book about grief, Victoria Chang has held a mirror to life-Obit reveals a stubborn search for language and for hope.