Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief - Victoria Chang

n nA TIME Magazine Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021n nA Los Angeles Times Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2021n nA Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2021n n nn A collection of literary letters and mementos on the art of remembering across generations. n n nFor 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.

n n n nDear 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. n n n nIn 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.n