Dear Memory

Starred review from August 9, 2021
Chang (Obit) brings a poet’s lyricism to considering grief and memory in this powerful collection of letters. Mixing official documents, handwritten notes, photographs, and correspondence, she creates a moving consideration of ancestry and loss. There are letters to family members—one, titled “Dear Mother,” is filled with Chang’s speculations about her mother’s move from China to Taiwan: “I would like to know if you took a train. If you walked. If you had pockets in your dress.” Letters are also written to nonfamilial characters in Chang’s life, among them “Dear Teacher,” to a high school English teacher who “loved to read,” and others to a slew of various acquaintances. Several pieces aren’t addressed to people at all: there’s “Dear Silence,” which discusses language and shame; “Dear Body,” which asks, “Have you ever wondered when I would let you go?”; and “Dear Ford Motor Company,” which features a perfect-attendance letter sent from the company to the author’s father. As Chang recounts the death of her mother and what it means to remember, her prose is sharp and strong—memory is “the exit wound of joy,” she writes—and her creativity shines in her incorporation of the collage-like visual elements, which add depth. Fans of Chang’s poetry will be delighted.

Starred review from August 15, 2021
In a series of letters and collages, an award-winning poet explores the wounds of her family history as well as her life as a writer and a mother. "I wonder whether memory is different for immigrants, for people who leave so much behind," writes Chang, whose parents were immigrants from Taiwan. "Memory isn't something that blooms but something that bleeds internally, something to be stopped." After the impressive formal innovations of her 2020 book, OBIT, which won multiple national awards, Chang continues to find new ways to plumb her experiences on the page. In addition to family members, she includes letters to Silence, to her Body, and to friends, fellow poets, and a teacher who started her on her way as a writer, which end up giving the book a second identity as an essay on craft. "What I learned from you was to forget the sun," she writes, "that the moon burned more, to cling to things that didn't seem to leave a trace, such as memory or silence or cruelty or beauty." In "Dear Reader," Chang explains that while she was at work on the letters, she found a box of photographs and interviews she conducted with her late mother. Using these and a variety of official documents, she presents a series of collages with hand-lettered text that create a backdrop of family history addressed both directly and indirectly by the letters. Depending on what one brings to this book, each reader may find their own moment of goosebumps or tears. One possibility are these lines on overcoming silence: "I still carry the brick around with me everywhere I go, but it is now outside of my throat. Sometimes I use it as a paper weight. Other times, it's so light that it feels like I no longer have it at all." This book is moving in a way that transcends story and message; it captures a pure sense of another person's heart.

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