# Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief - Hardcover

by **Victoria Chang** (Author)

**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 2021****An NPR Most Anticipated Book of October 2021**

### Author Biography

**Victoria Chang** is the author of _Dear Memory_. Her poetry books include _OBIT_, _Barbie Chang_, _The Boss_, _Salvinia Molesta_, and _Circle_. _OBIT_ received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the PEN Voeckler Award; it was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize, and was long-listed for the National Book Award. She is also the author of a children's picture book, _Is Mommy?_, illustrated by Marla Frazee and named a _New York Times_ Notable Book, and a middle grade novel, _Love, Love_. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a Katherine Min MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles and is the program chair of Antioch University's low-residency MFA program.

**Number of Pages:** 136

**Dimensions:** 0.7 x 9.4 x 6.9 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** October 12, 2021

## Details

- **Price:** 25.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 25.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief - Hardcover

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