What Is Autobiography? A Conversation with Debut Memoirist Victoria Chang, by Amy Wright

Interviews Victoria Chang’s new collection, Dear Memory, expands the field of the memoir for readers to explore a full-color archive of family photos and historical documents collaged between lines of poetry and letters. It prompts us to ask, with her, What composes a life and what makes of life art? What makes of memory history, and whose history, and how do we survive loss? We might expect the author of five books of poetry and two children’s books to incorporate the lyric in her first book of nonfiction, but Chang goes further. If her memories arrive at times as poetry, she denies them the protection of a poem. For instance, at the end of a letter that begins, “Do you remember those Fridays in gym class . . . ,” she realizes that memory may be “the exit wound of joy.” Such insights pierce us before we can register surprise. Elsewhere, she covers her mother’s mouth with three Mandarin characters in the photo on her certificate of naturalization, inserting her reservation into the official record along with her daughter’s grief. I reached out to Chang, moved by this book’s innovative form. “It was always my goal as a writer to be able to make whatever I want,” she told me via Zoom video hosted by the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University, which she directs. The winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN Voelcker Award, a Sustainable Arts Foundation... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'

[ World Literature Today | 2022-01-05 19:50:39 UTC ]
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Amy Bloom documents her heart-wrenching journey to help her husband end his life

In Amy Bloom's memoir, she writes of her husband's Alzheimer's diagnosis and all that followed. Continue reading at The Washington Post

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Omar Sakr's 'epic, stunningly dirty' debut novel challenges macho heterosexual myths of Arab-Australian culture

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Can a Self-Help Book Really Change Your Life?

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[ The Atlantic | 2022-02-25 15:00:00 UTC ]
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Leadership Change at Maria B. Campbell Associates

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Register Today for AAPI Communities in Conversation #3 Featuring Sara Desai & Jen Frederick

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Take an early peek at Hulu’s adaptation of Conversations With Friends.

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Reimagining ‘The Brothers Karamazov’? Lan Samantha Chang likes a challenge.

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Olympian Harrington teams up with Booker-winner Doyle on autobiography

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500 days a debut

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