'Dear Memory' digs into the shame accompanying immigrant silence
Victoria Chang traces her family history through letter writing in her book, Dear Memory. In an NPR interview, she talks facing micro and macro aggressions and staying silent, just like her parents.
Updated October 12, 2021 at 9:58 AM ET
In her new book, Chinese American poet Victoria Chang writes, "Shame never has a loud clang. The worst part of shame is how silent it is."
After her mother passed away in 2015, Chang found boxes full of family documents, letters and birth certificates in a storage facility.
"And a flood of questions came through my body but I had no one to ask them to," Chang says. "So I decided to write a letter to my mother,
