Interview with Victoria Chang

We’re so honored to feature Victoria Chang who will be reading from her book Obit (2020). “But without empathy, the bridging between two people, we don’t have a chance as a society and a culture,” Victoria says in this interview. In this spirit, we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to share her other thoughts on grief, politics, writing practices, as well as a beautiful reading of her poems at the end. To watch the interview, visit our Instagram IGTV at https://www.instagram.com/napkinpoetry_review/channel/

We have included the transcript of both Victoria’s discussion as well as her poems.

What was your process like for writing this collection and can you elaborate on your inspiration for Obit?

I have to wait for the time to write a collection. When things have been bubbling up in me and I finally have that time, I use it to write the book over a short period while someone else might spend five years writing a collection over which they change from start to finish. For me, I think it’s a function of time and my obsessive personality. I’ll write one then just write another one—I tend to write in groupings because I like form more now than I did before. So for better or for worse, a lot of my writing happens now in sequences and large groupings of things that are the same because they’re so fun, why not just keep going? I have multiple manuscripts that I’m currently working on in series as well. It would be nice to write one collection and just move on, but I don’t function like that anymore.

How do you see the idea of personal versus collective grief in Obit?

I think these are all my individual stories, with modifications because we’re writers and artists. While this idea of the ‘other’ did pop in while I was writing, I kept thinking, who cares? I was in a seminar yesterday for our residency at Antioch and someone said how in creative nonfiction, you always have that question of ‘who cares,’ and I think I had that question too because these poems were so personal. That’s when I popped out and started thinking more about collective grief, really thinking about these poems as individual art objects. Each one was a tiny sculpture that would be viewed by other people. I don’t know when this thinking came to be, but I remember thinking during the revision process okay, this is not important to anyone, and how can I at least make it something nice to look at. So, it’s always thinking about how a poem or a memoir can transcend the self.

How do you see poetry influencing the ways in which we interact and create inclusive spaces?

Everybody has been grieving and I think the empathy piece is really important. In moments like this, it’s easy to not have empathy and not give people the benefit of the doubt. But without empathy, the bridging between two people, we don’t have a chance as a society and a culture. I think that the collective aspect of grief, but in general the collective aspect of how we can all live together on this earth, is important to me. In my poems, too—how do we bring people together versus bringing them down and shutting them out, cancelling them. How do we forgive people for making mistakes real-time?

Poems:

Caretakers—died in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, one after another. One didn’t show up because her husband was arrested. Most others watched the clock. Time breaks for the living eventually and we can walk out of doors. The handle of time’s door is hot for the dying. What use is a door if you can’t exit? A door that can’t be opened is called a wall. On the other side, glass can bloom. My father is on the other side of the wall. Tomatoes are ripening on the other side. I can see them through the window that also can’t be opened. A window that can’t be opened is just a see-through wall. Sometimes we’re on the inside as on a plane. Most of the time, we’re on the outside looking in such as doggie day care. I don’t know if the tomatoes are the new form of his language or if they’re simply for eating. I can’t ask him because on the other side, there are no words. All I can do is stare at the nameless bursting tomatoes and know they have to be enough.

Victoria Chang—died on August 3, 2015, the one who never used to weep when other people’s parents died. Now I ask questions, I bring glasses. I shake the trees in my dreams so I can tremble with others tomorrow. Only one of six siblings came to the funeral, the oldest uncle. A few called and cried or asked questions. This uncle said he knew something had happened because the morning my mother died he felt someone kick him, certain it was her. Now I know others found my mother difficult too. But she was not his mother. She was mine, all mine. Therefore anger toward her was mine. All mine. Anger after someone has died is a cake on a table, fully risen. A knife housed in glass.

I’ll read a couple tankas, they’re syllabic poems, 5 7 5 7 7 and they’re in groupings, two on each page.

I tell my children
that hope is like a blue skirt,
it can twirl and twirl,
that men like to open it,
take it apart, and wound it.

*

I tell my children
that sometimes I too can hope,
that sometimes nothing
moves but my love for someone,
and the light from the dead star.

Do you see the tree?
Its secrets grow as lemons.
Sometimes I pretend
I love my children more than
words—no one knows this but words.

*

My children, children,
today my hands are dreaming
as they touch your hair.
Your hair turns into winter.
When I die, your hair will snow.

The Blue Dress—died on August 6, 2015, along with the little blue flowers, all silent. Once the petals looked up. Now small pieces of dust. I wonder whether they burned the dress or just the body? I wonder who lifted her up into the fire? I wonder if her hair brushed his cheek before it grew into a bonfire? I wonder what sound the body made as it burned? They dyed her hair for the funeral, too black. She looked like a comic character. I waited for the next comic panel, to see the speech bubble and what she might say. But her words never came and we were left with the stillness of blown glass. The irreversibility of rain. And millions of little blue flowers. Imagination is having to live in a dead person’s future. Grief is wearing a dead person’s dress forever.