Writing Letters to Mao
What does it mean to experience a history of trauma and blood in ephemeralities, in residue?
Dear Mao.
Dear Mao,
Dear Mao,
It is important for you to understand that never once did I long for a different life, which is not to say I never longed for home . . . for although as a child I was often homesick—at school, at the neighbor’s house, anywhere unfamiliar or foreign—I also at times felt an inexplicable longing while inside my own house.
Some nights I dream of subtropical trees and their serpentine branches, but more and more my days are filled with escarpment and carapace scattered across the beach. The shells are emptied, abandoned; they are waiting for history to declare them whole.
Dear Mao, In stories we kept reading, wandering was a punishment, and we were instructed to pity the immigrant, the foreigner, the stranger. But what if the absence of a point of reference is not something to be lamented but a structural foundation on which to build a house we fill with water?
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author Jennifer S. Cheng
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author Jennifer S. Cheng
More in this series
A Rarámuri Family's Flight from Drought and the Drug Trade
Luis received the first coins he had ever held. “Keep these safe,” the man said. “You’ll need them.”
Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls
“Nobody will stop a young blond girl, that’s the truth,” you said. This was when I grew angry with you, when I wanted to scrap our week-old friendship.
The Language of Plants Was Shaped By a Colonial Past
The more elaborate my mother’s garden grew, the more elided was the strenuousness of her efforts.