Books by Victoria Chang

After her mother's death, Chang wrote deep into grief by composing "obits"-from her mother's blue dress to language itself.

Los Angeles Times Book PrizePEN Voelcker AwardAnisfield-Wolf Book PrizeNew York Times 100 Notable BooksTime Magazine's 100 Must-Read BooksNPR's Best BooksNational Book Award in Poetry, LonglistNational Book Critics Circle, FinalistGriffin Poetry Prize, ShortlistFrank Sanchez Book AwardAfter her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died ('civility,' 'language,' 'the future,' 'Mother's blue dress') and the cultural impact of death on the living. Loss, and the love for the dead, becomes a conduit for self-expression. In this unflinching and lyrical book, Chang meets her grief and creates a powerful testament for the living.'Chang's new collection explores her father's illness and her mother's death, treating mortality as a constantly shifting enigma. A serene acceptance of grief' New York Times, "e;100 Notable Books of 2020"e;'Exceptional... Chang's poems expand and contract to create surprising geometries of language, vividly capturing the grief they explore' Publishers Weekly

Circle adopts the shape as a trope for gender, family, and history. These lyrical, narrative, and hybrid poems trace the spiral trajectory of womanhood and growth and plot the progression of self as it ebbs away from and returns to its roots in an Asian American family and context.