Victoria Chang
Victoria Chang (born 1970) is an American poet, writer, and editor. She experiments with different styles of writing, including writing obituaries for parts of her life, including her parents and herself, in Obit, letters in Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief, and a Japanese form known as waka[1] in The Trees Witness Everything. In all of her poems and books, Chang has several common themes: living as an Asian-American woman, depression, and dealing with loss and grief. She has also written two books for children
Chang's grandparents migrated from China to Taiwan, and her parents later moved from Taiwan to Michigan, where Chang grew up[2]. Chang explores her emotions on not knowing the lives of her parents in Dear Memory:Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief.
Chang has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and Chowdhury Prize in Literature[3]. Obit was awarded the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Time Must-Read Book[4].
Chang is currently the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and the Director of Poetry@Tech[3]
An example of Chang's obituary-style poems can be read on the Poetry Magazine website.[5]
References
- ↑ What Is a Waka? at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.
- ↑ Victoria Chang’s Correspondence with Grief by Kamran Javadizadeh at The New Yorker, Nov. 8, 2021. Last access 1/19/2024.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Victoria Change: Poet, Writer, and Editor on her personal website
- ↑ Victoria Chang at the Poetry Foundation
- ↑ Obit in Poetry Magazine (online), one of Chang's obits.