I Have Forgotten Her Voice(s)

I Have Forgotten Her Voice(s) is a poetry cycle that I completed in fall of 2023. It maintains a strong and specific focus on my identity, and serves as an emotionally intimate but analytical exploration of my identity and family history. As such, the primary themes of the work are migration/movement, intergenerational trauma and nourishment, the ebb and flow between peace and conflict, and a unique, intimate perspective of Asian motherhood.

Many of the poems are written about my grandmother and her trauma from being interned by Japanese soldiers in Jakarta, Indonesia during World War II, and use the poetic medium to explore this trauma and how it affected my mother's life, and by extension my own life in an indirect manner.

My primary goal for these poems written about my grandmother as well as the project at large was to reconstruct certain aspects of my family’s story in a way that is honest to the past and those who lived it, while simultaneously analyzing how specific experiences (especially those of traumatic or healing nature) have larger implications between generations. I also lend a great deal of attention to how those aspects of the family history have ultimately shaped my identity, and how I will extend those experiences into the next generations of my family.

The work offers this element of hopeful finality that exists inherent to the child, such as myself; an indication that even with the eventual decay of a past generations’ voice, an opportunity is left for the child to acknowledge past trauma and promote future healing.

I have included two selections in the images below, but please follow the "Read Here" link if you would like to read the full work!