It was chilly, cloudy, and lovely in Seattle when I arrived half an hour early for the first of several panels I’d picked all the way back in December: “Grief in the Asian Diaspora” featuring panelists Chris Santiago, Victoria Chang, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Sejal Shah. Reading from an essay in Dear Memory (which I was lucky enough to have signed the next day), Victoria Chang quoted a fellow poet on the topic of their parents not talking about their pasts: “maybe it’s us, the next generation, who will write in response to that history.” Coming from a Japanese American family, that thought is at … [Read more...]