What types of memories have you inherited?
Stories live in me like sharp lightning flashes across a southern desert.
How have they been passed down to you?
She said: On the train
they packed us like sardines
or We drove our own cars to the camps
or I wore a button
during the war saying
“I am Korean” for protection.
Then, nothing.
Then the great seas of silence
death-quiet and dark
that swallowed us.
Then cans in the backyard,
crushed and recognizable.
Then wind in a box,
light in a box, azaleas.
What helps you remember them?
If you get your face quiet enough, what counts as your father’s shadow will speak through it.
How have they impacted your life?
Unknown.
Do you think they’ve changed over time?
Unknown.
Do any of these inherited memories relate to historical events?
I tell my students: There’s no part of you that goes untouched by the angel of history, wings pinned to the air by the storm of progress.
What memories of your own have you chosen to share with others?
The light sings itself awake.
I am awake at the turn
of the 21st century
and alive to the turning.
Did I ask too large?
I’m afflicted with desire
and the girlhood wish
to lay my body down
in the blue summer grass
lit and unlit by the flicker
of the setting light.
Though shapes and faces
sail down the bloodlines
though ghosts grow their nails
into me, I remain a romantic.
For years, I turned the fire
inward, bleeding to prove
how much I wanted to be here
and break the skin and belong
in ways undreamt by them
to the administered world.
What are the differences between memory and history?
One gives birth to fire and one gives birth to stones.
Do you think history is fixed or objective?
No.
What is the relationship between the past and the present?
Yes.
How do we make meaning from the past?
Yes.
How do you make meaning from the past?
See the writer again at the gate of memory?
See the writer again—
See the writer again at the gate?
Gate the writer again at the memory—
Gate the writer—
See the past again at the meaning gate?
Past the meaning—
Past the making, gate the memory—
See the meaning?
She should drown it.
Do you think we have a responsibility to the memories we inherit?
“Even the dead,” wrote Walter Benjamin, “will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.”