Dear Tina Chang 2021

Dear Sydney,

Thank you for your letter. I was so uplifted by your words and I, equally, found similarities between us. When I was in sixth grade, I found my path in poetry. My teacher asked our class to write a poem and, instead of writing a poem, I wrote a book of poems. I recall writing one poem after another, excited for the prospect of putting together a collection; I illustrated the cover for my book and bound the pages with the only thing I had which was pink yarn. I presented it to the teacher and recall a look of surprise on her face. It might have been the first time I had done much more work than what was expected of me and I loved every minute of writing something that felt beyond me. It was first time I felt fully free.

When I got to college, I suddenly realized in the words of the great poet Lucille Clifton, “I had no role model.” I was taught Shakespeare, Chaucer, and then Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, and more. I saw, more and more, that no one looked like me. My Asian name and my Asian face were nowhere to be found in any of the pages of my books and this fell on me like a large and resounding thud. I found it crushing and I let it stop me—though only momentarily—from moving forward. Outside of learning from the great poet Agha Shahid Ali during my undergraduate years, I did not learn about one Asian American writer. I wondered, What kind of education is this? I also wondered, Are there writers out there who look like me and sound like me?

It wasn’t until my late twenties when I stumbled upon what felt like a miracle. There was a newly formed organization called the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW). A group of Asian American writers gathered together to share work, find mutual support, and explored pathways to uphold each other’s writing. They then sent a newsletter out via any outlet they could to find members who wanted to help them spread the word. Somehow, that newsletter found its way to me. I noted multiple spelling errors and mistakes in the newsletter and I called the AAWW to tell them about it. Instead of reacting to my audacious message, then Executive Director and one of the founders of the Workshop, Curtis Chin called me in to ask for my help.

The rest is history as knowing Curtis and discovering the Workshop solidified in me a sense of belonging. It offered me shelter, a place to be myself, to work on my ideas, and share them freely. I was surrounded by like-minded Asian American writers who had vast and magnificent ideas. In many ways, the writers and volunteers in those early years helped to secure a foundation for many Asian American voices today and I’m proud that, in some way, I could be a part of that movement forward. The Workshop is now celebrating its 30 year anniversary this fall!

Thank you for observing so many nuances in my poem. Thank you for embracing words as a possible place of refuge and reward. Knowing that there are Asian American readers who are willing and ready to receive my words makes this complex journey as a poet all the more rich.

Have faith. Most importantly, continue to have faith in yourself through your own voice. What we believe is real is actually our imagined possibilities. 

Take care, Sydney, and thank you again for your beautiful reading of my poem. I’ll hold your words close to me for strength and guidance as I continue on the path.

My very best,

Tina

Dear Edwina,

Thank you for your beautiful and lyrical letter. You are right to believe that time with our loved ones are both valuable and limited. My father still remains the most unfinished story. Because his story could never be fully told due to his untimely passing, I began to write toward my curiosity. I wanted to ask him: Where are you now? Were you a solemn, kind, or creative man? Did you kiss your wife before you left for work? What were you thinking about the day my brother and I were born? What did you miss when you left this known world? Though I’ll never know the answers to these questions, my imagination journeys after them and, in so doing, I believe I embraced my love of writing. Yes, cherish these moments with your father but, most importantly, ask him everything you’d like to know about his story: his birth story, his favorite and most painful memory, his parent’s love story. There is so much to know while there is still time.

Thank you, also, for your questions about the most important lessons a writer or artist must know. It’s been a long life filled with so much happiness and also some disappointment but isn’t any life filled with an equal measure of both? I don’t know if I’d want it any other way but if I had to offer three lessons, they would be: Find your tribe, hunger to learn, and fight for your freedom.

Find your tribe: Before I found poetry, I was very alone. I had three brothers, a great deal of noise in my family, and no place to go but to venture into my own mind. I found comfort in writing in my notebook though, over time, I realized I had no one to whom to show my poems. Upon entering college, I finally found a group of poets in a workshop and we shared a great love of poetry. This is the place where I discovered my true passion. Wherever you go, find your tribe and that tribe can be made of one or two people. So long as you support one another and make a vow to care for each other’s creative work and inner life, you will never be alone.

Hunger to learn: Read widely, read everything you can, and do your best to always have a book in your backpack, even if you wind up reading a line or a paragraph that day. Be curious about what you don’t know and never let it make you feel “less than.” Instead, let it drive you to be an eternal student, always willing and wanting to know about this world we inhabit.

Fight for your freedom: When I was younger, my fight for freedom felt quite personal. I wanted to be a writer while everyone in my family followed more practical professions: nurses, doctors, lawyers. I was the only person in my family who stood out (quite obviously) as the poet. I know my mother worried for her daughter. How would I support myself? How would I make poetry into a sustainable profession? Maybe her worries were legitimate but I wanted most fully to be myself. It was an uphill climb—as a woman, a person of color, with few role models at the time—but I eventually found my place. It wasn’t without difficulty and even moments that shook the foundation of my family. Now, I look back and I realize all of their worries were rooted in love. They loved me and they wanted me to be safe. In the end, I found both my personal freedom and a secure place to be.

I wish you a safe path on your journey to find the woods you dream of. When you journey out, bring a backpack and fill it with a writing journal, some very good snacks, a book, and a compass to guide you. The woods are a beautiful respite and shelter but it’s wonderful to find your way back home.

Most sincerely,

Tina Chang

Dear Sree,

I read your letter many times. Thank you for revealing aspects of your past and present and to allow for an open dialogue about the difficulty between parents and children. I had two fathers. One who died when I was very young. I imagined him as kind, patient, quiet. In my imagination, he says little but his slight actions—a gesture of a hand, a movement of his eyes, the act of sitting in a chair—was something I relived often as a child. I had another father, a stepfather. He was sadly unkind, argumentative, and moody. I spent a good part of my childhood disliking him and wishing for a different fate. Interestingly enough, our complex relationship forced me to seek a mode of expression and that was writing. I still have the notebooks from my adolescence where I begin by expressing my frustrations with him. We couldn’t meet eye to eye on any subject but my writing journal was a place of release and understanding. My journal didn’t argue back; it sought to understand me and to receive my sorrow and these random jottings eventually led to poems.

I’m grateful that you had such a connection to, “My Father. A Tree.” A lot of the poems that have been meaningful to me have come out of difficult situations: loss, death, argument but also the flipside of that which is abundance and love. I understand your feelings of loss but also the great desire to be close again. These are not conflicting feelings but one in the same. I suspect both you and your father are going through great changes. Part of growing up (and becoming a parent myself) is understanding my parents. I see now, that they were fully formed humans with their own world, their own set of problems, with feelings joy and happiness but also threat and insecurity.

When I was a young person, I could only sense my own universe, feel my own emotions so deeply. Now I see from various perspectives and the distance I felt in my past has now, over the course of many years, been bridged. Though I can’t promise you and your father will be close again, I can guarantee that the situation that exists now will not be this situation forever. Time changes everything. One day, your father will be older, you will be older, and maybe you will be the one to parent him, teach him, show him the way toward the kind of relationship you wish you had.

Perhaps one day, many years from now, with time as your teacher, you and your father can talk openly about what this time in your youth meant. You may learn a great deal about him and he will learn so much about you. I suspect this doesn’t take any pain away presently and if you need time to yourself in order to avoid conflict, take that time. Move toward relationships that make you feel most fully yourself. Many of my friends filled in the gaps where my father and my stepfather could not. I relied on an extended community to parent me and I tried to give back in return. Writing and poetry workshops were the places I found the most acceptance and belonging. The most important thing to remember: Don’t wall off your heart. Keep it open to the few people you trust and, in this way, you’re always growing, always attempting to understand family, either by blood or by choice.

Poetry also allowed me to be my most vulnerable self. It allowed me full expression, without judgement, and this was a freedom I needed very much. Poetry was a found space, a sanctuary I stumbled upon and it was the closest thing to perfection I could reach in this lifetime. Find your sanctuary so that you may continue to thrive and be happy and search for good, responsible, and compassionate guides. While we can hope that these guardians come in the form of mothers and fathers, they can also be found elsewhere.

One of my writing students who had a difficult time with his own father, recently told me he had many fathers. There were caring people he found along the way who served as mentors, leaders, and friends. By keeping your heart open, perhaps you can one day find a meeting place many years from now where you and your father will meet. He will see you clearly and you will see him clearly and you’ll each tell a story about your shared past. I’ll hold this hope for you.

With peace and gratitude,

Tina Chang

Dear An,

I read your letter with great interest. You had expressed losing your great grandfather over a year ago and I’m sorry for your loss. It was clear that you were close to him and that you still search for him all around you. It is true, when we lose those closest to us, they still exist somewhere and the path to discovery is finding their impact in the every day. Over time, his lessons will come back to you very powerfully, especially as you encounter challenges and difficulty. His history, his words, his stories, and even the hardship he experienced toward the end of his life, will teach you about your own story and your own resilience. He is an ancestor now, guiding you in many unknown ways. The lessons will be most clear when you pause and listen.

When I experienced moments of intense grief, the most comforting routines included reading and writing. Reading offered me a pathway to move outside of myself, to fantasize, and to be someone else entirely, which sometimes was a great relief. Writing offered me an outlet to delve into the texture of emotion and language. By reaching toward words—their composition, song, arrangement, mystery—the difficulty and even the brokenness of me had someplace to go, a resting place of belonging.

Continue to honor your great grandfather by asking as many questions as you can about him. Try to learn something new about him regularly and, in that way, you open the gateway to knowing more about yourself and more about your beginning which stretches back centuries. Your story has fought battles, crossed oceans, built civilizations. Your story is the ultimate love story.

Thank you for your sensitive reading of my poem and for sharing yourself so openly with me.

Sincerely,

Tina Chang