Writing & Publications

Some memories return bitter. Others reveal their sweetness only years later. “Let the Memory Come” is the book’s Preface—and where Huí Gān begins. Preface Let the Memory Come Do not speak a word, I tell myself. Let the memory come. Memory rarely comes to me through time. It begins with a sound. A smell. A feeling in the body. Only afterward do I search for the year, the room, and the people who were there. Sometimes it only insists: This happened. I remember a boy I had a crush on in kindergarten. We had drawn goat masks. I took his and placed it over my own face because I knew it would get his attention. I no longer remember his name. But I remember my heart beating quickly. I remember the heat in my cheeks as I hid behind the goat’s paper face. I remember wanting him to notice me and pretending that I did not. It was silly. It was also completely real. The name disappeared. The feeling remained. Painful memories can return with their original temperature. But sweetness returns this way too. Before my younger brother was born, my mother invited my cousins to our house each year to prepare for the Lunar New Year. Together, we cleaned everything—the windows, screens, walls, floors, and kitchen surfaces darkened by another year of smoke and grease. My mother used jiǎn — 鹼 — caustic soda sold in small white blocks that looked almost exactly like sugar cubes. When I was very young, I thought they might be sugar. Later, when I was old enough, my mother sent me to the grocery store to buy them. I was still the youngest, too small for the heaviest work, but I could carry the jiǎn home. I could bring what the older cousins needed. Water splashed. Screens were lifted from their frames. Buckets moved from room to room. Voices called to one another. The work was tiring, but I remember it as happiness. A week later, we made guàn xiāngcháng — 灌香腸 — Taiwanese sausages. The day began at the market. Back at the house, the meat was prepared, seasoned, and pressed into long casings. Someone held the casing while someone else filled it. Hands moved from bowl to bowl as the sausages slowly took shape. Then we carried them outside and hung them in rows to dry. We had to guard them because rats could climb up and steal them. Once, one did. After all the shopping, mixing, stuffing, tying, and watching, part of our careful work simply disappeared into the night. I remember the outrage of it. I also remember the excitement. After the cleaning and sausage-making were finished, my mother gathered the same cousins for an outing. We packed meat to barbecue, toast for sandwiches, fruit, and bottles of soda. Then we drove somewhere beyond the city, to a place with trees, water, perhaps a waterfall, and enough open space for all of us. I remember sunlight through leaves. Toast warming near the fire. Fruit passed from hand to hand. The excitement of drinking soda away from home. The sound of water. I remember being included. Perhaps some part of me is still there. Years later, I mentioned those days to my cousins. I expected them to remember. They had carried the buckets, cleaned the screens, made the sausages, packed the food, and traveled with us to the trees and water. But the first cousin did not remember. Neither did the second. By the time I asked the third, I stopped. Perhaps my cousins remember rooms, voices, and family moments that have disappeared from me. Why did I keep the jiǎn dissolving in hot water? Why the goat mask? Why the warmth of the toast and the sound of the water? I do not know. But this book began inside that question. There are memories that are harsh. There are also memories so sweet that their impossibility now is part of their sorrow. The house cannot be cleaned again by the same hands. My cousins cannot return as the young people they were. My mother cannot become the mother she was in that particular season. The boy cannot be found again through the goat mask. Even I cannot return as the child who believed the whole world might turn toward her because she placed a paper animal over her face. Through memory, that world becomes briefly inhabitable. Not repaired. Not reenacted. But witnessed. This room existed. This fear existed. This love existed. This ordinary afternoon, which everyone else may have forgotten, existed. I was there. I can write only from where I stood. This book offers the truth that memory carried to me. A dog breathing beside me. A horse lowering its head. A cousin laughing while cleaning a window. A mother packing fruit for a day near the water. A child hiding her desire behind a goat’s paper face. Do not speak a word, I tell myself. Let the memory come.