Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Obit by Victoria Chang

22 reviews

atreegrowsinbooks's review

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Wow these poems gave me words to the grief I’ve felt after losing my grandmother. A powerful collection in a unique form. Having each poem be an obituary to something that was lost, has died, is eye opening and heart wrenching all the same. Many many lines, many poems made me cry. Made me sad for Chang’s loss, for my own loss, and all loss. 

Some of my favorite lines are as follows:

“When someone dies, letters are always engraved. When someone dies, there is a constant feeling of wanting to speak to someone, but the plane with all the words is crossing the sky.”

“Because dying lasts forever until it stops.”

“That day dusk didn't arrive. I went into it.”
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robinks's review

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

4.75

I really loved the format of the poems and the compilation as a whole, I just wish they had been presented in chronological order (though I suppose in this way, Chang emphasizes the timelessness of death). 
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cantfindmybookmark's review

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

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edilund's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad

5.0

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gabbygarcia's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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jennymcwhinnie's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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vagorsol's review

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emotional medium-paced

5.0

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felixculpa's review

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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laurenleigh's review

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emotional sad medium-paced

4.0

This was a random read to fulfill a reading challenge prompt, but I love that discovery process! What an interesting approach Chang has here. While dealing with the  loss of her parents, Chang wrote multiple obituaries. Not for her parents specifically, but for language, for time, for memory. There are two styles of poetry interspersed. I found more emotional connection to the short bursts of poetry in stylized lines, but the paragraph block obits gave me more to think about. A lot of the subject matter concerns Chang’s identity as a mother, which, as she’s losing her own mom, is a rich and complicated relationship dynamic to think about.
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jayisreading's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

A heartbreaking and beautifully written collection, in which Chang takes the obituary format and refashions them into poems for her to explore her grief in an unflinching manner, meditating on parental illness/death and its lasting impact. What I found powerful was the way Chang highlighted how death and grief encompass more than a loved one’s passing, highlighting a multitude of things that also get caught in death’s hands. I liked that these poems showed how grief is a nonlinear exploration, in which time makes little difference, because, really, isn’t that how grieving works in the end?

I admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of the middle section of this collection, maybe because it was a little difficult for me to follow due to its jaggedness (for lack of a better word). There were some beautiful imagery in this long-form poem, though, even if I didn’t fully grasp their meaning.

Read for the Sealey Challenge. 
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