A review by jenncatanzaro
I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter by David Chariandy

4.0

“What happened?” | On Day 85 I wanted to share with you David Chariandy’s, “I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to my Daughter”. Chariandy’s work is fantastic and anyone who knows me, or who has been following this account for awhile, knows that I absolutely love my local reads. Chariandy composes this letter as a way to discuss the politics of race with his daughter. He writes, “I can glimpse, through the lens of my own experience, how a parent or grandparent, encouraged to remain silent and feel ashamed of themselves, may nevertheless find the strength to voice directly to a child a truer story of ancestry, and, in the closeness of voice and breath and chosen language, pass on a legacy of sorrow and power and luminous specificity that honours the past and reveals to the listener a livable future.”