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The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak
Guernica Editions, Spring 2021
70 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781771835879
ISBN10: 1771835877
$20.00 Canada, $17.95 US, £11.95 UK
The poems in The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak explore the many identities, both visible and invisible, that a body contains. With influences from pop culture, the Bible, tech, and Hong-Kongese history, these pieces reflect and reveal how the stories of immigrants in Canada hold both universal truths and singular distinctions. From boybands that show the way to become “the kind of girl a girl could love” to “rich flavours that are just a few generations of poverty away,” they invite the reader to meditate on spirituality, food, and the shapes love takes.
“ WHEN YUHUA HAMASAKI WENT HOME” //
when a Chinese drag queen
finally /
sashays into the Drag Race workroom
our ancestors clutch their jade pendants but /
no one says anything because /
our men have been painting their faces and
singing in soprano since /
the Six Dynasties //
*
when my grandma performed /
in 粵劇 1 /
she swung a sword as man /
wept as woman /
sang as both /
Shakespeare isn't the only /
dragulous form of theatre....
Grace Lau’s poetry will saunter into a room inside of your heart, take a seat in the front row, and stay there for weeks. These poems bravely make their way into the lonely corners and abandoned underbellies of some very painful places: a childhood closet, a complicated inheritance, forsaken faith, queer love, and family, to name just a few, and somehow render these memories into heirlooms. I read these poems once to discover what this poet has given us, and will now read them again and again, in order to truly unwrap and cherish her gifts.
Ivan Coyote, storyteller and author of Rebent Sinner
Ripe with intention and embroidered with the tiny pinpricks of pain, her language, the one she discovers alone in the dark, where we have all been left for so long, is naked, free of ballast as a sinking ship that does not sink but sails into the next sunrise, truth.
Linda Rogers, The Ormsby Review
Grace Lau’s debut poetry collection is blessed by fine details—fine details that hold immense meaning. Multi-generational histories steep in Grandma’s cup of cha. A lifetime of queer desire knits along with the poet’s own skinned knees. Lau’s refined poetic lines and crisp stanzas ask us to slow down the pace of our reading, so we too can discover the deep substance of each image and word.
Amber Dawn, author of My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems
Lau plays expertly in the messy gray between forms and realities, between languages and cultures. Through these juxtapositions we see what it’s like to live intersectionality: the beauty and the struggles. It is in this space between the black and white that the collection makes its home.
Kate Gorton, PRISM International
The poems in Grace Lau’s debut collection, The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak embody wryness, curiosity, and care.
Leanne Dunic, The Capilano Review
Reviews
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On The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak
Leanne Dunic, The Capilano Review - June 3, 2021
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The Hunger for Home: A Review of Grace Lau’s “The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak”
Kate Gorton, PRISM International - June 17, 2021
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Ten steps back to the garden: a poetic guide to recovery
Linda Rogers, The Ormsby Review - June 22, 2021
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Vibrant and Accessible: Review of The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak by Grace Lau
Ren Iwamoto, Canthius Magazine - June 29, 2021
Links
- Goodreads
- Arc Poetry Magazine Newsletter, Feb. 2021: Grace Lau interviewed as an emerging poet about to take the CanLit poetry scene by storm!
- Canadian Independent Booksellers' Associatoin (CIBA) recommends The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak
- CBC's 55 Canadian poetry collections to check out in spring 2021
- CBC Books: How recounting the past in poetry form helps Grace Lau find peace with her family and identity
- All Lit Up: 32 Books for Asian Heritage Month
- All Lit Up: Read This, Then That: Reflections on Diasporic Identity
Books by Grace Lau
