Vibrant and Accessible: Review of The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak by Grace Lau
Grace Lau. The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak.
Guernica Editions, 2021. $20 CAD.
Order a copy from Guernica Editions.
Grace Lau’s debut poetry collection The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak is sometimes casual, sometimes serious, and always conversational, but behind the accessible language and uncomplicated form lies a deep well of sentiment. Joy, love, despair, loneliness all bubble to the surface as the speaker walks you through nights out with friends, conversations with her grandmother, and family dinners.
An immigrant from Hong Kong, Lau offers a perennial selection of queer, diasporic, and queer-and-diasporic meditations that are, topically, easy reading. Boy bands, TV, the Bible, and the tragedy/blessing of modern technology (hello, online dating) provide universal touchstones. It is upon biting into each piece the reader encounters the fragment of bone that demands further examination. Alienation, intergenerational conflict, colonialism, homophobia and transphobia, and religion all invite the reader to slow down and unfold each piece. “When Yuhua Hamasaki Went Home” is the perfect example, simultaneously braiding traditional Chinese opera and RuPaul’s Drag Race, shining hard light on the performativity of gender, and the difficulty of being queer in an immigrant family.
While the beating heart of Lau’s poems are the intangibles – love, longing – the physical realm is nonetheless significant. The body is a diary upon which memory and meaning are writ. “Nobody has fought for me / like my body has” (10), she writes in “The Next Time You Scold My Body.” A straightforward love-letter to the self, it is nonetheless a valuable exercise coming from an Asian woman whose body is both fetishized and Othered (see again “When Yuhua Hamasaki Went Home”). The physical sensations of giving and receiving affection in a queer relationship make frequent appearances, anchoring, but not limiting, the speaker’s queerness to the body.
Some of Lau’s most sensational pieces have to do with food. As is so often the case in immigrant homes, food is much more than food, and some of Lau’s strongest pieces lay out buffets of feeling and meaning grounded in the cultural touchstone of food. “The softest most delicious chocolate chip cookies. I’m sorry for hitting you when / we were about to eat dinner” (34) and “My aunts feed me / secrets that will never leave my lips again, honeyed / chicken wings” (47) transform food into a communicative workaround when the silence is unbearable yet cannot be broken. The connective properties of food extend beyond the family unit in such poems as “3 a.m. Communion,” which highlights the importance of community for marginalized groups. The sights, scents, and tastes of pho, winter melon, five-spiced chicken, and more physicalize memories both good and bad (how can you untangle the taste and texture of those perfect cookies from the beating which brought on their baking in the first place?).
Lau’s poems benefit from their simple form, which highlights such details as “we’ve left our other lovers / in a lull / -aby moon” (18). The purposeful disruption of rhythm and flow gives the reader pause and holds the poem up at a different angle, in a different light. Indeed, the key to this collection is captured in these little moments; language is breakable and language is a plaything. When language is a chocolate chip cookie or a chicken wing, it is no wonder that one was never taught to speak it.
The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak isn’t necessarily ground-breaking. Food, identity, intergenerational trauma, connection and the lack thereof, the notion of home and the lack thereof – all are themes frequently featured in the works of queer and diasporic (and queer, diasporic) poets. The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak is, however, earnest. Lau’s work lurches off the page and seizes your hand like an old friend that cannot wait to catch up with you; you learn of the speaker’s romantic escapades, their family, their hurts old and new. Reading this collection makes you feel reached out to, and that is no small feat in a time everything and everyone can seem very, very far away.
Ren Iwamoto (She/They) is a writer and editor from the tenth dimension currently based in Toronto. Their work has been featured in various publications, including Augur Magazine, ByWords Magazine, and The Malahat Review. Find them on Twitter @reniwamoto or Instagram @ren.Iwamoto.