A memoir-in-essays that, in its exploration of language, family ties, and Taiwanese history, distills how the handmade holds memory, inheritance, and the work of caretaking.
“Unraveling Threads translates the tactile into text, weaving essays on motherhood, daughterhood, textiles, and language into a profound and luminous meditation: insightful, intelligent, and sumptuously gorgeous.” —Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island
“Unraveling Threads examines the fertile intersection between metaphor and matter through the medium of weaving. Filled with observations about motherhood, language, inheritance, and home, these essays unspool the efforts we make to be legible—for mothers to be understood by their children; for women’s work to be considered worthy of study; for a colonized nation to speak with its own voice. Like the handmade clothing collected by the author’s mother, this collection is lovingly designed, beautifully constructed, and infused with meaning for those lucky enough to receive it.” —Grace Loh Prasad, author of The Translator’s Daughter
“An impeccably wrought memoir so lush and tactile I found myself running my fingers over each of its stitches. Unraveling Threads is a book to savor, a roadmap that returns us to the people and stories that hold us in place.” —Rebe Huntman, author of My Mother in Havana
“Tactile memory feels like it is the easiest to lose,” brenda Lin writes in Unraveling Threads. But in these exquisite essays, she demonstrates just how the tactile bolsters personal, familial, and cultural memory. From the remnant of a baby’s umbilical cord to the antique hand-embroidered baby carriers her mother collects, Lin shows us how the tactile and handmade connect parents and children, homeland and diaspora, and give texture to caregiving’s many forms. As Lin writes, the radical for thread forms the basis of Chinese characters for women’s work, for practice through repetition, for inheritance. Threads form the mesh in the stent that keeps her father’s heart working. And yuan, the red thread of fate, is the first word she translated for her future husband. When Lin returns to Taiwan after decades away, this time with her young family, the threads of creativity and caretaking become the warp and weft of the continual process of homecoming. These essays on motherhood, language, art, and diaspora will resonate with anyone who has experienced the process of returning to, or building, a home.
brenda Lin is a writer, literary translator, and educator based in Taipei, Taiwan. She is the author of Wealth Ribbon: Taiwan Bound, America Bound. Her writing and translations have appeared in Fourth Genre, Asymptote, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
Photo credit: Ying-chi Wu
Contents
Umbilical Cord
繫
On Baby Carriers
紅
Translation Is a Gift
緣
On Characters with the Radical 糸
糸
Home
網
On Women’s Work and Creativity
繡, 織, 編
Nationality
絡
On Collecting
系統
Interstitial Space
紓
On Containers and Containment
納
Language/Pattern/Writing
紋
On Inheritance
繼
Mao Dun Things
結
Acknowledgments
