Letters Home

Jennifer Wong

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781911027874
• eBook ISBN: 9781911027881
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Letters Home, Jennifer Wong's remarkable and vivid third collection of poems, unravels the complexities of being between nations, languages and cultures. Travelling across multiple borders of history and place, these poems examine what it means to be returning home, and whether it is a return to a location, a country or to a shared dream or language.

"There are poems of homesickness, nostalgia, but also humour, hope and optimism - all depicted in Wong's distinctive, intelligent style... This is a remarkable collection, which makes a new and bold contribution to the genre of diaspora literature." – Hannah Lowe

"Jennifer Wong's voice is captivating, compassionate, her poems full of insight, as she questions the complex relationship between culture and identity and what it means to leave a place to become defined by another." - Rebecca Goss

iv. just an immigrant

If we were born in the cities we long for, Love – Paris,

Prague, New York –

what languages would they have taught us to speak?

– ‘Broken Ghazal: Speak Arabic’

from Louder Than Hearts by Zeina Hashem Beck

Arrival

i.

October 1998. When I first arrived

I did not tell anyone that I had

a rice cooker in my suitcase.

‘You’ll miss rice over there,’

my mother said. At Customs

the officer glanced at the letter

embossed with the college crest:

five yellow birds. ‘Why would they

offer you a place at Oxford?’

He shook his head and stamped

limited leave to remain.

ii.

Helen’s Court was where they put

all the foreign students together

so they’d feel more at home.

A bedsit waiting for its tenant:

empty bookshelves; a quaint-looking desk,

a worn-out armchair; a lamp with a green shade.

I opened the sash window and heard

a faint trail of bicycle bells. ‘Home,’ I said

but it hurt.

iii.

The post-room: among the narrow

wooden shelves I was the only Wong there:

my parents would be pleased.

Mum told me she went to Ying Kee

to stock up on tea leaves, and to Mei Foo

where she knew the best fishmonger.

Her letters were full of questions:

how cold is England’s cold?

Should we send more instant noodles?

iv.

Each week I went to Sainsbury’s

to improve my English. Walking up and down

the busy aisles, I relished the sound

of each exotic word: courgette, crumpets,

Red Leicester cheese, horseradish.

I smiled. Saying it right is an art.

Here they actually have ‘Chinese cabbage’.

At night I’d leave the butter and milk

outside the window to keep it chilled.

v.

On winter days when the sun

went missing, and I felt I was

an incomplete being, I’d visit Edamame,

hidden on Holywell Street just like

the other ramen place in Yaumatei

with its wooden screen doors.

There, people would queue for ages

for a bowl of miso happiness. Sometimes,

in the middle of my lunch at Edamame,

it felt as if me and my brother were

having noodles together,

as he asks me to repeat after him

the names of his favourite players:

Rooney, Fellaini, Rafael, de Gea.

Trace

Whatever you say, don’t ask me where I come from. I’ve been here fifteen years. I went to school in Cheltenham. I’m a voter (but didn’t vote to leave). I’m good at saying ‘how lovely’, even when things go wrong. I live in a good postcode and have a garden of my own.

Whatever you say, don’t ask me where I come from. I have traded my country up for better air. There’s nothing I miss – not the sea of black heads in a metro station, certainly not my ageing relatives. Sometimes I think of char siu and chicken rice done the proper way – half-lean, half-fat – served with a dash of julienned ginger and garlic. I only drink lukewarm water. And I follow news on the protests over there,

night after night.

London, 2008

The ashen-faced tr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• i. the ground beneath our feet
• ii. speak, silence, speak
• iii. Mountain City
• iv. just an immigrant
• v. remember to forget
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Thanks
• About the author and this book