Letter from the Editors: Memory

by Wendy Gao & Jasmine Wang

Dear reader,

In the beginning, there were memories. Memories of homelands, families, comfort food, languages, and religions. They live in the twilight zone between past and present, the convergence of passing and occurring. {in}Visible Magazine stands at this junction today. We are breaking new ground as the University of Virginia’s first literary publication dedicated to the Asian Pacific Islander South Asian American (APISAA) community as we hope to lay the bedrock for future generations. In our inaugural issue, Memory, we turn to the past to reflect upon our beginnings in order to create new memories that we will one day reminisce upon and think fondly of. This issue documents the memories that have shaped, made, broken, and rebirthed us while claiming a place in our collective memory here on Grounds. Memory, after all, is history.

This issue opens with Evelyn Pak’s poem, “sweetness,” which reminisces on the sweetness of childhood and the bitterness that comes with adulthood. It continues with Bhavyasri Suggula’s “Ladoos” and Jasmine Wang’s “Homecoming” with memories of losing touch with one’s culture, intentionally separating from one’s heritage, and finding our way back.

Memories were also whispered in our ears as bedtime stories, like in Melanie Chuh’s love letter to her grand uncle and the hangul language, “The Stuff of Bedtime Stories.” In Cheryll Caalim’s poem, “Grip,” memories of Tagalog evoke a sense of pride but also a pain deeply rooted in colonialism. In another homage to the Philippines, Patrick Yuson’s “Mimosa pudica,” memories are a tether to one’s motherland, while in Wendy Gao’s tribute to her grandparents’ “Inheritance,” memories serve as a lamentation of a separation from one’s native country.

This issue also explores imagined memories and how they are woven into tapestries of dreams and inherited recollections, like in Aliza Susatijo’s poem “Mango-Scented Memory,” which is about the dissonance of unshared memories and the inability to relate to collective memory. Other times, unshared memories are painful reminders of the differences between generations, like in Cayla Celis’ poem about religion, “to baptize.”

While memories are portraits of the past, they also inform the present, for without them, we would be forgotten. Memories anchor us to our pasts, our histories, and our identities. As children of the diaspora, we cling to memories as memorials and testaments to our roots and origins. They are souvenirs of home, wherever that is.

We hope you take the time to stroll through this inaugural issue, peer in between the lines of poems, dwell amid the stories, and gloss your fingers over the lyricism embedded into these beautiful pieces. We would like to thank our incredible writers who dove headfirst into this endeavor with us, amazed us with their sensational writing, and trusted us with their stories. Thank you also to our mesmerizing artists, Mariam Sesham and Tori Ochave, for bringing our writing to life with their breathtaking art. Without their hard work and ingenious talent, {in}Visible would be nothing. 

We are so proud and grateful to present you with our first issue alongside this group of APISAA individuals. Most of all, thank you, reader, for boarding this literary ship and embarking on a thrilling journey alongside us all. You make this work worthwhile and are the muse that fuels our inspiration as a publication. 

We founded {in}Visible Magazine in January 2023 because the stories within us yearned for a uniquely APISAA space to share them. We wanted to establish space—a home—for our narratives and a record of our existence at the University of Virginia. If memories are windows into the past and the foundation of the present, what better way to begin an archive than by starting with the past?

All our love,

Wendy & Jasmine