Unraveling Threads

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.

“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.