The Location of Memory (Anna Erice)

One of the strengths of Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember is how it explores such a great variety of places that memory inhabits.  It details how memory can be both internal and external and mental and physical, which adds a lot of depth to her discussion about memory.  Christine Hyung-Oak Lee begins by explaining the different ways that memory works in the brain, “The thalamus receives a signal whenever we see, touch, taste, or hear something, then directs it to the part of the brain that can process the information, whether to the prefrontal cortex for strategic decisions or to the primary motor cortex for movement.  It helps the brain make sense of the information coming in.  That the bright spot in the sky is the sun and the sun is a star and it shines during the day and today is going to be hot and maybe leave the jacket at home.” (PG 51)  By linking each thought with an “and,” it mimics the way we think and jump from one thought to another, almost too fast to process the ones in the middle.  When I read the sentence for the first time, I didn’t entirely process the middle of the sentence, I was reading it so quickly, but I understood how I reached the end of the sentence and continued reading.  Throughout the novel her writing is so quick paced to mimic the way we think, showing how thoughts grow out of one another and memories spiral out from one spark.

Next Hyung-Oak Lee distinguishes between different types of memory, “Semantic memory tells me I was born in New York City.  That New York City is the largest city in the United States.  That I entered UC Berkeley as a double major in English and molecular cell biology.  That I graduated as an English major with a minor in Asian American studies.  That I earned my MFA at Mills College.  That I spent twenty years working in tech. … But episodic memory says that I grew up in New York City, eating pizza for lunch under the El in Queens. That I crumpled under my parents’ wishes for me to become a doctor.  That they thought a writing career was too daring.  That I pursued it anyway.  But that first I worked in tech to earn a living, because before I did become a writer, I too thought it was too daring.” (PG 66)  I feel how the memory is becoming closer to Hyung-Oak Lee emotionally because she is using specific details that paint a picture.  It seems to resonate more with truth as she continues because she says things that are hard to admit but easy to believe, like she thought that a career in writing was too daring too.  I feel the passage growing closer to the body in a way I can’t quite identify, as if the emotional truth and resonance brings it closer to the core of our bodies, but I’m not quite sure how or why.

One place that Hyung-Oak Lee hints at a type of memory but does not go into detail is how memory can be contained in other physical parts of the body.  An example of this is scars.  I have accumulated a great many scars and they create a map of my life, because I remember how I got each one and each one tells a specific story.  For example, I have two small cross-hatched scars on my ankle from orthoscopic surgery where a tendon was reattached.  Whenever I bend down to tie my shoe, I notice the tiny scars and they remind me of the months I spent in a boot and the ankle brace I wore to prom and after the surgery when I was in a wheelchair and my parents took me to the zoo.  Marks on the body leave a physical mark to represent the memories they contain.

Hyung-Oak Lee spends more time describing how actions contain memories, such as crossing the street, “I still wince and crouch as I cross streets, years after being hit by a car in Seattle.  I will never cross a street while a crosswalk is counting down - not after a car hit me while I was in that ambiguous space.” (PG 231)  This whole section contains brutal passages about memory such as cutting, being hit by a car, and rape.  All three memories are linked by how physical they are.  Each describe an attack against the body and are purely physical experiences to remember, even if the memory is not triggered by a physical action, as crossing the street triggers memories of being hit by a car.  These passages show how close memory is to the entire body and how physical the process of memory is.  I was physically uncomfortable reading these passages because of how raw the physical memories are.  My body responded to them in an unpleasant way.  This passage stands out to me because it tells how the action still causes her to crouch and pull in her body as she crosses the street, how her body still remembers the crash every time she crosses the street.  It shows how the body remembers but the body does not always contain the memories.  The memories in this passage are contained in the action, in the movement, rather than a part of the body, although the act of the memory is a visceral experience for the body.

But she also demonstrates that memory can be located external to the body, in everyday objects that spark memories that would be lost without the sensory reminders, “To look at a Thanksgiving turkey and remember all the Thanksgivings in my life.  To then recall the first turkey my mom roasted, slathered in mayonnaise, per the suggestion of one of her friends. … How I found it dry and unappealing.  How we had roast chicken the next year.  And then my mother’s amazing North Korean chicken soup for the years following, because we loved that soup, and chicken is poultry, so why not.  How Adam loved Thanksgiving and roasted thirty-pound turkeys for the two of us. … To the turkeys my friend raised on her urban farm.  How she defeathered them.  To feathers, to peacocks that wandered my childhood town in Southern California.  To goose down and duvets and warmth.” (PG 54).  Hyung-Oak Lee made this passage flow the way memory actually flows, from one topic to another naturally so I never wondered how we started with a Thanksgiving turkey and wound up talking about duvets.  Every link was explicit but not over explained, so I was able to be lost in her thought process.  Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember uses the craft of physicality so well because it goes so in depth into its discussion of memory.  There are so many ways for me to relate to the discussion of memory and so many ideas for me to take away from it.