Again, Before I Forget

He wrote because he did not want to forget.At five, Renley Nicolas Chu survived the fire that took his parentsand his voice. At eight, he was adopted into a home thatbecame, over the next decade, the site of his abuse andtrafficking. At seventeen, in stolen hours between hospital wardsand safe houses, he began to write—pouring his memories intojars he could carry, before time and other people's cruelty couldempty them out. He died three days before he was meant to come home. Again, Before I Forget gathers the prose, poems, and lettersRenley wrote in the final year of his life, edited and framed by hisalmost-adoptive mother, Tiffany Chu. The book moves from fireand forgetting through entrapment, dissociation, and survivaltoward something Ren had nearly stopped believing waspossible: to be fully known, and fully loved. Tiffany's quietintroductions hold the context; the writing itself is entirely his.What remains is not a record of what was done to him, but atestament to who he was—a boy who could not speak, and whorefused, even at the end, to go unheard.