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 andtra?cking. 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, Ti?any 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. Ti?any'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.