The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak by Grace Lau is a wonderful poetry collection that explores many intersections of identity while also being a love letter to the society that shapes us outside of who we are. The short length both of the individual poems and the collection as a whole made this very digestable and enjoyable. The writing was enjoyable and fresh, unlike other poetry collections which can be clunky or hard to read. I particularly enjoyed how Lau discussed religion and cultural identities (especially in conjunction with queerness) and her take on Killing Eve.

A beautiful and lyrical collection of poetry. I loved the use of traditional Chinese characters in the poems and the duality of the language in these poems, it was a joy to read.

Though I am not usually a reader of poetry unless it's for work, I found my interest piqued in this instance with relatable but beautifully written poems. I think this anthology should be added to English curriculums the world over, especially IBDP programmes.

an amazing collection of poems!
it was really funny but also dealt with quite important topics like being queer and not being out etc.
I really liked it and looking forward to reading more works from this poet/author.

I absolutely loved this collection of poems. They were inspiring, relatable, and made me think about my own feelings. I loved the pop-culture references. Grace Lau really made a set of really unique stories.

I received an e-ARC from the author/publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak is a gorgeous debut poetry collection focusing on identity, heritage, language, pop culture, queerness, religion and family.
There were so many evocative turns of phrase and beautiful writing that I found myself wanting to highlight entire poems. It is a fairly short collection, but very cohesive. If a book could represent a whole person, this would be close. I love lyrical poetry that makes me feel like I'm meeting a new person, and this collection did that for me.

Wow!! This was a fabulous collection of poems and prose exploring a wide range of issues. I especially liked the poems that dealt with an analysis of religion because it is something that I both struggle and resonate with. As the daughter of an immigrant, many of the verses regarding a transfer of culture also stuck with me. I do not have Asian heritage, but many of the topics discussed regarding a struggle with culture in America still applied to my heritage. There really was a fantastic mix of poems regarding religion, culture, and sexuality, and I could not recommend this more.

“The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak”, debut poetry collection by Grace Lau is an intensive attempt in discovering concealed elements of immigrant inheritances, queer yearnings, multi-generational mysteries.

These poems valiantly exhibit the lonely corners and abandoned experiences of great pain. Readers explores the visible and invisible identities of immigrant life in poems like ‘Ginseng, winter melon, lotus root’, ‘My grandmother’s wallpaper’, ‘My grief is winter’, ‘Family Vacation’, ‘Going Home’.

Influences of Church, technology, western culture, and ancestral customs among second-generation lives are revealed artfully in her poetry.

A granddaughter wonders about her grandmother’s age as she believes the latter stole a few years to work early to feed her family - ‘The Lies That Bend’.

‘She said loneliness is better; than sin’ summaries how the Asian parents feel about unconventional/queer lives.

The emotional intensity of her work is shown in these compelling lines:

‘She swung a sword as a man,
Wept as woman
Sang as both’

‘How do you find yourself
When you don’t know your motherland’

‘He has been mourning
The future
For the last twenty years’

‘Loss that lives in a new-silence snow’.

A very remarkable poetry and I loved reading this collection.

Thanks to NetGalley and Guernica Editions for the Reviewer Copy.

This is such humourous and touching debut poetry collection (I find some collection very humorous).

The poems focuses on culture, sexuality and religion more which I can relate to. I love how the author doesn't try to be flowery or poetic to have the phrases and message be more of a wow factor but instead presented it in a straightforward and humorous way which I find really impressive.

The writing is really good, it was easy to read and at the same time indulging and page turning.

I just love how the flow doesn't stop and keeps me more indulged with every punch of the poems.

This is such a good read. Highly recommended.

Thank you netgally for approving me.

You know it's going to be good when the collection starts with a poem about Drag Race. This collection shows how different cultures can mix: Chinese culture, queer culture, Canadian culture, and I thought it was a really lovely debut by Grace Lau

This book is stunning, powerful, and evocative. The poetry immediately pulled me in and the topics she writes about are things that I don't think are discussed often enough.

Great poems and thoughts, I liked reading about “Hustle Culture,” “The Next Time You Scold My Body,” and loved how Eve Polastri came up!

Notable lines:

“ . . . because survival doesn’t always / look like / a war.”

“maybe it’s no stranger than how we take / the names of those who bruise us / husbands / fathers / Nanjing / maybe it’s no stranger than men saying / konichiwa / to me almost everywhere I go.”

"We have always eaten
what the dead gave us. This is the language of care
we were never taught to speak."

The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak by Grace Lau has ~72 pages of autobiographical poems touching on religion, race and immigration, sexuality, and hustle culture. The poems are polished, funny, and emotional (The writing is raw without being self-indulgent or cheesy). Lau uses the page space creatively to direct the reader's eye and pacing by combining words and adding dashes and slashes:

"lovedefendsavour"
"lull
-aby"
"soft / blue"
"Mac-Don-ald's"
"stepmotherland"

Lau's title are playful without distracting from the emotional intensity of the work.