Memory Piece 

From September 1, 1996, to September 1, 1997, I will:

• Write down all my memories as they come, continuously, from Eight A.M. to Three P.M., seven days a week
• Only write down memories of things that occurred before the start of the piece
• Not put down my pen for more than one minute at a time

At the end of the performance the pages will be destroyed 

This is the titular “Memory Piece” that the title refers to. What, exactly, does the symbolic burning at the end of the year mean? What is it supposed to represent? Neither Memory Piece or the performance artist Giselle Chin provide an answer, but it’s an undeniably powerful moment when 278 notebooks filled to the brim with recollections of the past turn to ash and drift away with the wind. 

In the middle of the dot com boom, Jackie Ong finds herself mesmerized by the haze of anonymity the internet provides, where gender, race, and class become social constructs of the past,  leading her to become a legendary figure in the industry, but she must soon contend with big tech’s shift towards surveillance capitalism, a concept counter to the very reason she fell in love with the world of 1s and 0s in the first place. 

Ellen Ng is a social activist in a rapidly gentrifying New York City, fighting for and failing to achieve meaningful change through the decades the novel spans over. 

These three meet as teenagers in the 1980s and the novel tracks the growth of their relationships and careers through the dystopian future of the 2040s with delicate, piercing, evocative prose. The narrative structure of the novel makes the latter particularly powerful – after spending the majority of a lifetime with these three, seeing them in a torn NYC is very poignant. Is Memory Piece perfect? No – it’s a very messy novel, tackling a lot of big ideas without particularly delving deep into any of them. But ultimately, Memory Piece is really quite good, a work of great literary ambition that shot for the moon and landed in the stars.