Let's Not Talk Anymore

Book excerpt: A five-generation family history told through what is seen and heard, if not said Let’s Not Talk Anymore weaves together five generations of women from Weng Pixin’s family, each at age fifteen. Her lineage is full of breakages—her great grandmother Kuan is sent away from her family in South China, her grandmother Mèi is adopted by a neighbor to help with housework, and her mother, Bing, is heartbroken by her father’s estrangement. Pixin's own story centers on her feelings of isolation and her rebellion from her mother. She extends the line by envisioning a fictional future daughter, Rita, who questions her family’s legacy. While spanning one hundred years, Pixin moves back and forth in time seamlessly, as each woman experiences loneliness and kinship, hope and longing. As each story develops, generational traumas are revealed and fraught relationships passed on from mother to daughter. Creative impulses are stifled or nurtured. They struggle with poverty and neglect. And at some point each woman begins to separate herself from her situation and understand the woman she will become. Pixin’s bold, vibrant paintings fill the aching silences between generations with beauty and emotion. Her paintings conjure complete worlds that these women inhabit. Let's Not Talk Anymore is a family history filled with tender moments as these women find connection with plants, animals, and their own creative pursuits, while struggling to connect with one another.