How to Write a Suicide Note: Serial Essays that Saved a Woman's Life

By Sherry Quan Lee

How to Write a Suicide Note examines the life of a Chinese/Black woman who grew up passing for white, who grew up poor, who loves women but has always married white men. Writing has saved her life. It has allowed her to name the historical trauma--the racist, sexist, classist experiences that have kept her from being fully alive, that have screamed at her loudly and consistently that she was no good, and would never be any good-and that no one could love her. Writing has given her the creative power to name the experiences that dictated who she was, even before she was born, and write notes to them, suicide notes.
Sherry Quan Lee believes writing saves lives; writing has saved her life.
Acclaim for How to Write a Suicide Note
"How to Write a Suicide Note is a haunting portrait of the daughter of an African mother and a Chinese father. Sherry dares to be who she isn't supposed to be, feel what she isn't supposed to feel, and destroys racial and gender myths as she integrates her bi-racial identity into all that she is. Through her raw honesty and vulnerability, Sherry captures a range of emotions most people are afraid to confront, or even share. Her work is a gift to the mental health community."
--Beth Kyong Lo, M.A., Clinical Psychologist
"Sherry Quan Lee offers us, in How to Write a Suicide Note, a deep breathing meditation on how love is under continuous revision. And like all the best Blues singers, Quan Lee voices the lowdown, dirty paces that living puts us through, but without regret or surrender."
Wesley Brown, author of Darktown Strutters and Tragic Magic
"I love the female aspects, the sex, and the strong voice Sherry Quan Lee uses to share her private life in How To Write A Suicide Note. I love the wit, the tongue-in-cheek, the trippiness of it all. I love the metaphors, especially the lover and suicide ones. I love the free-associations, the 'raving, ravenous, relentless' back and forth. Quan Lee breaks the rules and finds her genius. How to Write a Suicide Note is a passionate, risk-taking, outrageous, life-affirming book and love letter."
Sharon Doubiago, author of Body and Soul, Hard Country; and other works
Modern History Press is an imprint of Loving Healing Press

• Language: English
• Publisher: Modern History Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781615999859

Sherry Quan Lee

Sherry Quan Lee, MFA, Creative Writing is a Community Instructor at Metropolitan State University (Intro to Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing), and has taught classes and men-tored writers at Intermedia Arts, and the Loft Literary Center; and co-taught A Gathering of Storytellers with Lori Young-Williams for the University [of Minnesota] Women of Color organi-za-tion (UWOC), Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC), a partnership between the University of Minnesota and North Minneapolis, and for other community organizations state wide. She is the author of A Little Mixed Up, Guild Press, 1982 (second printing), Chinese Blackbird, a memoir in verse, published 2002 by the Asian American Renaissance, re-published 2008 by Modern History Press, and How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life, Modern History Press, 2008. Follow her online at http://blog.sherryquanlee.com

Book preview

Reviews for How to Write a Suicide Note

[cettaknits · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading Quan Lee's poems lets us into the pain and shame of denying part of oneself. Born to a black mother and a Chinese father, she grew up being told to deny her African-American heritage. The damage this did is explored in the poems.

[juliebean_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sherry Quan Lee says that it took her six years to write this book, and I can believe that the depth of pain through which she has crawled would require a six year journey to surmount. However, I was not exactly impressed by this work, and in fact expected a great deal more out of it. I am also still scratching my head over the fact that the title refers to "serial essays", and yet the text is solely poetry. I read it because I assumed that it would contain essays about the epic struggles one must overcome in walking away from suicide. Instead, Quan Lee offers brief glimpses of those struggles in her poems. The poems are beautiful, in their own way, but I was not swept up in the language, nor did I find myself struggling out of the dark with her. I felt more like a disinterested observer to a car wreck, and that is not at all how I wanted this work to make me feel. In the end, I can say that I am glad I read it, because I wanted to honor the author and her struggle. Unfortunately, I feel I will too quickly forget what she had to say.

[wphilbrook-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A woman's struggle with mental health related through poetry. I applaud the author's authenticity and desire to share her experience. However, it wasn't my cup of tea and I had to force myself to finish it. This book could resonate and speak volumes to the right audience.

[aclark1998-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To say that I fancy myself a poet is not exactly accurate; somewhere in a trunk at home there is a folder with Lord only knows how many pieces of poetry that I wrote in the 80’s and 90’s, when things for me were much bleaker and introspective. I even had some success writing a poem that was published a very long time ago.Therefore, I looked forward to reading How To Write A Suicide Note by Sherry Quan Lee, a multicultural woman writing about her grappling with suicide, growing up different, and finding herself. To say that I “liked” the series of “poems” (many of which read more like prose than poetry to me – that seems, in retrospect, apt) is not quite the correct word. This was a great series, but in some ways, was so emotional and passionate, that I actually had difficulty reading them. But then again, I’m often dramatic when it comes to topics of this nature.This was a very good book that I would recommend to people interested in mental health issues, multiculturalism, self-help, poetry or real-life essays, and if you are parent, read this and learn.