Lightening in July centers around the history of Dou Town. Along the axis of a greatuncle’s return, it retraces the layered years of colonization, cultivation, and religion. The century-old grandeur of the ancestral mansion bears the imprint of struggle and the sweat of forebears.
If forever gone truly means gone forever, then what are these traces to be called? Must the pursuit of progress and civilization always demand a departure from the homeland? A surname may be assimilated, appearances may be learned, yet the memories coursing through one’s blood remain—unleavable, unerasable.
And what of us? As we leave the axis of history and return to the present, the author contemplates death, language, illness, and the development of civilization in the immediacy of the first person perspective. The arrangement of words becomes both clue and timeline.