The Farewell: On the Goodbye That Goes Unsaid

In Western grief culture, we place enormous value on the explicit goodbye. Lulu Wang's The Farewell asks, quietly and without judgment, whether this is the only way love can look at the end of a life.

In this essay I reflect on what the film understands about cultural attitudes toward dying, the ambiguous grief of the diaspora, and the goodbye that happens without the word ever being said.

This essay continues over on Grief in Translation, my Substack publication for reflective writing on grief, loss, and the human experience.

You can read the full piece here: substack.com/@griefintranslation