The Road to England, Via Leicester

“I know that somehow the flat hills of this homeland have shaped me, though I’d never set foot there before.”

“I know that somehow the heather in these hills has shaped me, though I’ve never set foot here before,” Jessica J. Lee writes in “Synonyms for Mauve,” an essay from her new memoir, Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging, interrogating her connection to Britain as someone Canadian-born whose father came from Wales (and her mother from Taiwan). Her Welsh grandparents eventually joined the family in Canada, caring for Lee when she was young, an experience providing her with “cups of tea and digestives brought from Marks & Spencer,” explorations of illustrations in Beatrix Potter books, and watercolours painted with her grandmother: “With Nan and a set of paints, I come to know what British plants are: hollyhocks, hawthorn, gooseberries, and gorse.

Lee recounts travelling with her family to Britain for the first time at age 6, recalling a cold and rainy trek on horseback across Dartmoor during which everybody is miserable except Lee herself, who instead is struck by wonderment:

“There is a slate sky smudged on uneven ground, and a floral carpet glowing into the distance. For the first time, I am in a landscape I’ve seen before, but only ever in books and paintings. I am in the exact softness Nan taught me. And all around there is heather.”