To compare Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings with Game of Thrones would be so obvious as to be a little lazy on my part. Both are sprawling fantasy epics with dozens of major characters prone to dying with little fanfare. Both fantasy worlds have seven kingdoms with parallels in …
We had noodles for New Year’s, even though that’s technically a tradition for Chinese New Year. I’m not complaining–Dad makes really good beef noodle soup. “Hey guys,” I said about halfway through dinner. “When we go back to Columbus next week, I, um, I think I’d like you to meet …
I picked up Diamond Head by Cecily Wong on a whim at the library a few weeks ago and ended up inhaling the entire thing over yet another quarantine weekend. (I seem to be getting a lot of reading done during cold and flu season! But I would really prefer …
This past Thanksgiving, my mom brought an old pair of slippers to wear around our house because Asians prefer not to wear outdoor shoes indoors. The pink fabric had faded to gray and there were deep grooves worn into the soles. As my parents were packing up to leave, my …
“Are you excited to finally be going back?” Eugene squeezed Artemis’s hand when she didn’t respond. “Hey, you awake?” “Oh, yeah, I guess. Excited, terrified, same thing.” “Why terrified? Taiwan is great. The food, the weather…well, I guess the weather takes a little getting used to, but the food makes …
Lisa See and Jean Kwok are both on my “READ EVERYTHING THEY PUBLISH” list. Obviously, both are Chinese American women telling Asian American stories. Those stories happen to be fun romances anchored in universal truths about family and heritage, so I’d read them anyway. But it’s particularly meaningful to see …
You would think it would be hard to forget that I’m not white. I’m a Chinese-American woman, born, raised and educated in the Midwest. I was one of maybe a dozen Asian students in my high school graduating class of 400. I didn’t have a single Asian(-American) teacher until I …
It was finally Friday night, two weeks into the new school year. At nine o’clock, I was already exhausted. I had also realized that day that my period was late. Very late, in fact. I figured that the stress of a new school year had thrown off my cycle. But …