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The Language of Blood
Few authors venture to write in a language that is not their mother tongue. It’s hard enough to write. Why make it any more difficult by adapting a new vocabulary, grammar and syntax? Some might even call it a betrayal of country, home, blood. the chinese typewriter My grandfather wrote in English. Born and bred…
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Pig Knuckle Soup
My mother believes in soup. Whenever I was too sick to go to school, she would start a pot bubbling. I remember the reek of blood leaching out of bones. The suds that rise to the surface of the boiling water and the yellow pools of fat hiding below. When my mother wasn’t looking, I…
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The Good Immigrant
All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they’d really won. All across the country, people felt they’d done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing.” This quote comes from Ali…
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Through the Looking Glass: An Asian-American Identity
Reading is a search for identity. We look for ourselves between the pages and sometimes we get lucky. For me, the first time was Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. It’s a mixture of memoir, Chinese myth and family tales of life in and outside of China. She called her style of writing talk-story: reminiscing about…
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A New Progressive Narrative
There has been a lot of talk lately on the liberal left about the need for a new political narrative. We need a statement of what we stand for rather than protest against. A way forward rather than a look back. To be progressive in the broadest sense of the word. I’m a storyteller and narrative…
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Christmas Chinese-American Style
Christmas in Los Angeles is a contradiction in terms. The plastic icicles taped to the roof. The electrified snowman set among the cacti. But Christmas Chinese-American style takes weirdness to a whole new level. Not that my family was strange. We were like others at Christmas, Chinese-American or not. For Christmas Eve, we invited all the relatives,…
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A Reading List
Historical resources are critical when you set your novel as I have in a place and time not my own. The Dancing Girl and the Turtle is set in Shanghai 1937. Does that automatically qualify it as historical fiction? Hilary Mantel says historical fiction must do far more than dredge up the past: A relation of…
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A Pretty Girl
My father once had a very pretty cousin named May. She came from his mother’s side of the family, jewelers from Wuzhen (乌镇). I’d love to see Wuzhen’s wood-crafted homes and ancient bridges, though I hear that few Chinese still inhabit the place. In my grandmother’s time, though, it was a bustling town. Her father was…
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Origami for Authors
Nihon no hanga The canal house is built of massive grey cornerstones and variegated red bricks. A clock gable stands on top with a hook sticking out. The hook is for hoisting of pianos and wardrobes and king-sized beds. The doors are too narrow and the stairs so vertiginous for anything wider than a laundry basket…
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Chicken Shit
Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a woman of many talents. She’s an academic, poet, short story writer and translator as well as founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, the first on-line English language literary journal in Hong Kong. Since 13 November 2016, Tammy Ho also sits on the Executive Committee of the Hong Kong…