In 1978 when Malinda Lo was three years old, she sat on her white American grandmother’s lap in a wheelchair as her father pushed them across the wooden bridge at the border between the People’s Republic of China and British-controlled Hong Kong. She does not remember the crossing that redefined her life; she has only been told the story.
Lo brilliantly weaves a nonlinear story of immigration and identity, connecting her childhood in small-town Colorado to her grandmother’s experiences in wartime China.
Incorporating free verse, found poetry, and lyric essay, Lo’s debut memoir excavates the tangled roots of her hybrid heritage, exposing the unspoken pain of migration and the long shadow of the American myth.
Author
Malinda Lo
Malinda Lo is the New York Times bestselling author of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, winner of the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, as well as Michael L. Printz and Walter Dean Myers honors. Her debut novel Ash, a sapphic retelling of Cinderella, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Malinda’s short fiction and nonfiction has been published by The New York Times, NPR, Autostraddle, The Horn Book, and multiple anthologies. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their dog.
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