In what was an unplanned, yet timely celebration of my heritage, I happened to finish Bestiary by K-Ming Chang this week.
History and Heritage: I’ve never before read an American novel that:
contained so much of what I recognize as Taiwan
describes the generational PTSD experienced by Taiwan’s young people in World War II and its inherited impact on later emigre-generations. Especially important for a book published in a country that only recognizes the ravages of war on people who look like Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, etc.
so keenly illustrates the dual feeling of being native yet also a stranger to both sides of the Pacific Ocean
Farts: In an American society that views the body and its functions as shameful and secret, Bestiary is unabashedly intimate and corporeal. The human form is not presented as sexual or dirty, but rather the body and its fluids are considered as beautifully grotesque fact.
When my mother farts in her sleep, I shape the steam with my hands and release it outside as fog.
Magic: Every sentence and image in this book is dipped in layers of magic, meaning, and memory. The mysticism that I grew up with, that I see less and less of with each passing day, is memorialized:
Always remember to spit out the grape skins or you’ll get eyes like that too, all seed. You’ll see everything dark as light, everything loved as lost.
Audience: And there wasn’t a single italicized phrase. No bao zi or mei-mei or lao ban. For once, a book wasn’t presenting my culture for white consumption and approval; for once, a book was speaking to me (!!!)
And on the topic of identity and being seen and heard, I wanted to wish a very happy four year anniversary to dis one who embraces and wants to know every part of me. Recognizes how I’m seen and how I feel as different, understands how I look vs. where I come from as complex. Always curious of and sensitive to a cultural memory and ethnic experience that is alienated and sidelined in the US. Someone who loves me as a whole 3D human being, and not as a flattened, digestible, convenient, aestheticized image, as often happens to WOC at the hands of people their own race or otherwise. I ♥️ U PC and I thank u for loving me.
Happy lunar New Year babes!!