At a tail end of an unpleasant flu that lingered for three weeks. Been largely off social media during the illness. Realized, at some point, that Jenny Zhang is no longer on Twitter. Meanwhile, the government has been keeping files of both social media activity and Int...

Took it with me to a space station-themed coffeeshop

The lights are dim in the escape pod

Perhaps to hope requires some dulling

Took it with me to the Rose Reading Room

Past four security checkpoints

Tourists taking photos of a field of bowed heads

Took it with me to the Str...

Fell 15 feet off a bouldering wall and dislocated my elbow, plus badly sprained an ankle. So someone lied. Shooting for moon won't land you among stars. Lands you in ER.

I won't be doing much writing for a while, since my dominant arm is in cast and will require rehabil...

In Though I Get Home book news: we have a cover! Featuring my own handwriting! In typical fashion, I hated my handwriting at first (like hearing your own voice recorded for the first time), but I got over my squirminess. Here it is, a lovely cover that summons images a...

It's been busy. I participated in an interview series for a magazine (details soon). Editorial work started on the manuscript of Though I Get Home. I read the whole thing through once, decided to insert a new story, and trimmed down some existing stories. My edito...

I've picked up cross-stitching again, mostly to quell my social media tics. If you don't know what cross-stitching is, it's basically paint-by-numbers, but with needle and thread. If that sounds even more confusing (what's a needle? And thread? Like a reddit thread?),...

If Shirley Geok-lin Lim was the first Malaysian writer I encountered, then K.S. Maniam's The Return was the first Malaysian novel I read. The book made a lasting impression; I once presented a paper on it at an art history conference.

I hadn't thought about the boo...

I read Yiyun Li's words on giving up Chinese with interest. It fascinated me, the sureness that a language could be anyone's to renounce. To be able to give up, first you have to own. 

I am never going to give up any languages, because I own none. I speak three, but the...