Selected Essays
Photo: Sandy Kim
Keeping Love Close - New York Times
A picture can’t prove someone’s humanity — at least not to those determined to see you as other. But we don’t need our photos and stories to convince people we’re human, that we’re just like them. We don’t need to be just like them, for that matter; we don’t need to match some narrow red-white-and-blue blur of what Americanness — or humanity — means.
Read More
Illustration by Ping Zhu
The Strangers At Our Thanksgiving Table - Bon Appétit
For many of us, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with family. But when I was growing up, our Thanksgiving table was often full of strangers: people I had never met, people my parents barely knew, people I would never see again.
Read More
SCIENTIFIC METHOD - NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE "LIVES" COLUMN
The Betty Crocker from my mother’s cookbook is the quintessential all-American homemaker. But in 1968, my mother was neither American nor a homemaker. She was 22 and had just left Hong Kong for West Lafayette, Ind., where my father was starting a Ph.D. program at Purdue.
READ MORE
Giving Thanks Is a Political Act - Lit Hub
An editor recently asked me to contribute to a Thanksgiving roundup piece. I’d like to create some positivity, he said; tell me what you’re thankful for. At the end, he added a stern one-line caveat: “I’m not using anything about politics.” Here’s what I wrote in response.
Read More
WRITING THE (QUIET) OMNISCIENT NARRATOR - GLIMMER TRAIN BULLETIN
This novel needed someone to tell the story purposefully, framing it for the reader, weaving these different stories—which took place over more than a decade—into one. In short, what this novel needed was (gulp) an omniscient narrator.
The idea made me incredibly uncomfortable. To me, omniscient narrator called to mind the Dickens model: a Big Booming Voice who bossed the characters around, a know-it-all who judged everything. Someone very unlike me.
READ MORE
CAPTIONING EMILY - KENYON REVIEW ONLINE
What I find is that I’m not the only one looking for meaning in Emily’s death. People who knew her even less well than I did—people who never met her—plug the hole of her death with their opinions.
READ MORE
STRANGER THAN FACT: WHY WE NEED FICTION IN A WORLD OF MEMOIRS - FICTION WRITERS REVIEW
Unlike the memoirist, who promises to tell the truth, the fiction writer says upfront, “I am going to tell you a lie, but at the end you will feel that it is true.” He or she is a kind of magician who makes sure you know that the flames are only an illusion before letting you burn your fingers in them.
READ MORE
Selected SHORT Fiction
Every Little Thing - Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award
First let me try and explain: it’s like falling into deep, deep water. A sudden plunge that knocks your breath away, and once you go under, you forget which way is up. One minute I’m in line at the bank, or crossing the street, or pushing my cart through the Sav-Mart. Then something trips me and my memory opens up and I tumble in.
Read More (Excerpt)
How to Be Chinese - Gulf Coast
Take pleasure in the surprise on people’s faces when you say, “My name is Mackenzie Altman.” When they ask, explain that yes, your mother adopted you from China; no, you don’t know your birth parents; no, you don’t speak the language. Smile politely when they say you have no accent.
Read More (Excerpt)
Girls, At Play - Bellevue Literary Review
This is how we play the game: pink means kissing; red means tongue. Green means up your shirt; blue means down his pants. Purple means in your mouth. Black means all the way.
Read More
B & B - Alaska Quarterly Review
In the summer she misses the chalk. Pink chalk is a treat, dissolving on her tongue with a sweet effervescent hiss she can feel on the back of her throat. In the hallway she slides it into her pocket, to be savored on the long walk home, and licks the dust from her fingers.