“In typical Filipino fashion, my aunt expressed her love not through words of encouragement or affectionate embraces, but through food. Food was how she communicated. Food was how she found her place in the world. When someone rejected her food, they were really rejecting her… Read More
“The last war was on a different shore, with different people, in a different country, and there’s no going back, back to that life. She realizes this now, but that doesn’t make it ache any less. In fact, the ache grows. It grows into two… Read More
“Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?” I’m in my early 20s. I haven’t lived with my family full-time since I was 17 and moved to attend college in Northern… Read More
“When our language,‘Ōlelo Hawai’i, was outlawed, so our gods went, so our prayers went, so ideas went, so the island went.” My Goodreads review for SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORS begins, “this is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read holy ****.… Read More
Imagine that your family has always had a generations-long feud with another family. Now, imagine that you have been raised to particularly hate a member of that family who is your age — the two of you have always competed academically and athletically, but have… Read More
According to Oxford Languages, a ghost story (n.) is “a story involving ghosts or ghostly circumstances, intended to be suspenseful or scary.” We know from THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI’s title and opening sentence — “They burned down the market on the day that Vivek Oji… Read More
DETRANSITION, BABY features the type of queer representation I’ve only dreamt of reading: chaotic, complex, dazzling, not particularly redemptive, and so excruciatingly honest that it would have made Carrie Fisher proud. It’s honest enough that, at times, I felt like it would only be polite… Read More
insomniac reviews 