Releasing the Fear of St. Vincent’s “Year of the Tiger”
I fear it and I dream of it: total honesty with my family, opening the door of my personhood and letting them see all of me.
The Secret Asian American History Behind New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”
I love new wave music for the way it makes me feel—like the cups of my interior and exterior worlds are overflowing. Turns out I’m not the only one.
What Michelle Zauner’s “Paprika” Taught Me About Making Art (and Peace With It)
What a joy it is—a singular joy, an occasion for jubilee—to allow your art’s translation through another point of view.
Running Up That Hill (And Dealing With God)
This is the deal I’d make with God: my devotion in exchange for acceptance of the past, peace with the present, and assurances about the future.
A Chinese American Fairy Tale
I love my parents because they are in me, but I wonder if, when they look at me, they see those parts or instead a shapeshifter who’s slowly taken over the person they thought they’d raised.
My Chemical Hormone Therapy Romance
Transition begins by insisting that you can want more. It’s a dream in the sense that it reveals the version of you that wants, above all, to be here.
My Years of Summertime Sadness
She’s loved and lost and lost and lost and yet still loves, and I root for this assertion to take root. Every sweetheart deserves their summers.
Love in the Time of Panic
I could live inauthentically if it meant I could live with him. But my body kept betraying me with panic, and of course he noticed.
Boy, You’re a Runner Now
It was the first time I’d ever pointed at myself and claimed “boy,” even jokingly.
Breaking Up with Your Best American Girl
Since voicing my intention to transition, I’ve been revisiting my favorite love-as-a-woman songs and reorienting myself within them.