Mist
i. I say, I come from an island I am touched by salt, separated by straits, embraced by streams of motorcycle engines revving into side streets, the names of which I can no longer read. In Taiwan, we say the sun is going down a mountain when it sets. I have always known the […]
A Love Letter to the Glaswegian Dialect
“DJ Fucking Badboy here Steamin as Shite Am ’boot ti tell you a story ’Boot ma Friday nite…” This is how DJ Badboy’s ‘Friday Nite’ opens – a track well-familiar to anyone who spent their teens at sweaty Glaswegian house parties. I once made the error of writing about ‘Frid
Keep
I don’t see it as a word anymore spell out every letter enunciate every syllable begging for kinship from a word so distant, like your grandmother’s saris, the one in the pictures where she smiles unaware of being photographed woven in Banaras, home to poverty and colour, eyes wandering from
Vogel’s Toast
Although I was born in Scotland, my memories begin in New Zealand. Looking back at my childhood, it’s akin to a Supercut of a coming of age movie: wharf-jumping, peering into dormant volcanoes, swimming with seals around the islands, mum picking me up early from school because there was a tornado
Ecdysis
She starts off in vibrant red, the same colour as chandlos on the brown foreheads of Indian women. The scene changes. Countless embroidered mirrors glint on the folds of her lehenga, the sky-blue skirt flowing down from her brown midriff. Cue another scene change. She emerges in a yellow salwar kame
Swiping White
When Pittsburgh-born author Celeste Ng tweeted that she didn’t usually find Asian men attractive because “they remind me of my cousins”, she couldn’t have foreseen that she would be castigated anonymously as “another white-boy-worshipping cunt” and accused of raising the next Elliot Rodg
The Blurred Genres of Filipino Cinema
The corrupt congressman stumbles through the garbage in the rain, hurls a briefcase of money into the heart of the landfill, and looks around anxiously for the body of his child. “Open your eyes, and you’ll see her,” says the avenging citizen, looking on from above. I first watched Graceland i
A Feast for the Eyes
Still Life with Fruit, Jacob van Walscapelle, c. 1675 1. Against a tastefully dark background, colours look richer. The edge of a crystal wine glass stands out more sharply, a pomegranate seems redder, the bloom on the midnight-purple skin of a grape looks softer. This is what food is in
In Conversation with R.F. Kuang
“I describe it as Avatar: The Last Airbender if Azula was the main character and everyone was on drugs.” Blending Song dynasty culture with 20th century themes, grounded by grittiness and muddy morality, The Poppy War immediately became one of my favourite novels of 2018. Talking to author Rebec