10,000 Feasts

I was born in Los Angeles, but my parents came from China, escaping the totalitarian government that they grew up with. They were children in the Cultural Revolution, that period when the communist party violently reorganized society, forced displacement throughout the country for intellectuals, and drove youth out of education and into rural and factory work.

I'd visited a few times before, but when I went back in 2018 for a wedding, I felt much more aware of what it meant and felt like to be an Asian American in this place. China isn't a vacation for us, it isn't a place of tourism, really. For my mom, it is a place full of so many bad memories she would rather never return. For my dad, it's a hometown, a family history, and a network of relationships he's mostly cut off from. For my brother and I, it's kind of a deja vu -- a place we hear about all the time, but rarely see; maybe it's even baked into our bones but doesn't exist in our memories.

This time, I felt awake. I write about some of these experiences in a 40 page zine, handwritten, lightly edited. Black and white with a color cover. 

If you purchase, please contact me with mailing address and you will receive a copy in the mail.