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xtie's review
4.0
Some gorgeous nuggets in here about grief, memories, what makes a craft yours, what makes you you without your craft, that constant sense of isolation I’ve felt in the past few years …
I appreciate that hk also had a very different covid experience to the rest of the world and so the essays don’t just run the gamut of pandemic writing. Some essays did shine brighter than others - those that did felt really sardonic but delicately crafted; I know the editors felt that they didn’t want to generalise about the works in total but I really felt this sense of… difficulty and struggle amongst the more memorable pieces.
I appreciate that hk also had a very different covid experience to the rest of the world and so the essays don’t just run the gamut of pandemic writing. Some essays did shine brighter than others - those that did felt really sardonic but delicately crafted; I know the editors felt that they didn’t want to generalise about the works in total but I really felt this sense of… difficulty and struggle amongst the more memorable pieces.
poliswag's review
5.0
i couldn’t put this down. i was up at 4am, still reading, but when it was clear that i wasn’t going to finish i tried to go to bed, but was kept up by thoughts swimming around in my head. it’s a really interesting collection of psychological essays and fragmented prose written by HK writers and their thoughts, musings, and coping mechanisms over the past three years, bound by a common thread: how can we live a day that is a little bit better, and stay true to the voice inside us?
this is a book about hk that’s also not about hk: it’s an interrogation of language and lifestyle. how do you write good dialogue? can you temporarily detach from your trauma to gain perspective and breathing room? at what point should you re-engage with your trauma, and is this a choice you can consciously make? who gets to contribute to the hk narrative? how can you fully immerse yourself in the present? what role does sacrifice have in the hk identity? how do you write about 2019-2021 events in a codified way, and how will this be read by current readers (who will read this with the lived experience of 2019-2021), and readers of the future/readers who have little to no understanding of hk 2019-2021? how can a chinese sympathiser be pro-democracy in the burmese context? an bonus of this book: its bilingual, so maybe after some time i’ll read these essays in the opposite language and re-experience the feeling (privilege!) of reading these essays for the first time again.
also another thought ... with translators finally getting more recognition in anglo lit, will bilingual anthologies like this become more popular
this is a book about hk that’s also not about hk: it’s an interrogation of language and lifestyle. how do you write good dialogue? can you temporarily detach from your trauma to gain perspective and breathing room? at what point should you re-engage with your trauma, and is this a choice you can consciously make? who gets to contribute to the hk narrative? how can you fully immerse yourself in the present? what role does sacrifice have in the hk identity? how do you write about 2019-2021 events in a codified way, and how will this be read by current readers (who will read this with the lived experience of 2019-2021), and readers of the future/readers who have little to no understanding of hk 2019-2021? how can a chinese sympathiser be pro-democracy in the burmese context? an bonus of this book: its bilingual, so maybe after some time i’ll read these essays in the opposite language and re-experience the feeling (privilege!) of reading these essays for the first time again.
also another thought ... with translators finally getting more recognition in anglo lit, will bilingual anthologies like this become more popular
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