Email Address The following is an excerpt from Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the Arts, a new anthology from Paper Monument, n+1’s contemporary art imprint. The book is available in our store. My dad seated on his mother’s lap, with his father and two older sisters, at their home in Shanghai, ca. 1936. The family portrait was taken with one of the many Leica cameras my grandfather, an amateur photographer, had acquired while traveling.
My dad and his older sister Margaret fleeing Shanghai on foot during the Sino-Japanese War, ca. 1944.
Dear H, It would be an understatement to say that our time together in quarantine is a gift. You have, in many ways, saved me from self-destruction during this objectively stressful time. Yet this abeyance of normalcy is marked by the trauma of a global pandemic, national protests against systemic racism and police brutality, extreme fire and weather caused by climate change, the din of the 24/7 election-year news cycle, your grandpa’s indomitable mind despite flagging health, a punishing sense of the unknown, and a crippling suspicion that there are no answers and never will be. Marshaling the discipline to write a deeply personal missive on a heady topic like Asian American identity against this freefall was daunting, and the task has been arduous.