Because she feared starving so much, my mother shopped three days a week at Costco, which meant that we hoarded food, and that eating was almost as essential as money. In our family, a large gift of cash was better … more »
RP: You graduated in the MFA Creative Writing program at the Columbia University. What was that like? How did you decide that you wanted to enter the program and become a writer?
Columbia was very hard, partly because I was … more »
Chinatown Ghosts: The Poems and Photographs of Jim Wong-Chu
Paperback: 9781551527482, 128 pages, 2018 | Arsenal Pulp Press |
I remember the long drives home after our meetings. Jim liked choreographing the main points, teaching me how to read … more »
The Burnaby Art Gallery’s exhibition of Anna Wong: A Traveller on Two Roads is a refreshing approach to the Asian Canadian narrative. As the first major retrospective of Canadian artist and master printmaker, Anna Wong (1930-2013), it is long overdue … more »
Remember the “Comfort Women”
I was 15 and living in Vancouver when I first learned about the ‘comfort women’, a terrible euphemism for tens of thousands of young women sexually enslaved by the Japanese military. My mother had read about … more »
This year’s theme is Journey to the West: Writing Across the Pacific. We have an incredible line up of authors with a full schedule of events, workshops, and panels happening all throughout Chinatown.
Purchase a $25 Festival Pass on … more »
Dimpled folds of fat flow out from the blue jacket, surging over the armrest, edging closer as she watches in horror. Her seatbelt tightens and coils its way up her torso like a constrictor. She smells the meat and drink … more »
The humidity of the weather made everything a dream. Within a week, how had I come from being a minimum-wage waiter in Canada, to being a teacher in Hong Kong with a paid apartment; generous salary and benefits; and given … more »
April 12, 2006
The hot beef gravy seared the cheese curds as they seeped in with the russet fries. Maya, my sister, poured me a glass of craft lager. The beer was a deep gold, compared to the San Miguel … more »
The summer before we started Grade 9, my parents let me go to Josie’s house for a birthday sleepover even without her parents home. I’d launched the campaign about a month earlier, and days of arguing and nagging and negotiating … more »
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