As a child growing up in Hong Kong, Emma-Lee Moss wanted nothing to do with her Asian heritage. Then books began to return her to herself
Last week, a book arrived in my mailbox.On the back was a Chinese proverb: “It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters.” But at least, as the book’s blurb put it, daughters, like geese, “know the obligation to return home”.
The book was called Loop of Jade, and it’sa first collection of poems by Sarah Howe. Like me, she’s half-English and half-Chinese, but I know better than to refer to her as a British-Chinesepoet. Actually, I think I know a lot about Sarah, who left Hong Kong for England when she was young, without ever having exchanged more than three emails with her. I soon discovered that I couldn’t read her book in public, for fear of crying in front of strangers. The way Loop of Jade found me began to feel like some kind of crazy magic, like the sudden appearance of water just as you noticed you were thirsty. For some months now, I have also been looking for home.
Related: Junot Díaz: a life in books
“Something sets us looking for a place.
Old stories tell us that if we could only
get there, all distances would be erased.”
