my 2024 writing wrapped

or, some lessons on following joy and its unexpected gifts

In my late twenties, I unlearned several scripts that had been fed to me:

The first was about giving my energy to people who weren’t giving me the same (or any) energy back. I have fewer friends than I did in my 20s, but the connections I have now are much deeper. We deserve more than crumbs; we deserve whole loaves of affection and love and understanding.

The second was allonormativity, the avalanche-like timeline of cishetero culture and futurity. That is, I did away with the script that, as someone socialized as a woman, I must do XYZ (find a job but also a partner, get married, do things the way our ancestors did them) by a certain time, or ELSE. (No one talks about the what else and what it entails exactly, except for the oft-cited vague loneliness of spinsters, who, by and large, are some of the most fulfilled and community-oriented people I know.) I have given myself the gift of time and patience, and in so doing, have started to imagine several futures that all bring me equal amounts of happiness.

The third was that to be a serious academic and a serious writer were mutually exclusive. Isn’t that wild? Traditional academics discount creative writing (in fact, many universities will not even “count” creative writing towards tenure), even though the very work of literary scholars is to…study people’s creative writing. And for creative writers, a lot of the conventions that are taught to them are, supposedly, completely disparate from the analytical structures of literary scholarship. One of my college professors told me that I had to choose between one or the other if I were to be “taken seriously” in either.

There is a lesson here in doing what you want to do and sticking by it, not getting too caught up in the narrative of “should”s.

Well, call me stubborn, but I didn’t choose. I couldn't. I love both in equal measure. My literary research allows me to pursue and articulate intellectual questions about why and how we tell the stories we tell, and what the effects of those stories are. My creative writing allows me to get closer to a personal, or even spiritual, truth.

Stubbornly doing what I love has led me to some really cool things! I’m incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to pursue research and writing. But I also think that there is a lesson here in doing what you want to do (writing what you want to write about) and sticking by it, not getting too caught up in the narrative of “should”s. So, without further ado, my 2024 wrapped:

(The article is here. The short story is free to read here.)

On my ace pieces: I came to understand that I was on the ace spectrum in my mid-to-late-twenties, and this realization came through a wuxia (martial heroes)/ xianxia (immortal heroes) c-drama, of all things. I hadn’t watched c-dramas in about ten years, but right before lockdown, my friend introduced me to The Untamed (2019), and I resonated with Lan Wangji’s arc—he didn’t experience attraction often, and only felt it through emotional connection first. Although not explicitly stated in the text itself, many ace spectrum fans have read him as demisexual, and it was through these fan conversations that I began to find language for my own queerness. I owe a lot to The Untamed and the book from which it was adapted, Modao Zushi, which inspired me to get back into creative writing after a grad school-induced hiatus. Modao Zushi is the gift that keeps on giving: somehow I find myself invited to fan studies panels and comic conventions to talk about it!

(This article is available for free here.)

On this Babel piece: This year, I also transitioned from teaching high school to teaching college! In thinking about my place in academia, particularly eighteenth-century British literature, I wrote a piece analyzing RF Kuang’s Babel, which is also thinking about being queer and Asian in academia, about empire, and about our work as BIPOC authors in a deeply racist industry. My relationship to all of these things is vexed, but at the end of the day, I think it is important we’re here, taking up space and building curricula and creative classrooms that foster critical and independent thinking, especially about the canon, empire, and narrative conventions.

(The GoodReads link is here.)

And on my debut: Finally, I was able to announce my kidlit debut this year!! I don’t think about myself as foremost or even secondmost a poet, but in 2022, I spontaneously wrote two poems about learning Cantonese from my mom and grandmom. An editor read these two poems on Twitter and emailed me about writing a BTS book—and now we get to work together on Seven, which comes out in 2026!

Can you help me reach 50 adds on GoodReads by the end of 2024? It would mean the world to me and helps signal to the industry that we want BIPOC work.

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If there’s anything I’ve learned in 2024, it’s that following joy and doing work we believe in can lead to the most unexpected of paths and places, and that untethering myself from the “should”s is scary but fulfilling. My journey is really nothing like I dreamed, and somehow, sometimes, more than I dreamed.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much. Thank you for being here on this journey with me.

May 2025 bring health, happiness, and book deals for us! 💗