Diaspora Dialogues: In Conversation with Isabella Wang & Linda Rui Feng
Event Details
Join us for an exciting conversation with Linda Rui Feng and Isabella Wang as they discuss their new releases Swimming Back to Trout River and Pebble Swing covering Chinese culture and identity in historical settings. In Pebble Swing, Wang writes about language and family histories in an attempt to piece together the resonant aftermath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which stole the life of her paternal grandmother. In Swimming Back to Trout River, Feng tells the story of ten-year-old Junie who receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: her father promising to return home and collect her by her twelfth birthday.
Moderated by Ryan B. Patrick. Presented by Diaspora Dialogues.
Books featured:
- Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng (ebook / paperback)
- Pebble Swing by Isabella Wang (pre-order paperback)
Swimming Back to Trout River
Simon & Schuster
In the summer of 1986 in a small Chinese village, ten-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: her father promises to return home and collect her by her twelfth birthday. But Junie’s growing determination to stay put in the idyllic countryside with her beloved grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future.
What Junie doesn’t know is that her parents, Momo and Cassia, are newly estranged from one another in their adopted country, each holding close private tragedies and histories from the tumultuous years of their youth during China’s Cultural Revolution. While Momo grapples anew with his deferred musical ambitions and dreams for Junie’s future in America, Cassia finally begins to wrestle with a shocking act of brutality from years ago. In order for Momo to fulfill his promise, he must make one last desperate attempt to reunite all three members of the family before Junie’s birthday—even if it means bringing painful family secrets to light.
Pebble Swing
Nightwood Editions
Pebble Swing earns its title from the image of stones skipping their way across a body of water, or, in the author’s case, syllables and traces of her mother tongue bouncing back at her from the water’s reflective surface. This collection is about language and family histories. It is the author’s attempt to piece together the resonant aftermath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which stole the life of her paternal grandmother. As an immigrant whose grasp of Mandarin is fading, Wang explores absences in her caesuras and fragmentation—that which is unspoken, but endures.
