This Fish Is Fowl

Xu Xi is faculty co-director of the international MFA program in creative writing and literary translation at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and co-founder of Authors at Large. She is the author of numerous books, including the novels That Man in Our Lives and The Unwalled City and the memoir Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City.

"A whirlwind, wise introduction to the complicated joys of multiculturalism, This Fish Is Fowl is intensely personal yet fully engaged with the world, celebrating our differences as well as our shared universal experiences."-Foreword Reviews, starred "Broad-ranging, introspective, and honest essays that reveal a fine writer's experiences, mind, and heart."-Kirkus "Throughout these broad-ranging and honest essays, Xi wonders about humanity and the future of our world. She explores her cultural and family identity as well as past experiences. . . . Xi reminds us of the true meanings of identity and belonging, while celebrating all our differences."-Anita Nham, Hippocampus Magazine “There is absolutely no one like Xu Xi. To read these smart, inventive, and always surprising essays is to be given a passport to a transnational perspective the world sorely needs at this moment. Xu Xi’s sense of identity: Indonesian/Chinese/American/Hong Kong is not mixed up (though she likes to label herself a ‘mongrel’), but expansive. Identity for her has almost nothing to do with borders but with a kind of echolocation-sending forth her speculations on what it means to be a traveler, a daughter, a life partner, a woman in order to determine a shifting but remarkable path through geographies of being.”-Robin Hemley, founder of NonfictioNOW and author of A Field Guide for Immersion Writing “In an age of willful ignorance, parochialism, and a dominant prose style typified by misspelled tweets, Xu Xi’s writing is smart, international, and fluid. She navigates smoothly between not only countries and continents but, perhaps hardest of all, family members. Here the personal isn’t just political; it’s global. And, most important, deeply compassionate.”-Sue William Silverman, author of The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew “This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being explores the life of one whose shredded passport is never large enough to hold it all. Woven into skillful family story are topics ranging from the status of Dreamers in the U.S. to the ‘crying city’ of Hong Kong after the Occupy Movement, all dancing around the question of what it means to belong. With so many countries gripped by a new and brutal nationalism, Xu Xi reminds us there is another side-a world lived by many between a blur of borders. Part breezy, leaping memoir, part social commentary, this book adds a crucial chapter to the old story of national identity.”-Susanne Antonetta, author of Make Me a Mother and A Mind Apart

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsOn BeingTo Be AmericanWhy I Stopped Being ChineseCitizenshipBG: The Significant YearsDefault HomeLetter from AmericaWinter MoonThe Summers of My DiscontentThe Crying CityMum and MeTyphoon MumMaternity LeaveMy Mother’s Story: The Fiction and FactMum and MePrecarious PrecisionJourneys through Past Times: A Norwich NarrativeHome BaseAnd Then, Filial TimeOff-Season with SnakeWaiting WomenFor As Long As We Both Shall LiveWo/man RoarsFeminism and FaithOn Being Fowl: Notes on Some Explorations in Home EconomicsConcubine LoveOriginsA Ledge, a NunThe English of My StoryAmbition GameThe Book That Saved My Writing LifeTo Loaf, or How Not to Write a CVThis Door Is CloseBy Any Other Name