I started joking, “I prefer the word groundbreaking…” when people would say my special stamp was that I was writing something different. Maybe it was another cut, every time, to have to tell people how different and unusual and all those words. Maybe it was actually hurting the cause of representation to keep on othering myself and showing up as only being held up because I was writing while Asian and not because I was, you know, awesome at writing longing glances, emotion, immersive worlds…. Part of me was worried that I was actually hurting “the cause” of representation because here I was, this poster girl, this icon (OMG, I’m doing this…this is hard…this is going to get ugly…) this icon of being able to break barriers in the romance writing industry.
Part of me was perhaps running out of things to say because that’s what people kept on asking for. I started turning down requests to blog or speak at conferences if it was solely about the experience of writing diversely, writing while Asian, being different. I used to joke to myself that I knew when AAPI Heritage Month was coming because of the requests I’d start getting to blog (this was back in the day of blogs…). Disclaimer: This is not a gush post on Everything, Everywhere All at Once other than to say that movie is genius and everyone should go see it, like twice, maybe three times.
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