Cover Photo: A close-up of a statue of a qilin, a mythical beast of Chinese origin
Photograph courtesy of the author

Where Once Were Qilin: Return to Nanjing

What did it mean that now both the villages and the qilin were gone? This portal to the ancestors gone forever.

Author's father with his mother, ca. 1935, and at the same house in 1985; photographs courtesy of the author

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Photograph courtesy of the author

The Girl from Purple Mountain

Photograph courtesy of the author


May-lee Chai is the author of ten  books, including the short story collection, Useful Phrases for Immigrants, which won a 2019 American Book Award; memoir Hapa Girl, a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book; the novel Tiger Girl, which won an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature; and her original translation from Chinese to English of the 1934 Autobiography of Ba Jin. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.