Xu Xi

A collection of short stories and essays explores what it means to be an overseas Chinese.

Stories & Essays of the Chinese, Overseas

Overleaf Hong Kong

From a writer whose body of work witnesses her love affair with Hong Kong comes a highly personal narrative that unravels her recently finalized decision to leave the city for good. Xu Xi explores her tumultuous relationship with Hong Kong, her personal frustrations with how the city has developed in the recent past, and how these changes have informed her decision not to spend her later years there--a farewell address to the place that has shaped so much of her own identity.

An Elegy to a City

Dear Hong Kong

Bonnie Jo Campbell

Cat Warren

Beth Kephart

Diane Lefer

Carol Guess

Sybil Baker

Ethel Rohan

Kim Chinquee

Kathleen Rooney

Tama Janowitz

Kathi Appelt

Sherrie Flick

Victoria Redel

Robin Black

Deb Olin Unferth

Kathy Fish

Molly Gaudry

Debra Di Blasi

Ellen Meister

Jennifer Steil

Amina Gautier

Jo-Ann Mapson

Elaine Chiew

Tara Laskowski

Kristine Ong Muslim

Natasha Saje

Roberta Allen

Susanna Sonnenberg

Pamela Painter

Jillian Sullivan

Nancy Stohlman

Liza Gardner Walsh

Tara Campbell

Patricia McConnell

Lisa Kastner

Ellen Boscov

Kristin Burcham

Sara Chansarkar

Mare Chapman

Watsuki Harrington

Tara Masih

Robin OIivera

Alina Pleskova

Zalisa Rabin

Trisha Rodriguez

C. J. Spataro

Wendy Stetson

Chelsea Stickle

Julia Strayer

Girija Tripp

Fifty-two writers responded in exactly 100 words to the fine art photography of Meg Boscov to create an anthology of healing visions.

An Anthology of Micro Writing and Fine Art Photography

Healing Visions

Access

After her mother dies, who is her last family member, global investment banker Gail Szeto finds her life spiraling downward as she envisions a bleak future.

Habit of a Foreign Sky

Hong Kong Rose is a drama set in America and Hong Kong in the 1970's.

Hong Kong Rose

Marshall Moore

“Showcases the extremes of one of the world’s capitals. From ghost stories, to historical thrills, to underworld brutality . . . endlessly fascinating.”—CrimeReads Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. In Hong Kong Noir, fourteen of the city’s finest authors explore the dark heart of the Pearl of the Orient in haunting stories of depravity and despair. This anthology includes brand-new stories by Jason Y. Ng, Xu Xi, Marshall Moore, Brittani Sonnenberg, Tiffany Hawk, James Tam, Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang, Christina Liang, Feng Chi-shun, Charles Philipp Martin, Shannon Young, Shen Jian, Carmen Suen, and Ysabelle Cheung. “The history of Hong Kong, once a fishing village, encompasses piracy, the opium trade, prostitution, corruption, espionage and revolutionary plots; grist for the 14 dark tales in Hong Kong Noir.”—BBC Culture “A delightfully dark collection of fiction from Hong Kong, a city where talk is cheap and cash is still king.”—Ritz-Carlton Magazine “Ng and Blumberg-Kason defy the fates by presenting a collection of 14 stores—by Chinese tradition, an ominous number—illustrating their city’s dark side . . . Readers can feel lucky to have such a collection.”—Kirkus Reviews "Hong Kong Noir digs below the financial center’s gleaming surface to unearth stories of the city’s ghosts and spirits.”—South China Morning Post

Hong Kong Noir

Anthology of new writing and thinking from 43 of Hong Kong's most talented writers and poets. This is an eclectic, engrossing read to be dipped into again and again. Fifty-Fifty is envisioned to be a collective response to a burning question posed by the editor, Xu Xi: What are Hong Kong's odds as it counts down 50 years of 'Special Administrative Region' status, which grants it autonomy from China only until 2047? The book's inspired stories, poems and essays paint a broad picture of this extraordinary city on the cusp of major change.

New Hong Kong Writing

Fifty-Fifty

From the turbulent sixities through the nineties here is a history of Hong Kong told through fiction by one of Hong Kong's top writers.2nd edition includes a critical reading guide for English Teachers and students by Lingnan University's Mike Ingham.

Stories from the City of Hong Kong

History's Fiction

In This Fish Is Fowl Xu Xi offers the transnational and feminist perspective of a contemporary “glocalized” American life. Xu’s quirky, darkly comic, and obsessively personal essays emerge from her diverse professional career as a writer, business executive, entrepreneur, and educator. From her origins in Hong Kong as an Indonesian of Chinese descent to her U.S. citizenship and multiple countries of residence, she writes her way around the globe. Caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s in Hong Kong becomes the rhythmic accompaniment to an enforced, long-term, long-distance relationship with her partner and home in New York. In between Xu reflects on all her selves, which are defined by those myriad monikers of existence. As an author who began life as a novelist and fiction writer, she also considers the nature of genre, which snakes its way through these essays. In her linguistic trip across the comic tragedy that is globalism, she wonders about the mystery of humanity and the future of our world at this complicated and precarious moment in human existence. This Fish Is Fowl is a twenty-first-century blend of the essayist traditions of both West and East. Xu’s acerbic, deft prose shows her to be a descendant of both Michel de Montaigne and Lu Xun, with influences from stepparent Jonathan Swift.

Essays of Being

This Fish Is Fowl

Mike Ingham

City Stage is an anthology of recent Hong Kong English-language drama written for Hong Kong performers and audiences. All the plays were written in the last ten years and so capture and reflect the fast-developing multiculturalism of the Hong Kong scene – a somewhat paradoxical phenomenon in view of the 1997 return to China Mainland sovereignty. The richness and diversity of the subject-matter, the wide range of theatre styles from the naturalistic to the highly stylized and quite simply the engaging quality of the dramatic writing, all make this anthology both an essential adjunct to the 2001 prose fiction and poetry collection City Voices and at the same time a ground-breaking, independent record of an incredibly fertile period in Hong Kong's recent creative life history. Thematically speaking, whilst all plays have their unique voice and subject-matter, it is accurate to say that the quest for personal and communal identity is a theme that goes to the heart of all present selections. The anthology is important in that it epitomizes the increasing interconnectedness of previously segregated facets of Hong Kong culture, indicating the very welcome tendency towards more open dialogue between Chinese and non-Chinese practitioners and audiences. The anthology contains the complete texts of the shorter plays and strategically selected excerpts from the longer plays. All the texts in this collection were written as English-language versions for performance rather than literary translations, although for some a Chinese-language text was also written.

Hong Kong Playwriting in English

City Stage

Robin Hemley

An all-in-one craft guide and anthology, this is the first creative writing book to find inspiration and guidance in the diverse literary traditions of Asia. Including exemplary stories by leading writers from Japan, China, India, Singapore and beyond as well as those from Asian diasporas in Europe and America, The Art and Craft of Asian Stories offers an exciting take on the traditional how-to writing guide by drawing from a rich new trove of short stories beyond the western canon which readers may never have encountered before. Whilst still taking stock of the traditional elements of story such as character, viewpoint and setting, Xu and Hemley let these compelling stories speak for themselves to offer readers new ideas and approaches which could enrich their own creative work. Structured around the themes encountered in the stories, such as race and identity, history and power, family and aspirations, this text is a vital companion for writers at all levels keen to develop and find new perspectives on key elements of their craft. Written by two internationally successful writers and teachers, each chapter contains complete short stories and writing exercises for practice and inspiration.

A Writer's Guide and Anthology

The Art and Craft of Asian Stories

Michael Anthony Ingham

City Stage is an anthology of recent Hong Kong English-language drama written for Hong Kong performers and audiences. All the plays were written in the last ten years and so capture and reflect the fast-developing multiculturalism of the Hong Kong scene - a somewhat paradoxical phenomenon in view of the 1997 return to China Mainland sovereignty. The richness and diversity of the subject-matter, the wide range of theatre styles from the naturalistic to the highly stylized and quite simply the engaging quality of the dramatic writing, all make this anthology both an essential adjunct to the 2001 prose fiction and poetry collection City Voices and at the same time a ground-breaking, independent record of an incredibly fertile period in Hong Kong's recent creative life history. Thematically speaking, whilst all plays have their unique voice and subject-matter, it is accurate to say that the quest for personal and communal identity is a theme that goes to the heart of all present selections. The anthology is important in that it epitomizes the increasing interconnectedness of previously segregated facets of Hong Kong culture, indicating the very welcome tendency towards more open dialogue between Chinese and non-Chinese practitioners and audiences. The anthology contains the complete texts of the shorter plays and strategically selected excerpts from the longer plays. All the texts in this collection were written as English-language versions for performance rather than literary translations, although for some a Chinese-language text was also written.

Xu Xi’s body of work witnesses her turbulent love affair with her home-city of Hong Kong. In this probing memoir, she unravels her recently finalised decision to leave the city for good. She critiques a Hong Kong that has, in her eyes, lost its way. And yet, it is only out of the city’s enduring presence in her life, both in the form of memory and periodic homecomings, that she has carved out a personal and literary identity. Dear Hong Kong is a profound reflection on the life of Hong Kong, personified and interrogated by one of its most lucid writers.

Penguin Specials

Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy For A City: Penguin Specials

Xu Xi

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