Crying Over Spilled Milk: my afterword to a new Taiwan translation of Jesmyn Ward

Plus, come to my Taipei event at Bookman Books on August 17th; a dialogue on teaching and learning in prison; and book club about Claire Messud's THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY

Thank you, kind readers, for replying to my missive about letting of English. It means a lot to me. If you’re in Taipei, I have an event here at Bookman Books on Saturday, August 17th at 14:00 to 15:00, where I’ll be in conversation with Katherine Chang about my book Reading with Patrick. You can register for this bilingual event here; I’d love to see you!

Readers of my book often ask how Patrick is doing and what it has been like since its publication. I’ve been thinking through these questions for years, and this is the first time I’ve shared my thoughts on paper. Today’s writing is probably the most honest thing I’ve ever written about it, and I’m really grateful to you for reading.

I incorporated this writing into an afterword of a new translation of Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, which was just released last week. Ward’s book is a record of five men in Mississippi, among them her brother, whom she lost in a two-year period. 嘉世強 , editor-in-chief of an imprint at China Times, acquir…