I try to distance myself from systems of literary production and strains of thought that place primacy on publishing and publishing quickly. Ironical… - Jenny Xie

I gravitate toward language that radiates a certain energy for me.

Reading is migratory, an act of transport, from one life to another, one mind to another. Just like geographic travel, reading involves estrangement that comes with the process of dislocating from a familiar context. I gather energy from this kind of movement, this estranging and unsettling, and I welcome it precisely because it’s conducive to examination, interrogation, reordering. Travel, imaginative or physical, can sharpen perception and force a measuring of distance and difference.

Speaking and writing in English carried with it the anxiety of being betrayed by one’s usage mistakes and lack of fluency; this was no doubt reinforced by the linking of academic success to facility with speech and writing. At the same time that I began learning English, my Mandarin slowed in development, because I wasn’t using it outside of the domestic sphere. To this day, even though I enrolled in a year of intensive Mandarin study in college, my Mandarin is quite stunted. I’ve lost most of the ability to read and write in it, sadly.