Exciting news! My essay will appear in the forthcoming anthology How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit: True Stories of Expat Women in Asia edited by Shannon Young and published by Signal 8 Press. Our publication date is June 10, 2014, which is coming up soon!
My personal essay is titled “Huangshan Honeymoon” and centers on a rather unusual kind of vacation for newlyweds in China — one where my husband’s father-in-law came along for the ride! Why did we bring his father on the trip? And, more importantly, how did this journey change my relationship with his father, a man who once counseled his son not to date foreign women? Find out when you read “Huangshan Honeymoon” in this forthcoming anthology.
Want another reason to check out How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit: True Stories of Expat Women in Asia? The many fantastic contributing writers, including some names you just might recognize:
- Susan Blumberg-Kason, author of the forthcoming memoir Good Chinese Wife
- Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, an award-winning writer who contributed the memorable essay Three Words from a Chinese Father to this site and is currently working a memoir
- Jenna Lynn Cody, the Taiwan-based blogger at Lao Ren Cha and a frequent commenter on this site
- Kaitlin Solimine, author of the forthcoming novel Empire of Glass and a contributor to Unsavory Elements (her essay, “Water for Li-Ming”, was one of the standouts in the collection)
- Ember Swift, the Canadian singer-songwriter who also blogs about her multicultural family and is working on her Master of Fine Arts in Writing in Hong Kong.
- Christine Tan, whose now-defunct blog Shanghai Shiok was one of my all-time favorite reads on cross-cultural relationships and interracial dating between Asians and non-Asians
- Edna Zhou, who wrote for Shanghaiist and is best known for her blog Expat Edna, which chronicles her globe-trotting adventures
Plus, the anthology has received glowing blurbs from two of my favorite writers:
“How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit is an eclectic, soulful collection of stories by badass women who have adventured far out of their comfort zones. Full of candid observations about travel, language, food, self and other, it’s a book for anyone who has ever felt peripheral, upside down, culturally shocked or inspired. In other words, a book for all of us.”
– Rachel DeWoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing, Repeat After Me, Big Girl Small, and Blind.“A unique and inspiring collection of voices that calls up all the wonder, fascination, challenges, disorientation, and delights faced by women expats throughout Asia. I was moved by the breadth of experiences included in this anthology at the same time that I fell in love with one thread running throughout: how the expatriate journey takes us away from ourselves and then ultimately delivers us back, richer, wiser, and even more aware of how our own identities fit within our wide, wide world.”
– Tracy Slater, author of The Good Shufu: A Wife in Search of a Life Between East and West.
I’ll keep you posted on the forthcoming publication of How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit. In the meantime, you can follow the anthology on Facebook.
Sounds like a very rather unusual honeymoon but as we all know, something different usually means eventful which always makes for an interesting read!!
June 10th is a great day in my books! I met my husband on that date and we were married on that date as well (different years, of course;) )!!
Thanks for the comment, Constance! How cool that you and your husband met and then later married on the same date! That sounds like a fantastic story as well!
Congrats! That’s wonderful!
Thanks Grace!
Congrats! If you’re interested, I’m open to reviewing the book 🙂
That would be fantastic if you could review it! I’ll be in touch with you.
How exciting! 🙂
Thanks Eileen!
The title is the punch! What an idea! It is enough with dragonfruit, a little know fellow. What to wear to buy it? Haha! Brilliant! Congrats that your contribution too will be published, Jocelyn!
Thank you ordinary malaysian!
oops, should read “..a little known fellow.”
Congratulations 🙂
@ordinary malaysian: what’s with the title? I don’t get it :/
Thanks Marta!
Congrats! This is really a piece of good news!