Later, I asked Esmé to write a piece for the Go Home! anthology I was editing. The book is about incest, love, foreignness, family, suicide, and yet, somehow, it’s also really quite funny. When I bought her novel The Border of Paradise, it was everything I hoped for. Here was this person who struggled with mental illness and who loved aesthetics and fiction. There was something about the urgency, thoughtfulness, and rawness of those early entries that made me feel safe. I stumbled on her blog as a confused, lost teenager. Then I realized that I’m always telling people that I was reading Esmé Weijun Wang before her first book. Why does it matter that you liked someone early? You were just lucky. It always seemed an absurd bid for ownership. I never really understood those people who go to lengths to tell you they liked a band when it was starting out, or a singer before she got famous. And hide, because I suppose love is always a little embarrassing. Convey, because I hoped it would give her joy. I suspect that I was trying both to convey and to hide how much and how long I had loved her words. She spoke slowly, taking her time to think between words. Under the pale strip-lights, she was looking a little overwhelmed but her bleached pixie cut and red lipstick were immaculate. I met Esmé Weijun Wang a handful of years ago at the AWP conference.
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