![]() ![]() It connected me to a cultural history that I had never learned elsewhere or realized I needed. Choy’s novel was my gateway into the communities that lived in Chinatown alleys. Yet like Jook-Liang from the novel, I, too, have memories of bedtime stories of the Monkey King, told to me by my grandpa before I had immigrated. I was a first-generation immigrant from mainland China growing up in a suburb far from Vancouver’s Chinatown. His stories touched me in a way that no other books ever had. ![]() He was a role model who showed me that Chinese immigrants and their descendents could also be writers. ![]() He was the first Chinese-Canadian author whose work I read, the only writer I was connected to then beyond a name on the page. She knew him as a friend, after they had connected because she reached out on behalf of a student dealing with an illness. ![]() She not only taught The Jade Peony in classrooms, in between units on Shakespeare and formal poetry, but spoke frequently of his kindness and warmth. Bouska, was the first to introduce me to his work. One of my high school English teachers, Mrs. As a young, bright-eyed, aspiring writer who spent most of my high school and undergrad years scribbling stories and poems, I had devoured his novel, The Jade Peony, in a matter of days. He was visiting the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts in August 2012. VANCOUVER -I met Wayson Choy when I was 20. ![]()
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