halfway unknown & mostly perturbed
hong kong and the microcelebrity
For anyone following my Instagram, you will know that I have spent the last week parading my American accent around Hong Kong. For those interested in the specific chronology of my life, this is the first time I’ve travelled since my days flying to Paris for the MFA.
It’s odd to show up somewhere completely unfamiliar again. I slowly picked up pieces of French while in the program—enough to converse, get by, eavesdrop. And my one graduation trip to Barcelona was a reward for all my years taking Spanish in high school, where I could flex my multilingual memory (thanks for raising me with two tongues, my dear parents). In a way, I’ve never f
elt more like a diaspora baby before. I was surrounded by people who all looked like varying degrees of myself, all speaking a language I’ve never learned.
When asked, I’d say that it felt a little bit like Jakarta, mixed in with a Parisian walkability. I couldn’t stop comparing it to things that I’d experienced, slightly adjacent, slightly related, but entirely inaccurate. Hong Kong is one of those places that escapes the imagination, and the famed Prime show EXPATS is apparently hated by locals, since the show runners refused to quarantine while filming the show in the peak of lockdown. What’s lauded as the most accurate modern representation of Hong Kong is a failed commentary on migrant workers and grifters, largely because it was imported, transposed without care.
And while drifting in and out of tourist attractions and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, I found that I was incredibly aware of how alien I was. How unknown I was here. How I was a sore thumb with a backpack and platform sandals.
Walking around the streets of the Bay Area, there’s a high likelihood I run into someone I know around town. And if not, I’m walking around familiar haunts where I have chatted with the same baristas and cashiers hundreds of times. But while in Hong Kong, I was visiting my friend Hayley, who brought me along to a punk show in an industrial warehouse church and introduced me to all her friends.
These friends didn’t know anything about me. I was left to forge an impression entirely from scratch, and though I do this every day in line at the grocery store when I chat with the person behind me, having it feel like a bit of matchmaking is something that I almost forgot how to inhabit.
While walking around, Hayley pointed out these massive billboards with idols singing and dancing on LED flatscreens. She laughed about how fans pool their money and buy these ads themselves. They love these strangers, and they think the world benefits from seeing even their image. Hayley also has a fascination with the Hong Kong microcelebrity scene, as she dubs it. There are people, in her words, who are everywhere in Hong Kong—all over social media, all over different events in different “scenes.” And people become their fans, all while they’re not actually famous. They’re simply known.
I then couldn’t stop thinking about how the writing scene is its own microcelebrity microcosm as well. You can go to a different town and everyone’s talking about a different “big” writer. And if a writer is well known, chances are that they’re not getting mobbed in real life, even if they have hundreds of thousands of books in people’s homes.
I feel like I’m not quite at microcelebrity level—I just like making new friends and seeing the same people at readings and knowing my neighbors. I live my little life in my apartment, taking a nap at 6pm every day when the sunshine warms my pillow until dusk falls and I wake up to cook dinner with Daniel. My scene is the small crowd of Bay Area poets that all know each other and celebrate whenever someone new reads at an open mic for the first time. It’s not really a culture of celebrities. It’s kinda like a big web of people who either know each other or know someone who knows someone and then bam you’re Instagram friends.
And while that’s beautiful, it’s a little scary too. Writing is an incredibly personal act, and that’s how I think that the writing scene is an elevated form of a parasocial relationship. I feel like when you really love a writer, you know some of their darkest secrets, forgetting that they’ve been meticulously editing the same passage for years. I forget that when I meet my favorite poets, and I also forget that when people ask me about my own work. Oh, I immediately think, you’ve read all my deepest insecurities, and not only are you still talking to me, you’re also saying that you somewhat enjoy the way that I talk about my worst fears.
I feel like I’m constantly balancing this selective amnesia. It feels like there’s no in between—in my mind, either you know everything about me, or nothing at all, though the reality is likely somewhere in between. There’s something destabilizing about declaring yourself an open book. You never know what page people are reading.
All this to say—I’m back from my travels and am thrilled to say I am in one piece, and have already had my first 6pm nap since returning. I’m also thrilled to say I’ve got a few readings lined up in the near and also far future, and realized I should probably actually use this newsletter to give you updates on things like where I’ll be.
UPCOMING
Thursday, July 18—I’m performing at Poolside Poets again! Come see me read at the Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco. We’re talking “Lessons Learned” and dressing to the theme of “Origins.” (I’m wearing a batik, and I’m going to suggest Daniel wears his Eagles jersey).
Saturday, July 27—BEAST CRAWL!!!! The East Bay’s premiere literary crawl is happening, and I’m opening up the Starting Points Open Mic at Punchdown in Oakland, 5:30pm sharp!
FURTHER IN THE FUTURE
August 16—Acts of Care, where I will be reading at a gallery opening at Ruth’s Table in the Mission!
October 19-20—LITQUAKE OUT LOUD, where I’m curating the curators for a two-day festival of Queer and BIPOC writers amidst the one and only SF Literary Festival, with Morgan Parker headlining!
October 24—Litquake & Center for the Art of Translation, where I as a baby translator will be moderating a panel of Bay Area translators
October 25—Litquake & Generation Women, where I will be representing Team 20’s and talking about my quarter life crisis probably
And more things that aren’t official yet but will be posted when they’re all tidy and confirmed.
Anyway, if you want to book me, you can. I’ll spit some poems wherever, really. Also buy my book. Also buy a pride sticker from Game Over Books. Cool.