“Being Enough is an Illusion” has been published by Gavagai. You can read it here.

Inspiration: I started writing this story in 2023. I had just watched a documentary on PBS called “Armed with Language”, about the Japanese American translators in WWII. I thought about the struggle between being a person in between, always seen as foreigner.

My parents regretted raising me speaking Wenzhounese when Mandarin would have been more helpful. I grew up in the Bronx, while the rest of the family was in Queens. Before college, I went to multiple Chinese schools on weekends to try to shove Mandarin into my head.

Meanwhile, my cousins can manage Mandarin and Wenzhounese.

I thought about others who had their cultures removed in more traumatizing circumstances (Native Americans in residential schools, Japanese Americans in internment camps, etc.) Then I thought about the ways these same groups tried to prove themselves to America. Choctaw and Navajo code talkers in WWI and WWII, Japanese soldiers in WWII, the Civil Rights era after the armed forces were integrated.

I had a wild dream to write something hopeful! (Wild because that is not my default vibe.) What if reparations were paid? What if schools put our heritage culture back into us? I used the magic system I am using in my second novel. I originally wrote the short story for a solarpunk call and that was its first rejection.

In 2023, this story did get accepted. A year later, I got a contract which a clause that said if it’s not published in six months, the rights revert. Six months passed, I asked for the story back and submitted it with my Viable Paradise packet.

At VP, it was critiqued and a very astute writer, Abhijeet Sathe, suggested changing the POV. I revised and out the story went again, and again, and …

It took a total of 19 rejections across three years before it was accepted at Gavagai.

Considering the angry stories Gavagai bought from me before (Big Fire Angry, Ghost Festival in the Desert), I had no expectations they’d take this story about illusion magic and imposter syndrome and reparations. I was so happy they did!