Lisa Eckstein’s Reviews > How to Write an Autobiographical Novel > Status Update

"It felt as if a president had been assassinated, but the president was alive. Instead, the country we thought we would be living in was dead. As if a president had assassinated a country."

"In the time before I understood that I was writing this novel, each time a piece of it emerged, I felt as if I'd received a strange valentine from a part of me that had a very different relationship to language than the me that walked around, had coffee with friends, and hoped for the best out of every day."

Each essay is so thoughtful, revealing, beautifully written. Especially enjoyed the last two I read, on tending a rose garden and on emotions surrounding money.

On moving to San Francisco during the AIDS epidemic: "... we were a wave arriving on the West Coast from the East: postcollegiate youngsters seeking and finding a paradise of cheap apartments and thrift stores bursting with the old athletic T-shirts and jeans and flannel shirts we all prized. I remember when I put the empty clothes together with the empty apartments..."

Chee's writing is so vivid and compelling.