🐯Year of the Tiger🐯

It’ll be a little while before this one is out, but I thought it was too perfect not to include now as something to look forward to. Wong mentions how the title of the book and its release came as a result of “deliberate manifestation” and “big cat energy.” In it, Wong, the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, shares a collection of everything from essays to graphics and art commissioned by disabled Asian American artists to show what her life has been like as a disability advocate. With humor and insight, she explores pop culture, her Asian American identity, and the various consequences of ableism.

This novella is the second in the The Singing Hills series that started with The Empress of Salt and Fortune (one of my favorites of 2020). We find ourselves back with cleric Chih and their companion in the fantasictal world Vo has created that has elements of Asian mythology. The monk and the young lady are at the mercy of a trio of shapeshifting tiger sisters, and must tell them the legendary story of a tiger and her scholar lover. Correctly, lest they be eaten. It’s a love story within a story and features a majority of female characters who take lovers and live as fiercely as they please.

TW: s*exual assault

This may seem like it doesn’t fit, but I think it perfectly embodies the spirit of fierceness, bravery, and exorcising demons that the year of the tiger symbolizes. It’s the memoir of the woman that was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement went viral, and was viewed by over 11 million people within a matter of days and read on the Congress floor. Despite never shying away from the label of being a victim, she also doesn’t let it define her, instead offering a nuanced way of viewing victimhood and assault. She’s the epitome of bravery and resilience, in other words.