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Three Books: Belle Yang

Submitted by hyphen-migration on Wed, 09/01/2010 - 12:00am

We asked Belle Yang — author of the graphic memoir Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale: “What books have left a legacy on your creative life?”

 A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (Vintage)

[When] I read this nearly 20 years ago, [I loved] the luxurious tale of a man’s plodding pathos and humor in searching for and creating a house of his own. My family had been refugees from mainland China to Taiwan to Japan and finally to America, in search of a private space where we could be free to live and love.

The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul (Vintage)

I read this after the Tiananmen massacre in China, where I was neither truly Chinese [nor] foreign. I reread the book on returning to the United States. It is a claustrophobic retelling of Naipaul’s arrival in England as a poor student from Trinidad, too afraid to venture from his lodging, where he ate his meals over a trash bin. The pain of adjustment and the constant reminder of his foreignness were like a scab repeatedly torn off.

The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh Edited by Ronald de Leeuw (Bulfinch Press)

Few realize that Van Gogh was not only a painter but also a well-read literary man. His letters found me when I returned from my three-year sojourn in China. I was encouraged by his adamant road [in becoming] an artist — starting his career at the late age of 30. His brother Theo’s support was like my [mother] and father’s unflagging emotional and spiritual wisdom, which [has] sustained me these 25 years.

Magazine Section: 
Books [1]
Magazine Issue: 
Issue 21: New Legacy - Fall 2010 [2]
Categories: 
Comics [3]
Books [4]

Source URL:https://hyphenmagazine.com/magazine/issue-21-new-legacy-fall-2010/three-books-belle-yang

Links
[1] https://hyphenmagazine.com/magazine/books [2] https://hyphenmagazine.com/magazine/issue-21-new-legacy-fall-2010 [3] https://hyphenmagazine.com/categories/comics [4] https://hyphenmagazine.com/categories/books