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| photo: Ricardo Rivas | |
Jessica J. Lee is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author and environmental historian, winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award, and founding editor of the Willowherb Review. Her second book, Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts, is available now from Catapult.
On your nightstand now:
I recently stacked all of my to-be-read pile next to my bed, so there are about 12 books right now! Of these I'm reading Rose Lu's wonderful book of essays, All Who Live on Islands, K-Ming Chang's Bestiary, and am most looking forward to Chia-Chia Lin's The Unpassing.
Favorite book when you were a child:
This is a toss-up between Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (I was obsessed with horses and riding) and a picture book called Old Black Witch by Wende and Harry Devlin, because it was about a woman who ran a run-down b&b (one of my dream jobs) and included an extraordinary recipe for blueberry pancakes!
Your top five authors:
This is constantly shifting, so I find it helpful to think in categories or moods. For transporting environmental storytelling: Anna Tsing. For stunning poetry and prose: Nina Mingya Powles. For riveting distraction: Ben Aaronovitch, whose Peter Grant novels are endlessly fun. For depth of feeling/days when I need a cry: Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. For atmosphere: Daphne du Maurier.
Book you've faked reading:
At risk of sounding like a true nerd: I can't think of one. For many years, I forced myself to finish every book I started and ploughed through a lot of "classics" because I thought that was what I was meant to do. And I was examined on a lot of them during my Ph.D., so couldn't really fake it! I'm much gentler on myself these days, so unfinished books are really piling up!
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-Yi. It's a rich tapestry novel I will never tire of reading--attentive to the natural world, memory and place, with a nuanced story of a son and a father. Darryl Sterk's English translation of the book renders the interplay between Mandarin and Taiwanese to stunning effect.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada. The cover was designed by Harriet Lee Merrion, who also designed the cover for my book, Two Trees Make a Forest. I should say it's a fascinating story, too.
Book you hid from your parents:
I didn't hide books, but my parents definitely showed surprise at my choices. My mother, who grew up under martial law in Taiwan, was beyond surprised that I was allowed to own and read Marx and Engels's The Communist Manifesto, for example.
Book that changed your life:
Art and Engagement by Arnold Berleant. It transformed my thinking about the world, the environment and the senses.
Favorite line from a book:
Richard Mabey's work on plants is easily the best contemporary nature writing, and this line from Weeds has inspired me endlessly: "How and why and where we classify plants as undesirable is part of the story of our ceaseless attempts to draw boundaries between nature and culture, wildness and domestication. And how intelligently and generously we draw those boundaries determines the character of most of the green surfaces of the planet."
Five books you'll never part with:
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. The Country and the City by Raymond Williams. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. I have a battered copy of The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot that I'm rather sentimental about.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Probably an odd choice given recent months, but I've long thought about how engulfed I was by my first reading of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.
Best music for reading and writing:
Broken Twin's EP Hold on to Nothing.