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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Editor’s note: Gauri Yadav’s review essay explores Sumana Roy’s How I Became a Tree as an ecofeminist, genre-defying work that reimagines autobiography through plant life. Blending personal narrative,…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Sumana Roy’s 𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝐼 𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑎 𝑇𝑟𝑒𝑒: Autobiography as Ecofeminist Manifesto” by Gauri Yadav](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/sumana-roy-how-i-became-a-tree-.jpg?w=1024)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS John Hsu (director), Dead Talents Society 鬼才之道, 2024. 105 min. Put aside the spine-chilling horror of Nosferatu: what if the realm of the dead had its own celebrity influencers,…
![[REVIEW] “Gazing at Ghosts: John Hsu’s 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑇𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑆𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑡𝑦” by Keziah Cho](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/john-hsu-director-dead-talents-society--1.jpg?w=1024)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Click HERE to read all entries in Cha on Yiyun Li. Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. 368 pgs. Yiyun Li’s The Book of Goose is a novel…
![[REVIEW] “Fiction as Control: Yiyun Li’s Exacting 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝐺𝑜𝑜𝑠𝑒” by Zalman S. Davis](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/yiyun-li-the-book-of-goose-farrar-straus-and-giroux.jpg?w=978)
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Editor’s note: In his reflection “A Slower Mode of Time”, Chris Sullivan contrasts urban haste with nature’s unhurried rhythms, weaving cicadas, childhood memories, and captive flamingos into a meditation on suspended instincts, looping time, and the quiet grace of slower…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “A Slower Mode of Time” by Chris Sullivan](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/a-slower-mode-of-time-chris-sullivan.jpg?w=1024)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Jeremy Atherton Lin, Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told, Allen Lane, 2025. Deep House, a memoir by Jeremy Atherton Lin, may or may not be “the gayest…
![[REVIEW] “On Queerness, Migration and Same-Sex Marriage—A Review of Jeremy Atherton Lin’s 𝐷𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝐻𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝐿𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑇𝑜𝑙𝑑” by Hongwei Bao](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/deep-house-by-jeremy-atherton-lin--1.jpg?w=987)
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Editor’s note: Cuiyu Lin’s “Broken English, Sweet Oranges” is a lyrical meditation on language, fragility, and repair, weaving Chinese porcelain mending with personal scars to reveal brokenness as both burden and beauty, and imperfection as a vessel for truth. The…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Broken English, Sweet Oranges” by Cuiyu Lin](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/karolina-grabowska.png?w=1024)
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茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS [ESSAY] “As If Present; As If Absent: Fang Fang’s Wuhan” by Angus Stewart Click HERE to read all entries in Cha on Fang Fang. Editor’s note: In this eloquent and incisive…
![[ESSAY] “As If Present; As If Absent: Fang Fang’s Wuhan” by Angus Stewart](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/fang-fang.jpg?w=976)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Weike Wang, Rental House, Riverhead Books, 2024. 224 pgs. Reading Rental House is, for a Chinese person, a singularly curious—almost epiphanic—experience. Years ago, slightly tipsy at a reception in…
![[REVIEW] “It’s My House, and I Live Here: Weike Wang’s 𝑅𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐻𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒” by Peixuan Xie](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/rental-house.jpg?w=994)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Rajan Kurai Krishnan, Ravindran Sriramachandran, and V.M.S Subagunarajan, Rule of the Commoner: DMK and the Formations of the Political in Tamil Nadu, 1949–1967, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 280 pgs.…
![[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “Politics of the Plebs—𝑅𝑢𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑟: 𝐷𝑀𝐾 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑖𝑛 𝑇𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙 𝑁𝑎𝑑𝑢” by Kathiravan Annamalai](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/rule-of-the-commoner.jpg?w=419)
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📁 RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS📁 RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS Saad Omar Khan, Drinking the Ocean, Buckrider Books, 2025. 250 pgs. “We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into…
![[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “A Love that Doesn’t Bind: Saad Omar Khan’s 𝐷𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑂𝑐𝑒𝑎𝑛” by Fathima M](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/saad-omar-khan-drinking-the-ocean.jpg?w=971)
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Header artwork by Annysa Ng 茶 First Impressionsclick for information 茶 Essays click for information 茶 En Routeclick for information 茶 XI XI—Can We Sayclick for information 茶 Write to Powerclick for information 茶 Auditory Cortexclick for information
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