Tony Hao

Nov 11, 2024 | memoirland.substack.com | Xiao Hai |Tony Hao |Vera Kachouh |Emily Latimer

Welcome to Memoir Land—a newsletter edited by Sari Botton, now featuring four verticals:Memoir Monday, a weekly curation of the best personal essays from around the web brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus,  Granta, Oldster Magazine, Literary Hub, Orion Magazine, The Walrus, and Electric Literature. Below is this week’s curation. First Person Singular, featuring original personal essays. Recently I published “Asked, Not Answered,” by .

Jan 10, 2024 | thecommononline.org | Tony Hao

By TONY HAOI wore a cream-white scarf and sat on a plastic stool… Behind me were residential buildings, NE Pharm’s apartments, windows caged behind iron lattices. From a distance, the buildings looked like a prison. Wilted leeks and cabbages were piled neatly on the windowsills: old people definitely lived there. Those cargo three-wheelers we call ‘reverse donkeys’ were chained to the rails in front of the buildings. I sat in the sun in front of the wall, my face hurting from the cold wind.