The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam

"Lyrical prose, palpable love, and formal audacity coalesce to make this a must-read." — Publishers Weekly starred review

"A love story, a litany, a catalog of observations, a guidebook of emotions, a ghost story, a map, a travelogue, a critique of authenticity, and a search for home, The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam lives in the transition between loneliness and connection. Invoking Gertrude Stein’s refusal of fixity while indicting her racist assumptions, Lana Lin creates a text that swims between personal history, art criticism, and collage. This is a book that plays with memory, grief, and solitude to reveal the rituals of intimacy that sustain a creative life.” —Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Touching the Art

“In her brilliant revision of the queer archive, Lana Lin not only brings the understory of the Asian diaspora to the surface but into luminous frame. The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam is a testament to our different histories and to how, through shared stories and everyday habits, we merge and become each other over time. If you asked me to give you a gift through which you could discover yourself in others, I would offer you this book.” —Julietta Singh, author of The Breaks