Standing With Other Chinese Diaspora Writers And All Underrepresented People
No, I will not tear down another Chinese Diaspora writer to soothe the ego of the unsound. I will stand by her and all the other humans who deserve so much more than being reduced to colonial fodder.
These thoughts and feelings have been weighing on me for the past five years. I have already written four essays, a poetry book, a mixtape, and three other songs about my stint in the publishing industry and on social media.
But during my spiritual cleansing and emotional processing, I kept getting stuck on one person who had never disrespected me in any shape or form, yet for a while, I felt such strong resentment every time I thought of her. To make matters even more confusing, the resentment was not actually directed toward her, but something else that had nothing to do with me or her.
I’m ready to speak on it. To reclaim my power. To move forward with Love, Light, and Abundance. To assert my birthright and the birthright of other humans who have been through something similar, but who may not necessarily yet have the platform or resources to speak up for themselves.
And hopefully, this essay will serve as a beacon of unity and true diversity for other underrepresented writers and artists and musicians to remember that another person who share your cultural background is not the enemy.
Do not let yourself become colonial fodder.
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A Nuanced Take On White People
For a long time, the only other Chinese person I knew in the US was my mom. I had felt very lonely because nobody around me had heard of the snacks that I grew up eating (棒棒冰，山楂片，奶糖，辣条), the cartoons that I still love with my whole heart (弹珠传说，喜羊羊与灰太狼，巴啦啦小魔仙，成龙历险记，西游记), the online games that I played with my cousin as a kid (盒子世界，小花仙，摩尔庄园，奥比岛，赛尔号), and so many more things that only a fellow Chinese person would understand.
I was into writing, but not really into reading. The books that were popular at the time had no Chinese characters, not even Black or Brown characters. In fact, the main characters dominating Young Adult books at the time were reminiscent of the basic white girls in middle school who competed with each other over who would one day become Scotty McCreery’s wife, who thought that a wrong Starbucks order was the end of the world, never mind that so many people outside of the US couldn’t even afford their next meal, or have access to clean drinking water, or have the leisure time to read amidst constant political upheaval.
In short, I didn’t want to read books that celebrated spoiled brats, written by stuck-up white women who looked like the ones that bullied my mom when my mom was just waiting to pick me up from school.
It’s not that I have a problem with white people in general. It’s not so much the fact that they are white, but the terrible attitude of entitlement that a lot of them perpetuate toward non-Western and Indigenous people. Because to assume that all white people are automatically bad and that all non-white people are automatically good is rather naive and does not cut to the glaring core of the issue.
And I’ve met quite a few amazing people who just happen to be white. My history professor from my old community college who never stopped encouraging me to put my stories out there is a white man. A middle school friend with red hair recently told me that she was directing a theater production in her hometown. I am so happy for her because she has always been interested in the dramatic arts, and she has been a corporate hater with me since day one, so to see that she is doing theater management makes me feel joy too. The artist who I work with for the Garden illustrations is an Italian white woman. Another friend of mine who has been a very vocal supporter of my writing is also a white woman. My therapist is a white woman.
One time, I did a spoken word performance at my university. Afterward, a white boy came up to me and thanked me for choosing to speak myself. He and I talked for a while, during which he told me that he felt deeply inspired by my choice to stand up for what is right and my unwavering dedication to authenticity. He told me that he felt empowered to share his music with other people after listening to my poetry, and that he had always felt scared of being judged for sharing an intimate part of his soul with an often-unforgiving world. I encouraged him to keep going, and he encouraged to keep speaking. That was March 2024.
Every time I attended a meeting at Legacy, which is the indie music collective at my university, he would always strike up a conversation with me, and we would learn a lot from each other. At the end of February 2025, I was in the studio with him and a few other people. He was recording a song that he wrote on the mandolin, working with a super sweet Black guy who was mixing the song. I was seated in the back with a white girl who played the guitar and another Chinese diaspora.
I said, “Let’s all give a round of applause to Booth. When we first met, he was scared to speak his truth. But now a year later, he is recording a song that will be released on Legacy’s annual album.”
He smiled so hard that everyone saw his dimples. And he said, “I couldn’t have done it without everyone’s encouragement. Thank you all so much.”
Another interesting encounter that I had with a white man was when I attended a lecture delivered by an Asian-American professor who was visiting my university in February 2024. I was with my partner, who sat in the chair to my left, and we both listened intently to the professor discussing the complexities of the Asian-American identity ranging from the perpetual foreigner and the model minority myth, to the rise of anti-Blackness among a lot of Asian-Americans who rallied against affirmative action, to the importance of voting and showing up for humanity.
After the lecture, we were allowed to ask questions. A white man nearby brought out a notepad and a pencil. He raised his hand and waited patiently for the Asian-American female professor to call on him. When she did, he asked something about how people like him could do better to support Asian-Americans and affirmative action. As the professor gave a thorough answer, he jotted down notes and did not even think to interrupt her.
My partner and I exchanged a surprised look. She is a Brown woman, and I am a Chinese person, and the two of us felt bewildered for a moment.
“How is he actually treating an Asian woman with more respect than some of the other Asian women whom I ran into before?” I whispered to my partner.
My partner shrugged. “Yeah. Some white people can be batshit, but not all are.”
It’s true that not every white person is crazy. But sadly, it’s also true that a lot of the batshit ones tend to congregate in publishing and art spaces for external validation and clout.
For a very long time, I was repeatedly pressured by the basic white girls in publishing who had made it clear that if I didn’t go against another Chinese Diaspora writer, the one who had inspired me to take a stand and to share my stories, then “publishing” would never welcome me.
And the Chinese Diaspora writer they wanted me to compete against is Chloe Gong.
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Her Name Is Chloe Gong
In February 2019, I was sixteen-years-old, stuck in a rural town in the American South with nothing but a military base and a field full of cows. I was semi-active on Twitter, mostly so I could keep up with the few Asian-American writers whom I looked up to. One of them was Julie C. Dao. Another one was Rebecca F. Kuang. I was checking to see if they had any new books out, but then I saw this.
The first thing that I noticed was that she looked like me. The second thing that I noticed was that her surname sounded Chinese. The third thing that I noticed was Shanghai. Then I read the entire paragraph three times.
I am not from Shanghai. I am from Chengdu. But the fact that this deal announcement included a Chinese city written by a Chinese girl who looked so friendly in that photo, I was very happy to see that.
So I started keeping up with Chloe Gong. Back then, I went by “Z” on Twitter, so she didn’t know that it was me. Every time when she posted a snippet of her upcoming book, I sent her words of encouragement that she promptly replied to with funny memes. We did exchange direct messages a couple of times when I had asked her about her writing process, and she replied with so much detail on how to outline an epic fantasy story. I took a screenshot of the tips that she gave me, and I referred back to them a few times in the following years.
When she revealed the cover of These Violent Delights, the first thing I saw was 蔡 embossed onto the dagger. I commented about it because I was excited to see a Chinese word on a YA book cover. She replied about how she was glad that I saw it.
Every time when my teenage years got really dark in the form of repeated abuse from that terrible white man who will never be my father, I would remember the Asian-American writers out there. And I would remember Chloe Gong because she is the closest to me in age, and she is Chinese like myself. While all the Asian-American writers who I know of are amazing, not all of them are Chinese.
But I would point to Chloe Gong, and Rebecca F. Kuang, and Katie Zhao, and Joan He, and Cindy Pon, and Kat Cho, and Julie C. Dao, and Nghi Vo, and Axie Oh, and Ken Liu, and Fonda Lee, and Elizabeth Lim, and Malinda Lo, and Christina Li, and Zoe Hana Mikuta, and Grace D. Li, and June Hur, and Emiko Jean, and Traci Chee, and Marie Lu, and Jenny Han, and Natasha Ngan, and Amélie Wen Zhao, and Thanhhà Lại, and Xiran Jay Zhao, and Ann Liang, and Shelley Parker-Chan, and the others out there every time I was told by that terrible man to stop writing. He had no right to tell me what to do with my life simply because he failed at making a life for himself. He was never even my real father, and he had no right to resort to physical violence in an attempt to stop me from writing.
I hated him. I hated him so damn much. People like him projected their own problems onto everyone else, expected everyone to worship the ground that their stinky feet profaned, wanted to make their shame and cowardice everybody else’s problem, felt entitled to everyone else’s attention, shifted the blame onto the ones they had harassed, refused to take accountability for their problems, denied their own crimes, twisted the narrative through smear campaigns and character assassinations, made every single thing about their ego, and gaslit everybody else because they sucked so bad that they didn’t know how to do anything aside from being complete buffoons.
And I saw so many other people who had bled, who had died, because of weak men’s ego. I saw Black women struggling with undeserved pain. I saw Hispanic classmates being mocked for their beautiful accents. I saw how hard my few friends had struggled in middle school and high school precisely because those entitled fuckers couldn’t get a damn grip on their lack of self.
I even saw powerful and sensitive men, straight and gay, young and old, who stood up for their mothers and sisters and daughters and neighbors. But those truly powerful men would get locked up and abused and bullied by the weak egoists. Those weak egoists cannot ever stand on their own because they had rejected their own souls. Boys who cry are powerful. Men who don’t aren’t.
Nobody should have to suffer the failures of cowards who couldn’t handle their own problems. Nobody should have to spend the rest of their lives recovering from someone else’s mistake. Nobody should have to lose their life or the lives of loved ones and others in their community simply because a grown brat didn’t know how to be a good human.
And when I read the books written by those Asian-American authors, when I read the books and articles and essays and blog posts penned by Black authors and Brown authors, I felt determined to help, to fight, to liberate. And seeing someone like Chloe Gong, someone who was roughly three years and four months older than me, someone who was in college back then, someone who understood my experiences, I felt encouraged to speak.
Because for a long time, I wasn’t able to speak without being physically attacked by that weak man, without being emotionally invalidated, financially abused, sexually harassed, verbally assaulted, and forcefully isolated by him. He made everything about his ego. He mistreated me and tried to force me to become an object in his life. I flipped him off multiple times and fought back.
I am the subject of my own life. I assert my birthright to be. I assert my innately valid existence to speak and take up space.
And I wanted to perhaps one day meet the authors who had inspired me, who had showed me that the walls of that weak man’s mansion would not be my grave, who had blazed a trail for everyone in our community.
I wanted to meet them as another author, not as a reader.
But then things took a dark turn because the basic white girls whom I had cut off in middle school re-entered my life with different faces, older ages, and even more sinister agendas.
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The Junes In School
When Rebecca F. Kuang was interviewed about Yellowface, she mentioned how she knew a lot of “Junes” in the publishing industry. In her satire, Yellowface, June is a white woman who stole the manuscript written by a dead Asian-American writer named Athena Liu and passed it off as her own. Aside from some common feelings that a lot of people in publishing could relate to such as exhaustion triggered by unhealthy competition and indignation ignited by the lack of proper compensation, June, for the most part, is a very problematic, fucked-up, and entitled brat whom I ran into so many times even before I attempted publishing.
In middle school, it was the brunette girl obsessed with Scotty McCreery who threatened to turn everyone against me if I didn’t bring her snacks and water and gave her the test answers. One time, I sneezed in fifth grade, and she immediately jumped out of her seat and shrieked. The teacher wasn’t in the room, so everyone looked at her in alarm. She seized the hand sanitizer bottle and sprayed it all over my desk, loudly proclaiming that she was getting rid of a “virus” and “looking out for me.”
I had covered my mouth while sneezing. And I would’ve thrown my desk in her face had the teacher not walked in.
She was also the brat who had pulled up a photo of a dead cat and asked the science teacher in seventh grade to put it on the projector so she could announce to the whole class that Chinese people “ate cats.” Of course, I would’ve jumped her, but then I remembered that most middle school teachers bullied me as well, and that they would never take my side, and they were just looking for a reason to suspend me, then it would be hell at home because nobody bothered to listen there either.
In high school, it was another brunette girl who got mad at me because the teachers often said: “If all of you could be more like Feifei and did your work, I’d feel a lot better.” I didn’t ask the teachers to say that. I didn’t feel anything towards it. I just found it to be odd that people didn’t do their work because weren’t you supposed to do your work in school?
But every time, the other brunette girl always talked back to the teachers and said, “You don’t always have to compare us to her. You always say that about her. Stop.”
The teacher said: “Well, am I wrong in saying that she actually does her work unlike all of you?”
The brunette girl stopped talking after that.
But then one time, I was chatting with another person, and he started to make jokes about the English language that were actually funny to me. He uttered some gibberish and said that the Englishmen would think it to be a word because he said it in a British accent, and then he would just laugh and say that not everything is a word. To go along with his joke, I said: “That’s not a word, Jalen!” We laughed about it, then moved on.
Then fifteen minutes later, this brunette clown said, “Um, Feifei, that is a word.”
I said, “What are you talking about?”
The brunette girl showed me her phone and said in the most obnoxious tone, “That is a word. I looked it up. Get your facts straight.”
I ignored her because her insecurity was not my problem. But then she kept grumbling about how the word was in the dictionary, and how she looked it up across three dictionaries, and how she will keep looking it up to prove to me that it was a word.
And I was thinking to myself: “Damn, what the fuck is wrong with her?”
While I couldn’t read Jalen’s mind, he must have also felt annoyed, so he told her to shut up. When she kept trying to get me to acknowledge that it was a word, Jalen said that it’s not that serious, and that she ought to do her work.
To this day, I still do not remember what that word was, and it honestly doesn’t matter.
But the reason why I mention these incidents is because everyone knows someone like that in school. For a lot of us, we’ve unfortunately run into multiple people like those brunette girls. When I was younger, I thought that maybe those girls were just emotionally immature and that they would eventually grow out of it. I mean, it was middle school and high school.
But alas, some people never mentally age out of high school, and more people than you think never age out of middle school. And I had the utmost unpleasant experiences dealing with the Junes in publishing who had wanted to pit me against Chloe Gong, who had wanted to further divide people of color, who had launched incessant attacks against my self-esteem, my right to exist, and my right to share my stories, simply because they hate themselves and can’t handle their own emptiness.
But I will not be silenced. I will keep speaking.
I have already stood up for my younger self by asserting my birthright, by reconnecting with my Soul-Self, by continuing to choose compassion, and by speaking the truth.
But there is one more thing that I must share with creatives around the world, especially those from marginalized communities. I share these experiences with the intention of preserving knowledge that could protect others from similar harassment, that could help people who are going through this or who had gone through similar things to feel less alone, that would help artists reconnect to True Reality. And this True Reality is founded upon cooperation, not competition. Harmony, not discord.
By standing with your people, you will forge the key to liberation, and you will burn the gates erected by colonial agenda, and you will break free from the cages that the empty ones had put your mind into through decades of miseducation.
And you will reconnect with your Soul.
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Their Lies And Inability To Tell Us Apart
My publishing journey started in December 2020 when I was eighteen. At the time, I had wanted to publish a novel instead of the nonfiction records of my spiritual friends. I wasn’t in a safe place to fully open up about myself, and I wanted to test the publishing waters to see what would happen.
Back then, I was talking to a Chinese writer in Canada who was finishing up her tech degree in grad school. She was querying literary agents, and she finally got an offer of representation for her book. When I told her about a story that I came up with based off of the real lived experiences of my spiritual friends but had nothing to do with my actual spiritual friends, she told me that some part of it reminded her of Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights, which had just released in November 2020.
I was really excited because another Chinese person knew Chloe Gong and that my story reminded her of Chloe Gong’s. And of course, this person was also happy to see Chloe Gong’s success, and she was cheering me on, and she was also keen on sharing her own story. It was a nice conversation.
But then that person withdrew from all publishing-related things. She never sold her book, and she broke her contract with her agent, and she was never heard from again. I found that to be a bit odd. She was not a scammer because she showed me actual things that she did in her university, and we brainstormed about her manuscript as well over multiple calls. At the time, I thought that she probably changed her mind on traditional publishing, and she decided to fully devote herself to becoming an engineer instead.
In hindsight, I think that she was cyberbullied into silencing herself.
She wasn’t the only Asian author who broke their contract with their agent and just didn’t bother with publishing ever again. There was a Malaysian writer who announced her agent, then didn’t post anything for a year or two, then she uploaded her entire manuscript onto Wattpad. When asked about her decision, she said that the literary agency never valued her, and that traditional publishing Twitter bullied her into depression, so she broke the contract to post her story on Wattpad instead. She also quit writing altogether soon after.
Now, let’s go back to the beginning of my publishing journey.
In January 2021, I felt a bit sad after that Chinese Diaspora writer decided to leave publishing, so I thought to try and connect with some other young writers online.
Enter the Bitch, or B, for short.
You may be quirking a brow and wondering why I would call someone else a bitch. After reading this essay, you will call her a bitch too. And she wasn’t the only bitch whom I ran into during my stint in industry. I already stood up for myself and spoke the Truth of what had happened to me in Summer 2022, but B was a different headache. And I aim to be vocal about the harassment that often occurs behind-the-scenes, unchecked and unspoken, until now.
At first, I enjoyed talking to B because I thought she was really nice and hard-working. She was one year younger than me, and we lived in the same area. But then one day, we were talking about other young writers, and she asked me if I knew Chloe Gong. I told her that I didn’t know Chloe Gong personally, but I did enjoy her debut novel. B started marveling about how Chloe Gong had so much praise from everyone and how she wanted that praise from everyone too.
I said, “I think that she is doing amazing things. But I don’t think it’s fair to anyone else or to her when people idolize her and view her as nothing more than just a pathway to fame that they could also take. She’s an inspiration to me for sure, but I don’t worship her. It would be dehumanizing for us both. She does her thing. I do my thing. And that’s okay!”
There was a moment of silence.
B: “So you don’t want her to notice you?”
Me: “It’d be cool if she did, but I wouldn’t mind either way. We just both do our own thing, and I can support her from afar. I swapped messages with her a couple of times, but she hadn’t responded in a while, and that’s so okay. I would love to meet her and talk to her about writing and Chinese Diaspora experiences, but I don’t live to be validated by her or by anyone else. I am fine the way I am. She is fine the way she is. We both shine.”
Another moment of silence.
B: “You and I are not the same type of people then.”
Indeed, we are not.
But back then, she seemed so nice and so supportive, so much so that I invited her to join a group chat with two other Gen Z writers whom I had befriended prior to meeting her. One of them is a Black lesbian, and the other one is a white, disabled, queer, Deaf/HoH, and non-binary person. We will call the first person N, and the second person L.
So when B joined the group, the four of us had a lot of fun over text conversations and Zoom calls, united by our desire to publish our books. N was determined to write books for other Black lesbians while L was passionate about writing for young people who are Deaf/HoH and who communicate primarily through ASL. I was determined to embody the change that I wished to see, to champion a non-Western way of knowing and being that resonated with Indigenous Wisdom, Chinese folk beliefs, spirituality, and the human heart. Though I no longer talk to N and L, I know that the three of us are still giving our all into uplifting underrepresented communities and speaking our truths.
In hindsight, B had probably just wanted to be famous.
When I shared my writing with the group, that was when the comparisons started. B continuously said that my writing reminded her of Chloe Gong. She said it so many times that N started to echo that too. N wasn’t petty, so she probably meant it as encouragement. L didn’t read fantasy, so L didn’t echo the comparison.
But B kept going. Everything that I wrote, eight times out of ten, B said it reminded her of Chloe Gong. In retrospect, what exactly did I write that reminded her of Chloe Gong? Was it really my writing, or was it the fact that I am also a Chinese Diaspora girl who favored third-person storytelling? I found it to be extremely annoying when everything that I did was reduced to: “It’s just Chloe Gong, but a lesbian version of it! It’s just Chloe Gong, but your version of it. This is SO Chloe Gong! This is Chloe Gong!!!”
I remember shouting at my screen: “I AM NOT CHLOE GONG! I AM FEIFEI!”
I spent years writing my stories whether it is working with my real spiritual friends or doing my own fiction every now and then. I spent years fighting back against people who had tried to erase me because they refused to see me as a human being. I spent years being mistreated as a third wheel, a backup plan for white people in school who didn’t have other white people to talk to. But as soon as another white person came into the room, I became invisible to them.
And it didn’t end with B. The clown named “A” whom I mentioned in another blog post also started to compare me to Chloe Gong. Some other people, even one from Hong Kong and another one from Vietnam, started to tell me that they thought I was basically another version of Chloe Gong. They were all older than me with the exception of B. I was 19 at the time. They were in their early- or mid-20s with a few in their early-30s.
Me: “I am not Chloe Gong!”
Them: “THAT IS SO CHLOE GONG OF YOU TO SAY!”
I just wanted to punch every single one of those people in their faces because even though I’d said it a million times already, I had to keep saying it with emphasis that I am not Chloe Gong. Otherwise, it would be hard to breathe in that space.
But then it started getting even worse.
“A” (white woman): Wow, if you were published before Chloe Gong and got there first, then everyone would worship you!!! Chloe Gong is not even that good. She is just good at TikTok!
Hong Kong Girl: I am so upset that Chloe Gong set a book in Kowloon Walled City. I was going to do that! Feifei, why do you even like Chloe Gong? I don’t get why you support her.
Vietnamese Girl: Oh my gosh. Feifei, you write just like Chloe Gong!
B: Wow! I think everything you do remind me of Chloe Gong!!!! It’s like so Chloe Gong of you to write about courtiers and antiheroes. It’s SO SO SO Chloe Gong of you to want to be a writer. IT’S SO CHLOE GONG OF YOU TO EXIST!!!!!
After a few months of this, every time I heard the name Chloe Gong, I got incredibly angry, not at Chloe Gong, but at the fact that people couldn’t fucking understand that Feifei Z is NOT Chloe Gong, and Chloe Gong is NOT Feifei Z, and two Chinese women are NOT carbon copies of each other, and that we are NOT the same person!
Chloe Gong was born in Shanghai. I was born in Chengdu. She moved to New Zealand and went to school there before attending college in Pennsylvania. I was fighting a war in a small southern town in the United States so I could one day be free and be safe. Chloe Gong is not spiritual. Feifei Z is spiritual.
But nobody ever cared about anything that I had to say on this topic, nor did they even seem capable of viewing Chloe Gong as another person and not just their own projection. Because they want the same readership as Chloe Gong. They want people to flock to them and honor their writing the way so many do for Chloe Gong. They point to Chloe Gong’s success as something that they think will one day belong to them. They think Chloe Gong is just an external manifestation of their ego’s delusion. And they think that by talking to Feifei, they are talking to Chloe Gong, and that by putting Feifei down, they are also putting Chloe Gong down.
Because deep down inside, they don’t want me or Chloe Gong or any other Chinese Diaspora there. Because they want everyone to worship them. They don’t care about inclusivity and social justice. They just do a bunch of online virtue-signaling for social capital. They claim to support diversity as a way to deny the fact that they are oppressors-in-denial.
But that was just the start of it.
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Standing Up For Myself
In my other blog posts, I had already talked at length about the smear campaign that “A” launched, the terrible cyberbullying that “A” and her petty friends perpetuated against me, the mass digital abuse hurled toward me and my Filipino-Polish friend when we stood up for our own people, and the literary agents who told the two of us that our writing is good, but they can’t ever sell it.
I also talked about the social media clout-chasers who present themselves as writers for brownie points, but don’t actually care about writing, nor do they know how to write, nor do they understand that 3 TikTok tropes do not make a good book, nor do they know how to respect other people’s boundaries, nor do they have a sense of self.
But I never really talked about B. And after meditations and conversations, I realized that some things must be said.
To give you a clearer picture of B outside of her inability to understand that I am not Chloe Gong, she is the type of person who pretends to be nice to you so she could get something from you, but deep down inside, she never really cares about anyone or anything other than her own ego.
Soon after I started talking to her in early 2021, I realized that she had a tendency to send me 20+ short messages where it’s just her talking at me. Don’t get me wrong, I send bursts of messages too because I feel very deeply and am very eloquent. But I always reply to every single thing that the other person says. I reach out and talk to them about their feelings. I make sure that they are okay. If I see an opportunity that doesn’t align with me, but may align with them, I forward it to them. I always view other people as other people. I always aim to respect other human beings, to stand up for what is right, and to demonstrate good character.
But when it came to B, she rarely replied to any of my messages unless it was to force her thoughts and misinterpretations onto me. And soon, she started to talk down at me and acted as if she knew me better than I know myself.
I cut her off in July 2021 because she was insensitive, selfish, and manipulative.
But sadly, we ended up attending the same college, and we somehow found each other again, and we didn’t know too many people there, so I decided to try again with her because she was 18, and I was 19. And maybe she would mature in college.
We did try to reconnect in-person in September 2021. She invited me to lunch, and I met her at the dining hall. Immediately, she started to talk about herself and how she got not 5, but 6 offers of representation. She did it in a way where she just kept going about how great she was. I said probably five things, four of which was to congratulate her out of kindness. As soon as I started to talk about something else, not even about myself, she redirected the conversation back to her querying process.
And I remember clearly how she never asked how I was doing, how I was feeling, how I was faring. She got mad when I tried to communicate my feelings to her, and she told me that she felt that our conversation was like a “bad first date” because she thought that “I wasn’t ready to reconnect.” All because I stopped congratulating her for getting 6 offers of representation and that I actually wanted to communicate candidly about reciprocation from her and talk out any potential misunderstandings to see if we could rekindle our friendship.
I did not hear from her again until March 2022 where she once again talked about her book deal and made everything about her. And it was very tiring. I did manage to talk to her about my feelings and what happened in July 2021, and I had some flashbacks about some things unrelated to her, and I started to cry. And she got up and hugged me, and she tried to comfort me. We went to her dorm later, and she actually managed to talk about some other things, even though a majority of it was still largely about herself, and she did offer me some words of affirmation. And I thought that she was changing, so I decided to give her another chance.
But then the Summer happened. And she never stood up for me. She never checked in with me after I got bullied by those terrible people on Twitter. She never checked in with me when people dogpiled me and my best friend. She never stood up for me the way I had and will always stand up for Adrian. Not just for Adrian, but for all of my good friends, my partner, my mom, underrepresented writers, good people, and so many more.
And always, I will stand up for myself.
My partner was there for me throughout the entire summer. She actively listened and held me while I cried. One of my best friends, Lucas, rarely drops the f-bomb during our conversations. But when I cried to him about what had happened, he dropped two f-bombs and said that those bitches were fucked-up. And when I reconnected with Adrian after a period of chosen isolation with my partner, we vowed to stand with each other no matter what.
These people are the real ones because they care about my feelings too.
These people are the real ones because they always give back.
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Mixed Feelings
I spent the 2022 holidays with my partner, then I decided to take publishing into my own hands. I wrote about my feelings at the end of that year in a letter to myself. I learned how to design book covers, format the interior, commission artists for illustrations, and many other skills that I will continue to build upon for the rest of my time on Earth. I brought together 4 other Chinese Diaspora and we filmed a music video in celebration of the 2023 Lunar New Year. I advocated against the unjustified rise of Sinophobia, talked to more Chinese international students on campus, and spearheaded a lot of other creative projects for my people.
But every time when I remembered Chloe Gong, I felt nothing but sheer indignation.
I had only read These Violent Delights at the time. It was on my second shelf, collecting dust. I went ahead and bought Our Violent Ends, Foul Lady Fortune, and pre-ordered a signed and personalized copy of Immortal Longings from the Astoria Bookshop where Chloe Gong went in and signed copies for everyone.
But something changed when I did my reread of These Violent Delights. The first time when I read the book in November 2020 and finished it in May 2021, I enjoyed it a lot. I was very grateful for Chloe Gong and I loved the cultural references, the pinyin, the descriptions of 1920s Shanghai, the action scenes, the banter between Juliette and Roma, the budding romance between Marshall and Benedikt, the tension between Rosalind and Kathleen, and everything in between. I luxuriated in all of her lush prose, and I really looked up to her.
But I became more critical the second time in July 2023. I was trying to prove something to myself. But what exactly? I started poking holes at the book that I once thought of as a favorite. I caught a few historical inconsistencies, and I thought to myself that I would not have made those mistakes. I forced myself to read Our Violent Ends. At the start, I wasn’t very happy because in the theater of my subconscious, I was still trying to prove something. What exactly? It wasn’t jealousy because I didn’t want to be traditionally published. I didn’t lust after what she had built for herself.
My publishing goals had always been simple: release to speak myself and to exist out loud, release to stand up for the human heart and the Natural Truth. I do it for the writing, for the Soul, and for the Real. I didn’t care about sales, clout, audience, social media, or any marketplace. My values of literary integrity and creative autonomy are at odds with traditional publishing, so I had chosen long ago to never work with publishers or literary agents.
And just sharing spiritual wisdom and art for the sake of it was what many Indigenous, ancient, and non-Western societies had done for millennia prior to the transgressions of Western colonialism that engineered the Industrial Simulation, prior to the forced erasure of non-Western ways of knowing and being. Storytelling around the fire was about community and expression, not branding and marketability.
So I kept reading Our Violent Ends. And in the middle of that book, I started to enjoy it again, and I flew right through it. Then I read Foul Lady Fortune and I swooned over Rosalind and Orion. My signed copy of Immortal Longings came in from the Astoria Bookshop alongside the UK special first edition that I ordered from Waterstones. I showed both copies to my mom, and I asked my mom to watch the interviews that Chloe Gong did on TV. My mom said: “不错嘛。她不错。”
But even after Chloe Gong got my mom’s approval, I still felt very bitter every time I thought of her. And it didn’t help that in Spring 2023, B texted me again and asked to grab lunch. I thought that maybe by scrutinizing the source that had altered my perception of Chloe Gong, I would arrive at my answer. So I met B at the dining hall.
Somehow, B and I started hanging out every Tuesday before my class. She seemed to have changed with her debut novel’s release date rapidly approaching. We went to local bookstores together where she pitched her book. I thought that maybe by helping another young writer, I would recover the thing that I had lost.
But what was that thing exactly? Did I lose my desire to support other writers? Not really. But I did feel bitter every time I looked at a book because it reminded me of the abuse that I shouldn’t have suffered on social media. But I thought that maybe by helping B, I would rediscover my passion of uplifting other writers.
I got my professor and so many others to check out B’s book, but still, it didn’t feel quite right. I did mean every bit of the support that I had given her during those times, but something was still missing. Something profound, something intrinsic.
I didn’t feel right for a very long time after that summer in 2022.
B did celebrate my birthday that year with me. She grabbed lunch with me and bought me the final copy of The Green Bone Saga, which was my favorite book series at the time. I thought she really changed because she started to listen to me more, offer suggestions, talk more about how nervous she had been feeling about publishing, complain about how her boyfriend at the time was not living up to her expectations, and how traditional publishing had been very disappointing at times. She talked less about herself than before and did seem like she was making an effort to change.
But looking back, she was a liar through and through.
And I was going through really confusing times. I was about to graduate college in 2023. I didn’t want to work corporate. I didn’t have a chance to process exactly what had happened to me in the summer of 2022 in addition to all the things that had happened to me as a teenager, things that I couldn’t process until I got to a safe place, things that haunted me in the dead of night, things that I tried to drown out by taking up so much work that my partner had to constantly remind me to eat, or I just wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to. But because I didn’t feel the hunger most of the time.
And in hindsight, I realized B kept reaching out to me because she wanted to feel good about herself and that she wanted to exploit my kindness as supply. She only ever texted me when she needed me to look over 80 pages of her manuscript that were due in 2 days, or when she had a book event and she needed people to go, or when she needed to have lodging for a summer internship, or when she needed someone to drive her because she didn’t have her license.
And every time when I went with her to a bookstore, she always put me down. But I know what I am doing. I always know myself. It was just hard to hear myself think back then because people like her kept talking over me. But it’s not my problem that she didn’t understand. And every time when I helped her, she was never appreciative. Instead, she chose to be passive-aggressive and rude without realizing that I could’ve just not helped her at all.
It got even worse when she kept complaining about L, one of the Gen Z writers in that group chat that I created, but then I left. B told me multiple times how she thought that L was never a good writer, and that L only got an offer of representation and sold their book because L was writing about Deaf/HoH characters. She said she hated it when L shared their accomplishments with the group chat and when other members cheered L on. B said that L always “made everything about themself.” She said that even though she hated L, she needed to maintain good relations with L for business purposes.
In hindsight, she was only treating L as a mere asset to benefit her own publishing career, and she was only treating me as someone to call when she needed a picker upper or a supporter, and she was only treating her boyfriend at the time of many years as a tool for validation while complaining about how he refused to serve her needs while his mental health took a nosedive. And instead of helping him as any good person would do for their partner, she was mad that he couldn’t provide for her like he used to.
Even in 2024, as I worked to phase her out of my life, she continued to compare me to Chloe Gong. Eventually, she admitted to me that she never even read These Violent Delights or any other book by Chloe Gong. So how was she going to repeatedly compare my writing to Chloe Gong’s when she never even read Chloe Gong’s books? Oh, I know. I told her that my books are rooted in my heritage. And Chloe Gong’s works are also inspired by our shared heritage. It makes you wonder about the intelligence of someone like B when she cannot even grasp the basic phenomenon that two Chinese women are not the same person. I would not be surprised if she confused Jamal with Andre, Yuliana with Maria, or Yukiko with Chaeyoung. Good writers have heart and substance and critical thinking skills. I guess industry will publish any rectangular fart if they can make out with the money afterward.
And B told me one time how she felt that Rebecca F. Kuang was pretentious despite being a good writer. And I wondered if she was feeling butthurt because someone like her could never write something as profound as Babel. She was a Letty through and through.
Wait a minute, B was making some serious progress there. She was beginning to understand that Chinese people are not just Chloe Gong or Feifei Z. She was able to comprehend the existence of a third Chinese person who is neither Chloe Gong nor Feifei Z. Awwwww. She’s getting there. Let’s just hope that she does not start calling me R. F. Kuang. Don’t tell her that there are currently more than 1.4 billion Chinese people alive right now. Baby steps are needed here.
Anyways, when I saw that Samantha Shannon was getting new covers for The Bone Season, I was really excited and shared the news with her because none of my other friends knew about Samantha Shannon. The article talked about how Shannon published the first book of The Bone Season when she was 21. And I was hoping to celebrate Shannon with B because I thought that B couldn’t possibly complain about another white woman’s win, right?
B: Don’t send me this.
Me: Why? You don’t like The Bone Season?
B: “Bestseller at 21.” Ugh. Don’t send me stuff like this. Makes me feel bad, okay?
But yet, she kept reaching out to our university’s student newspaper to brag about how she got a book deal in college and how successful she was. There are at least three to five articles about her same book deal published by our university’s newspaper over the past few years.
And I remembered how she told me that she looked up the snippets of other people’s writing on social media solely to put them down so she could feel better about her own writing.
And I remembered a conversation that we had in June 2021, about how excited I was to see that there were other authors on campus whom we could talk to. But she only scoffed and said that they were self-published, and she pulled up an excerpt of their books, only to hate on the first pages repeatedly and wondered why they even bothered publishing. All of those other authors on campus were white women like herself.
Ah. So she thought that she was not like other white people.
She also told me that all traditionally published authors thought themselves above all self-published authors, and that everyone will hate on those at the top until they get to the top and get hated on themselves, and that she only ever views her manuscripts as products, and nothing else.
She also questioned why I didn’t seek external validation, why I would bother publishing if I didn’t want to make it big, why I refused to market, why I didn’t care for other people’s opinions.
B: Feifei, publishing isn’t just about writing and a flashy book launch.
Me: I don’t care about a flashy book launch. I write for the sake of writing, and I just want to put my stories out there for the sake of it.
B: What’s the point of you doing that?
What is the point? The point is that people like me have historically been told to shut up, have historically been deprived of the resources to speak, have historically been disenfranchised and discriminated against. So I choose to fight back by speaking, by existing out loud, by unapologetically being myself, by publishing my writing despite the odds, by standing up for True Reality and humanity one word at a time.
I do not need external validation because I love myself and I am fulfilled on the inside.
And publishing is quite literally just making your books available to the public. Publishing is not inherently a business or a social media circus. And a good book is not the same as a good sales pitch. People resonate with stories, not best seller lists.
And for B to repeatedly claim online that she is a social justice activist while also hating on self-published authors is ignorance at best and hypocrisy at worst. Because some of the most revolutionary writers throughout history, especially those who had suffered under authoritarian regimes, were the ones who had chosen to circumvent traditional media and distribute their writing in the form of pamphlets and zines.
Modern self-publishing has democratized self-expression for underrepresented communities in unprecedented ways. Yet, all B could focus on is how much “better” she is because she got picked by a publishing house. Empty people chase empty titles to make themselves look better than how they feel about themselves. But if anyone can publish nowadays, then being published wouldn’t make her special, so she must tell everyone that traditionally published writers with their accolades are better than revolutionaries and minorities who choose to speak themselves on their own terms, who choose to defy oppression and fight for their people.
But you see, accolades are just social constructs. They are not real.
And a person like B is a cancerous tumor in any creative community.
I share all of this to help other creatives who may be struggling with someone like B, someone who seems so sweet and innocent when she talks to you, someone who carefully curates her reputation online and flashes dazzling smiles at those who attend her events, someone who raves about how authentic and supportive she is of other creatives on the university newspaper, someone who calls herself your best friend as a way to psychologically manipulate you into serving her own needs.
That person is not your friend. That person is using you.
You and I deserve so much better than someone as ego-driven and selfish as B.
At first, I was just going to phase her out and call it a day.
But then that conversation happened in October 2024.
And I realized that the only way forward is to speak, speak, speak.
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Exposed
In October 2024, after not talking to B for months, she suddenly reached out and told me that her boyfriend was breaking up with her and that she felt very depressed. Looking at that made me feel some kind of way. I didn’t want to talk to her, but she kept saying how she was feeling very bad, so I thought I’d keep it brief.
She ranted about how her boyfriend had another fight with her, and how she was angry because he was right about her. And I asked her what did she plan on doing next? I thought she would finally repent. But instead, she told me that she was angry because she should’ve been the one to dump him and not be the one to get dumped.
I was not happy for her boyfriend because he deserved so much better than being used and played and emotionally abused. She kept ranting about everything, talking at me, and eventually the conversation turned sour when she asked me how I was doing in grad school.
I was not happy in grad school, so I vented about it for roughly ten minutes over a voice call. I told her that it was hard for me to talk to people in America who didn’t understand my way of knowing and being, my spirituality, and my advocacy for artistic integrity. I told her that I had a hard time trusting other people after what had happened to me online two years ago. I also told her that the commodification of human expression is very problematic to everyone worldwide and to the environment too.
She immediately accused me of “talking at her” because I stopped talking about her for ten minutes. And she wondered aloud if she were to leave the room, would I even know. I was not very happy about her rudeness and insensitivity. But before I could say anything, she told me that she valued active listening, and that she said I should go to a psychiatrist and ask for them to diagnose me with autism.
I was flabbergasted at that statement.
Me: Why would I do that?
B: Because you obviously have autism and you think that there are Spirits out there and that the Earth is alive and you think that it’s spirituality, but you just have autism. And you think that there are multiple worlds of existence. And you just need to get diagnosed.
Me: First of all, this is spirituality. Second of all, spirituality is not the same as autism. I’ve already seen some therapists in the past who never mentioned anything about autism. I know what I have, and that is my spirituality.
B: You need to see a psychiatrist instead. Most of my friends are neurodivergent, so I would know.
Me: Did you see a psychiatrist then? Did you get a diagnosis from a psychiatrist?
B: Ah, well, you bring up a good point. How do I know that I’m neurodivergent even though I never saw a psychiatrist? I mean I just know myself. I know it’s neurodivergence.
Me: I know that I am spiritual. I know—
B: Look, I am deeply disappointed in you for being so ableist toward autistic people.
Me: How the hell am I being ableist when I am just being honest that my spirituality is NOT the same as autism—
B: Look, I have strong feelings about this. Okay? You need to unlearn your internalized bias toward autism.
Me: Oh. I see what’s going on. You’re one of those people who only claim to be neurodivergent when you are being called out for bullying and belittling other people. It’s not okay to misrepresent neurodivergence and autism as a shield to get away with your misdeeds that have nothing to do with neurodivergence and autism because—
B: So? You need to stop being ableist. Chinese people hide behind their marginalizations all the time.
Me: How the hell—
B: Look, you are a queer woman of color, a lesbian, a Chinese immigrant, and you refuse to accept that you hold subconscious ableist biases? I am deeply disappointed in you and what you choose to stand for.
Me: What the—
B: I’m not trying to call you out. I don’t want to expose you or anything. But I’m just calling-in. You can improve. You can do better. You just need to accept that you are ableist. And I’m gonna hold you accountable by calling-in. That’s a term used by women of color. I’m gonna hold you accountable.
Me: I am not an ableist for speaking the truth about my spirituality—
B: Look, I am all about active listening. And you are wasting my time with all of this. And by the way, that man in your class didn’t need to know that you were on your period. Why would you go around telling everyone that?
Me: I didn’t! He asked me if I was feeling all right first—
B: Well, not everyone needs to know about your period. And you need to learn how to stop oversharing on social media because nobody cares. Literally. Nobody. I saw this article on the NYT written by someone who said we would all benefit from knowing less about each other, okay? You’re wasting my time about this man. So I’m gonna go study. I have a paper to write. Bye.
Me: I am not even on social media. You are the one who is always screaming about yourself on social media—
She hung up.
I messaged her about how unfair she was being.
She did not respond for days.
And that was the last straw for me.
First of all, she didn’t understand a damn thing about non-Western spirituality. She knew nothing about Chinese folk beliefs, nothing about Buddhism, nothing about Shamanism, nothing about Hinduism, nothing about Daoism, nothing about Indigenous Wisdom. She knew nothing outside of her ego.
And yet, she repeatedly claimed to “champion” diverse books and Indigenous voices on social media while actively invalidating some of the most fundamental beliefs about the Earth and the Spirits and Other Realms of Existence held by a lot of Indigenous and non-Western people.
Second of all, every time when I tried to bring up my spirituality in the past, she mocked it. She thought that it was weird and insane when such beliefs were the norm in most places prior to the transgressions of Western colonialism. And Chinese folk beliefs are still widely practiced to this day.
But B automatically associated something she thought to be weird and insane with autism. And she always used the label of autism as a shield to disguise her narcissism.
So when she actively chooses to further the stigma toward autism through her deliberate misrepresentation, and when she automatically equates autism with something she considers to be vulgar and peculiar, she is the ableist that she accuses other people of being, and she is a hypocrite through and through, and she needs to quit projecting.
Then she had the nerve to pull the race card on me when she is white, when she would never understand the prejudice hurled at people of color, especially women of color, on the daily, by hypocrites like herself. And she had the nerve to claim that she was actively listening when she was actively interrupting me. And she had the nerve to claim that she supported women of color while actively disrespecting the woman of color she was talking at. She exploited everyone and everything around her for clout and validation.
I feel for that kind boy who was once her boyfriend because he probably got it way worse than I did. I feel for L, who had no idea that B was talking so much shit about L behind L’s back. I feel for all the people she had lied to at her book launch, claiming to support other young writers while actively looking up their snippets just to mock it and tear it apart. I feel for Chloe Gong whose name she weaponized to keep down other Chinese Diaspora. Then she would post pictures of herself with Chloe Gong for clout with her disgusting fake smile as if she actually cared about Chinese people.
People like B are the basic white bitches who are at once mistrusted by people of color and dismissed by other white people who are trying their best to unlearn the toxicity of colonialism. People like B are poison to creative spaces. People like B are just there for the prestige and the clout while putting writers of color down, then they would go on to claim that they are not like other white people, and that they would give their lives to support non-white people and Indigenous communities.
And then people like B would go on to antagonize conservative lawmakers, screaming bloody murder if the men did not give in to their “activist” demands. But instead of helping the social justice cause, these Not-Like-Other-White-Girls are just providing ammunition to the conservative lawmakers who would then open fire on the actual activists and underrepresented people whom B claims to fight for.
Wow. To call her disgusting would be a severe understatement.
We should not be punished for the hypocrisy of people like her.
I sent her several long messages that called her out. Then I cut her off without waiting for her response because she wasn’t worth my time.
Then I finally figured out why I had felt indignant every time I remembered Chloe Gong.
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Not Our Burden
I was never angry at Chloe Gong. I was angry at the toxic people in publishing who told me that it was either Chloe Gong or me. I was angry at the terrible systems in place that pit creatives against each other, that falsely preach the lie of competition when True Nature operates in cooperation, harmony, and communion. Just look at animals in harsh climates. They work together to stay alive and eventually thrive.
Then look at these virtue-signaling hypocrites who claim to support diverse voices, who talk themselves up during every interview, who make it seem like they genuinely care about people who don’t look like them. They don’t understand anything about social justice. They just think that diversity is a trend and a ticket to profit and fame.
They don’t want two Chinese women in the same room because they only want one as a token to disguise the fact that they never wanted any of us at all.
The pain that I had felt every time when I thought of Chloe Gong, when I read her books, when I tried to criticize her writing, came from the fact that I never truly wanted to hurt her. And the thing that I was trying to find in her books, the thing that I was trying to prove, was the Truth that I had lost along the way. The Truth that told me that she is never my competitor, that it doesn’t have to be just me or just her, that a long time ago, I had looked at her with appreciation, and she had encouraged me to keep writing in 2019 and in 2020 prior to her debut when she could’ve just never responded to a message from a stranger.
But she responded with such detail and such heart. More than once.
And I wanted to prove to myself that it didn’t need to be a battle royale.
Because I don’t want to hurt Chloe Gong. I don’t want to hurt someone who looks like me, who shares the same dream that we both turn into reality, who never gives up in the same way that I never give up, who understands the pain of being forced to be either just smart or just pretty, who truly knows what it’s like to grow up in the West as a Chinese Diaspora, who gets it when I say that China probably wouldn’t welcome us back with open arms, but we can only ever be perpetual foreigners to Western people.
I don’t want to hurt her by competing with her. I don’t want to put her down. I don’t want to invalidate her experiences that are just as valid as my own. I don’t want to cause pain to another Chinese Diaspora, to a fellow Descendant of the Dragon, to a sister with the same ancestors who had been tortured by people like B, to a human being whom I still wholeheartedly supported deep down inside.
I don’t want the death of Chloe Gong’s career to be the birth of my publishing journey.
But the Truth of the matter is that it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Truth is that we both have a right to do our own thing. And the real culprits are the ones who want to keep us both down, who want to bury our people.
And after reconnecting with my loved ones and real ones, after fully embracing my spirituality and choosing to speak the Truth despite the devourers, after so many serendipities that had led me to discover so many decolonial scholars worldwide who are all fighting to preserve their valid ways of knowing and being, for my valid way of knowing and being, for our valid ways of knowing and being, I realized that I was never alone.
And I have many good people in my life.
And I will never buy in to the lie of scarcity-driven, colonial, capitalistic infighting.
I am not Chloe Gong. I am Feifei Z.
And Feifei Z will always support Chloe Gong’s right to exist, Chloe Gong’s right to express herself, Chloe Gong’s right to publish, Chloe Gong’s right to be, and Chloe Gong’s right to thrive. And both Feifei Z and Chloe Gong will continue to support other Chinese Diaspora writers who deserve so much better than the limitations of the daughters of colonizers who had made our Chinese ancestors bleed and wail and die.
And if you are a fellow Chinese Diaspora writer, remember that your kin is not your enemy. Do not fall for their 反间计.
不要让你自己也成为敌人手上的刀。
龚心怡，飞飞支持你。
ㅤ
My Name Is Feifei Z
I stand up for non-Western and Indigenous ways of knowing and being. I stand strong with my fellow Chinese Diaspora and other underrepresented communities fighting back against the insidious shadows of colonialism and the ego of devourers who aim to extract and sabotage.
I speak up for the Earth, the Spirits of Nature, my spirituality, my writing, my right to exist, my right to be, and my right to take up space. I will always assert my birthright as the subject of my life. And my life is my dominion, not someone else’s playground.
I stand in solidarity with my partner, my mother, and my friends.
I learn from the wisdom of past sages and present fighters. I am among the ones who will pave the way for future generations so they would feel less tired and lonely. I celebrate other creatives, other musicians and artists and writers and poets and actors and dancers and sculptors and painters and photographers, and so many more.
I stand for the Human Heart. I stand for empathy, for compassion, for sensitivity, for girls who refuse to shut up, for boys who refuse to kill their own hearts, for everyone and anyone who is tired of being exploited by the parasitic 0.1% that benefit from the forced labor of the 99.9%. I stand for the trees and the rivers and the bushes and the animals and the air and the gemstones and the birds and the clouds and the stars.
And I am just getting warmed up.
While those hypocrites keep on cannibalizing each other in that crumbling industrial skyscraper, their eyes filled with the simulation and their throats full of each other’s bones, I am smiling on the mountaintop. I am one with the Stars.
I do not need external validation or social media clout to know my worth. I do not need other people to read my books to write my Truth. I do not care to cater because I was not born to serve. It’s not that they don’t want to work with me, it’s simply that I don’t need to ever work with them. I came to this planet without their permission, and I don’t care to seek their approval now. I just keep going. I just keep shining. Even after the storms, I keep smiling. And if they try to hurt me and my loved ones, then I will make them regret it by publicizing the Truth that they want to bury.
Because I am that person that they wish they never messed with.
And I am just getting started.
And I am not the only one out there.
My people are everywhere, not just the Chinese Diaspora, but all the humans around the world who are fighting to reclaim our Souls and to protect each other.
So stand up and speak with your kin.
Your voice matters. Your people matter.
You and I have every right to exist because we are here, we are alive, we are real.
I am currently wrapping up my second poetry book, My Sky Is Full Of Light, for publication. I am also finishing up the companion rap song to the same book. The song is titled My Legacy with the beat produced by my friend, Kidnxtdoor. I will send out a newsletter containing the links to the print book on release day.
I hope everyone is having a good day or night. I am so grateful for my loved ones and my friends and my former professor who will be receiving this newsletter.
And if you are into YA cyberpunk, keep an eye out for Chloe Gong’s upcoming book, Coldwire, that will release on November 4, 2025.
Take care!
The cover photo for this blog post, Bird In Flight, was taken by Feifei Z in January 2025.