Why I write

My first experience with the English language was in Year 1, on my first day of school in Sydney after migrating from Beijing. I only knew “Hello” and “Goodbye”, but my parents assured me it would be fine. Oh boy were they wrong.

My first class ended with the teacher yelling at me, slowly too, like my lack of English was a mental development issue. I tried pointing at things, gesturing, moving around, but nothing would make her stop or help me understand what she wanted. I never got an answer, except that it was an absurdly cruel or at least incompetent way to speak to a six-year-old kid. And without parents who knew the language or any friends yet, I knew I was truly alone.

The next week, I checked out all the books I could carry from the library, and decided to stare at them and look them up in my translator until they started to make sense. A whole year later, I handwrote my first novel – a 200-page adventure about Mario and Luigi in an alternate universe. A friend paid me $4 on the spot for it, and it is one of the proudest moments of my life.

Writing and reading taught me that language is a superpower, that it can alienate, abuse, and destroy, as much as it can unify, comfort, and inspire. It is as essential as (and for) thinking, bonding with others, and learning, and though we may never live inside another, words can get us just a bit closer. When a writer speaks to a reader through a book, two imaginations weave a language of their own, and both end with an ethereal nod to the other – that yes, it’s true, we are all the same in our quest for meaning, our capacity for love and beauty and pain and despair and in that grand equation, no one is ever alone. And this is why I feel inspired to write.