Description:
Coping with the death of her cousin, Mei abandons her life in the city to live in his now empty house in a small town. There she connects with his history as well as her own, learns about her aunt's long-term secret relationship, and reflects on the trans women she has left behind.
Small Beauty explores the protagonist's transness, but it also tenderly yet bitterly unpacks her experiences as a mixed-race person of Chinese descent, cycles of death and loss, and queer and intergenerational community. Small Beauty wanders through isolation, and then breaks it.
Brief description:
jia qing wilson-yang is a mixed race trans woman living in Toronto. She likes to write poems and stories and music. Her writing has appeared in Bound to Struggle: Where Kink and Radical Politics Meet (ed. Simon Strikeback), Letters Lived: Radical Reflections, Revolutionary Paths (ed. Sheila Sampath), and the women of colour issue of Room magazine. She has recorded several acoustic albums and this one time was a drummer in a pop punk band. Small Beauty is her first novel.
Review Quotes:
"A quiet, gorgeous meditation on grief, race, and community." --Morgan Page, Lambda Literary
Wilson-Yang's spare prose unearths its quiet heroine's inner world with meticulous exactitude."Every moment of this novel felt like real life, in a way that felt both unremarkable and extraordinary at the same time." --Casey the Lesbrarian