Matthew Salesses clearly remembers the first time he saw Jeremy Lin on the basketball court. It was three years before Lin became an international celebrity and “Linsanity” took over Madison Square Garden in New York City, but even then Salesses knew there was something special about watching an Asian American basketball player dominate on the court. More than a decade later Lin’s rise to fame - and the mix of recognition and racism he endured on the way - is the template for Salesses’s new novel and his latest examination of identity, masculinity, and belonging.

On this episode of Paternal, Salesses recounts his memories of “Linsanity” and the fallout in the sports media, as well as his own upbringing as a Korean boy adopted by an all-white family in a small town in Connecticut. He also discusses how he held onto hope and wonder as his wife battled cancer, and how he’s parented two young children after her death. Salesses’s fourth novel, The Sense of Wonder, was released in January 2023.

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