"I think so much of acceptance by foreign countries as immigrants, I think, lies with this ideal of assimilation. And assimilation in one respect, it's the negation of your own heritage and your own identity. Because it requires this kind of knowing adoption of a different set of standards and cultural practices, which are alien to you. And in order to assimilate, you have to make them feel as though they're your own. And I think that as a society we're trying to move past assimilation as an ideal for acceptance and moving into a more heterogeneous understanding of a culture that is able to absorb and tolerate different cultural practices and still preserve a common sense of identity that doesn't require necessarily assimilation.

My parents used to say, 'You keep your head down, and you just try to do better than anyone else. And that'll be enough.'"

How can we retell the story of America? In the United States of Amnesia, why does the Western celebrate cowboys but not all people who built this country? What does a Chinese-American hero look like in the 21st Century?

Tom Lin is an American writer whose 2021 debut novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu chronicles the story of a Chinese American outlaw seeking revenge during America's railroad boom. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making Lin the youngest Carnegie winner in the prize’s history. Tom Lin is currently pursuing an English doctorate at the University of California Davis.

https://twotreeforest.com

www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/tom-lin/the-thousand-crimes-of-ming-tsu/9780316542173/?lens=little-brown

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Image courtesy of Little, Brown and Company & Tom Lin