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A review by fonkun
The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir by Karen Cheung
4.0
I’m not from Hong Kong, but I felt this book deeply. Like Cheung, I went to an international school before my parents switched me out to a local school.
“This is what most of my university is like: being vaguely international, identifying with being a third culture kid because I feel closer to “Western” culture than I do to Hong Kong’s. My international school education had distanced me from the city, and I failed to learn about the city’s political and colonial history during my local school years; my university years followed this natural trajectory.”
I’ve always found it hard to describe my struggle with who I am. All I can say is this memoir helped me process what I’ve been feeling for most of my life and I’m so happy I picked it up. Since Cheung uses personal narrative to document Hong Kong from 1997 to 2020, her memoir offers a peep hole into Hong Kong history and politics – I found this memoir unique and I’d recommend this memoir to Hong Kongers, anyone curious about Hong Kong, and anyone who, like me, is figuring out their identity, specifically where “home” is.
Thank you Random House for the gifted copy!
“This is what most of my university is like: being vaguely international, identifying with being a third culture kid because I feel closer to “Western” culture than I do to Hong Kong’s. My international school education had distanced me from the city, and I failed to learn about the city’s political and colonial history during my local school years; my university years followed this natural trajectory.”
I’ve always found it hard to describe my struggle with who I am. All I can say is this memoir helped me process what I’ve been feeling for most of my life and I’m so happy I picked it up. Since Cheung uses personal narrative to document Hong Kong from 1997 to 2020, her memoir offers a peep hole into Hong Kong history and politics – I found this memoir unique and I’d recommend this memoir to Hong Kongers, anyone curious about Hong Kong, and anyone who, like me, is figuring out their identity, specifically where “home” is.
Thank you Random House for the gifted copy!