Take My Name But Say It Slow: Essays

Description

Thomas Dai has never gone by his Chinese name, Nuocheng, fashioned from the Knoxville (Chinese: Nuokeshiweier) of his childhood and the Chengdu his mother called home. Seen another way, Nuocheng also contains the cheng of Chenggong: success. In one breath, his name speaks of a hometown, a geography, a half-baked promise to succeed. For Dai, every name is like a map, and every map can define identity.

In Take My Name but Say It Slow, Dai writes of a river that runs only in the mind and a queer map housed on the internet; of love carved on the rocks of Taipei and Arizona; of pounding the racetrack in Wenzhou, watching his grandfather fade from the world. He recounts a relationship that would literally go the distance from the American Southwest to China and back again, and a road trip chasing the memory of Nabokov, the writer and lepidopterist. As he reflects on the paths his parents took to build a life in America, he also asks what it means to “return” to a place he never felt he could claim as his own.

Incisive and gorgeously written, Take My Name but Say It Slow offers a fresh perspective on placelessness, yearning, and belonging, and introduces a sparkling new literary talent.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Thomas Dai
Published: 01/21/2025
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9781324066378
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 1.30″ H x 8.40″ L x 5.60″ W

About the Author
Dai, Thomas: – Thomas Dai teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho. He holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona and a PhD in American studies from Brown University.