Bone

Today I woke up thinking about Fae Myenne Ng, whose voice I first heard on the radio by accident, and whose Philadelphia reading of BONE I attended despite the fact that it was 1993, a time when I rarely got out for such adventures. BONE is exceptional, the story of three sisters growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown. It is one of the most controlled, deep-plunging books I've ever read.

I waited in line that night to speak to Fae. I wanted to tell her only how her reading had given me the sound of her voice, and how that sound would now carry me forward as I finished her book for myself. The line was long, every person telling Fae something about their own life, and Fae listened, patient and gracious. When it was finally my turn to speak, Fae (still patient, still gracious) asked me the simplest hardest question: Are you a writer? I didn't know. I had been publishing short stories in literary journals, I said, and yet, I didn't know what qualifies one as a writer. I didn't know how I would know when I had crossed that line.

A few months later (and this was long before the ubiquity of email), I received a package in the mail—Fae's name on the return envelope. I remember shaking, tearing open the envelope, reaching into the pouch to find what was inside, and do you know what was inside? A pen. She had been traveling, she wrote, and had remembered our conversation. She was sure, she said, that I was a writer.

A pen.

I was forever wanting to read Fae's next book. I was always asking in bookstores, then googling, but there was nothing. Today, as I sat down to write this blog, I googled again, and my news of today is that Fae Myenne Ng has a new book due next May, something titled STEER TOWARD ROCK.

Between us she will always be the real writer. She will also always be to me one of those rare people (but not, by any means, the only one) who reached out, who said, Believe.