This Fish Is Fowl

I was attracted to this essay collection by its elegantly clever cover design. The duality of the fish and the duck image perfectly illustrates one of the recurring themes of Xu Xi's essays as she describes navigating a life split across several national identities. As someone who can feel 'at home' pretty much wherever on the globe she lays her hat, Xu Xi is very much a global citizen which, in this era of regressive nationalism and threats of stronger borders, is a refreshing outlook. Through the twenty-eight essays in this collection she explores questions of cultural and familial identity, especially as seen from her Hong Kong home - a crowded island city which understands cultural confusion only too well.

I loved Xu Xi's writing style and was entertained by her sense of humour throughout the book. I did find that overlapping information became irritatingly repetitive in the second half though. Perhaps this book is meant to be dipped into over a long period of time, rather than consumed within a week, in which case reiterating information might be useful to the reader. I found it meant I was sometimes skipping bits I had already been told and, consequently, losing the thread of particular essays.

Xu Xi doesn't shy away from intensely personal subjects such as her mother's Alzheimer's and her brother's death from cancer. She is also unapologetic about her multiple marriages and her decision to remain childless. This is absolutely not a stereotypically submissive Asian woman, yet I could understand and empathise with her questioning of whether she had actually chosen the 'right path'. I think this is the double-edged sword of women's slowly increasing independence and equality. In a world where we, theoretically at least, can now become anything, what should we each choose. Xu Xi discusses following her head to make this decision herself and then following her heart. With her personal and cultural background she approaches these big questions from a different angle to my own so I appreciated seeing and understanding the ways in which we differ in our outlooks, and also the ways in which we wholeheartedly agree.