Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging

(Paperback)

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Wanting to understand how her path is tied to her mother tongue, Anne, a young, multiracial American woman, travels through China, the country of her mothers birth. Along the way, she tries on different rolesseeker, teacher, student, girlfriend, artist, and daughterand continually asks herself: Why do I feel called to make this journey

Whether witnessing a Tibetan sky burial, teaching English at a university in Chengdu, visiting her grandmother in LA, or falling in love with a Chinese painter, Anne is always in pursuit of intimacy with others, even as she is all too aware of her silences and separation. For two years, she settles into a comfortable routine in her boyfriends apartment and regains fluency in Chinese, a language she spoke as a young child but has used less and less as an adult. Eventually, however, her desire to know herself in other ways surfaces again. She misses speaking English, she feels suffocated by urban, polluted China, and she starts to fall for another man. Ultimately, Anne realizes that to live her truth as a mixed-race, bilingual woman she must embrace all of her influences and layers. In a world that often wants us to choose a side or fit an ideal, she learns that she can both belong and not belong wherever she is, and that home is ultimately found within.

Reviews

2022 IPPY Awards Bronze Winner in Multicultural Non-Fiction

2021 Indies Foreword Finalist in Multicultural

2021 Washington State Book Award in Memoir, Finalist

2021 Bronze IPPY award in Multicultural Nonfiction, Winner

"Heart Radical is a richly absorbing, deeply moving book about one woman's search for identity, enlightenment, and connection. It's also a tender travel memoir that takes the reader on an unforgettable and intimate journey with the author as she grapples with being a twentysomething American in China--the country from which her mother immigrated. I loved this book. It's vulnerable, searching, insightful, riveting and beautifully written."
--Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

"Anne Liu Kellor's intimate and revealing memoir Heart Radical concerns a struggle to know oneself--and to get into the heart of the Chinese people through language."

--Foreword Reviews (starred)

"Kellor has made a unique and tender contribution to the conversation about what it means to be fully alive."--Amy Reardon, LA Review of Books "Questions around identity, connection, and language can be even more complicated for multiracial Asian Americans--questions Anne Liu Kellor contemplates in her sensitive, soulful memoir, Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging... Most resonant for me throughout her memoir is her interrogation of both the usefulness and harm of silence; how honing her instincts as an independent person allowed her to find and use her voice."--Chin-Sun Lee, The Adroit Journal "Heart Radical does a great service to our society by shedding light on contemporary race issues with its deeply authentic portrayal of what it means to belong everywhere and nowhere in a world where being biracial is increasingly common, but not yet truly understood and accepted."--Zoe Ramos, South Seattle Emerald

"In Heart Radical, language becomes a rich metaphor for our own complicated and changing identities. 'To be radical, ' Anne Liu Kellor tells us, 'is to be rooted in your essential nature.' In this soulful memoir, Kellor looks to the many ways language is a means of communication, yes, but can also be a barrier to a full understanding of ourselves and of each other. In following Kellor's journey to China and back again, we find ourselves searching for what is most radical--most essential--in our own hearts."
--Brenda Miller, author of An Earlier Life

"A lovely, evocative book about travel and culture and love. And language and teaching and dancing. And intimacy. If you have never been to China and Tibet--or if you have been many times--you'll enjoy this fresh and honest perspective."
--Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History

"Traversing two countries across two decades, Heart Radical gets at the multiple meanings of the heart in word, in practice, in physical and emotional use and evolution. Vivid with sensory experiences, this book offers us the chance to travel not just with Kellor but also within our own interior landscapes to arrive at new and deeper ways of connecting to our hearts' most fervent and secret wishes."
--Khadijah Queen, author of I'm So Fine

"Through personal and historical recollection and the language of wounding, Heart Radical speaks to land and culture, selfhood and belonging. To live within and without language, to ignore or embrace silence. This memoir is a refuge, a legacy, a heart breathing in one continuous motion."--E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love

"As I read Heart Radical, I yearned to go back to China--Anne's writing makes my bones ache. Expect to be led on a journey of the heart, a journey that is striking, haunting, and remarkable, one where you can stumble freely and yet somehow find your way home."--Crystal Chan, author of Bird and All That I Can Fix

Author Bio

Anne Liu Kellor is a multiracial Chinese American writer, teacher, editor, and creativity coach. Her essays have appeared in publications such as Longreads, Witness, The New England Review, Entropy, Normal School, Vela Magazine, and Fourth Genre. Her work has received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Seventh Wave, Jack Straw, 4Culture, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods. She lives in Seattle, where she facilitates private workshops for women and teaches writing for the Hugo House.