ORDINARY DISASTERS

Musings on race, gender, parenting, and mortality.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, race and gender scholar Cheng was already battling cancer. She was also parenting two children, navigating an interracial marriage, grieving the death of her father, and managing her aging mother. During this time, the author writes, “it felt as if I was at war with everyone, including my partner and my own body.” The purpose of the essays she collects here, Cheng states, is to find “a way back to myself, or more accurately, to arrive at a self that I have yet fully owned.” On this journey of self-discovery, she writes about her memories of her grandparents in Taiwan, her experience of anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, her changing relationship with her teenage son, her husband’s incomplete understanding of her racial experiences, and her childhood in Savannah, Georgia. While many of her essays hone to traditional narrative structures, others lean toward the inventive, most notably “Things Not To Do to My Daughter When I’m Old,” a poignant, tongue-in-cheek list of the author’s mother’s foibles that she hopes will not become her own. The strongest essays are the most personal, in which Cheng speaks frankly, vulnerably, and insightfully about how her multiple identities affect the most important aspects of her life. In these pieces, she flows effortlessly between her relationships and insecurities and scholarly, historical, and pop culture references. While a few of the essays temporarily break this mesmerizing spell by slipping entirely out of the personal and into the academic, overall this is a lovely collection.

Tenderly written essays form a beautifully intimate memoir.