Ken Liu and The Paper Menagerie and The Message™ and immigrant stories

 

Tuesday September 8, 2026 was a big day for Asian Americans that read and write books, because both Ken Liu and R.F. Kuang had new releases. Taipei Story for Kuang and The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories for Liu. It was a bigger day still for people in the Boston area (hey that's me!), because both Massachusetts-based authors held events in the city on that day. Big Ken Liu fans and big R.F. Kuang fans who ALSO pay attention to author talks in Greater Boston are probably a small population, but I'm sure there's at least one sad person out there who had to miss one of these conflicting events. 

 

Me? I was merely an aspirational fan of both authors having read 0 works from each (as of September 8). Ken Liu's event in Harvard Square was in conversation with Fonda Lee (another author that am a huge aspirational fan of; Jade City is perpetually the book I want to read next and never get around to), and that's the one I decided to attend. 

 

Ken Liu writes a lot of short fiction. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is the most well known collection, though several other stories of his were adapted into the show Pantheon. He's written epic fantasy novels (The Dandelion Dynasty series), at least one sci-fi thriller, and also translated several Chinese works (including The Three Body Problem—yeah I bet you've heard of that one). 

 

The new short story collection, The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories, was the main topic of this event. Unlike his prior collections, all of these stories share a common theme, but what that theme is is a bit unclear to me without reading it for myself. My impressions based on the discussion: I have a feeling this book will speak the most to other writers and artists in general: people that have put their work out there and have been taken aback by how it was interpreted. "Art requires misunderstanding," he said at one point. If someone reads what you write and derives the "wrong" message, is that a failure of imagination or a failure of craft? They talked about how there is never one single meaning to be taken from a story. "If I had a single thing to say, I would've just said it" made me LOL. They spoke about divisive media: how it's possible to love something and then discover that it's not-so-well-loved by the masses. How you can break established "rules" of a craft in an effective way. A lot of talk about stories and the way they are received. 

 

At one point, Ken mentioned his award-winning short story, The Paper Menagerie, how people have spoken to him about their own interpretations over the years, some that were unexpected. Of all the Ken Liu books/stories I've meant to read, The Paper Menagerie has always been at the top of the list, and this talk gave me enough motivation to go home and read it. In the spirit of this event, I just wanted to know what my own takeaways from this story would be. 

 

I purchased a signed copy of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories that night. The titular story is notably NOT the first story in the collection, so I did some rule-breaking and skipped to the middle of the book.   

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In one sentence, The Paper Menagerie (2011) is about a biracial boy's relationship with his Chinese mother who makes magical origami... go read it. 

 

This is a heartbreaking immigrant/diaspora story that feels familiar to me in uncomfortable ways. I cried some (a lot). To me, this story is about a mother's unconditional love, it's about how kids are shitty sometimes, it's about how young people struggle to understand their parents, it's about the power of one's native language, it's about being a foreigner in a new country, it's about feeling like a foreigner even when you're not one, and maybe it's about how the dead are watching over us à la The Lion King. I'm sure it's about many other things too.  

 

The Paper Menagerie makes me want to hold my loved ones close and try to be kinder even when it feels impossible. 

 

The speculative aspect of the story feels secondary; I think you could tell a very similar story without it. But it adds to the feeling of nostalgia and childhood wonder. The origami animals are a physical representation of the mother-son relationship, and I do think they are important. 

 

There's a very vividly relatable feeling here of being inherently different than your peers. I'm sure most people feel this in some way or another, and I look back and know it's not really a big deal. But when you're a kid it feels like the biggest deal when you're asked questions that other people don't have to answer. And I still hit scenarios where I feel like the strange one in a group simply because I grew up a little bit different. 

 

The mother's words about feeling English in the mouth but Chinese in the heart really struck me as well. I'm close to monolingual, so I can't directly relate, but I can imagine that one language will always feel the most natural and the most like home. And the way she's treated by the only person that understands her language broke my heart. Sometimes we don't deserve our parents. 

 

This story was a hard one to read. I don't really know grief, not yet. I wonder if reading about these things will be different once I've gone through it. Maybe it will be cathartic or maybe it will be impossible.  

 

Read: September 9, 2026

Rating: ★★★★★ / 5  

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Apparently this story was originally submitted to an anthology about wizards and was rejected, and I think that's pretty funny. 

 

These 15 pages took me 2 nights and probably 2 hours total to read, but I was taking notes and honestly have rarely felt motivated to read with my eyes these days, so it felt like a great accomplishment. Be warned, this one is a bit emotionally manipulative. I'm a crier, so I cried. 

 

Shout out to Harvard Book Store for this cool event. I hope to finish the rest of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, and maybe I'll pick up The Passing of the Dragon one day as well. 

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Diaspora stories can be so varied, but they all hit hard, and many of the themes are universal. I just started Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim, which is about a woman coming back to Korea after 20 years and meeting the version of herself that never left. I have never moved countries, but I do sometimes wonder who I would be if I grew up in my parents' home country. Even if you're not a first or second generation immigrant, the feeling of "what if" is universal. What if I chose a different major? What if I didn't lose touch with that friend? Who would I be if the world was just a little bit different? 

 

Nick (of Nick's Book Club) says Sublimation is "literally just past lives the movie but sci Fi so far." Hmm I will watch Past Lives after finishing the book. I will judge for myself.