Book news :)

and Thursday is my favourite weekday

Hello friends,

Since I’ve last written, everyday life has carried on. You know, the 9 to 5, the tube rides, the unread emails, the grocery shopping, the wash-ups, the Sunday laundry, the evening walks, the afternoon naps I may not have actually earned, the leaks in the kitchen, the bookshop visits, the occasional splurge on flowers, the flu pills and the cough syrups, the cocktails and the roobois teas, the dinner parties and the takeaways. Just everyday life carrying on.

The quotidian hasn’t changed much. I haven’t either. Amidst all things magical and mundane that make up my ordinary life, however, I did manage to fit in something slightly more extraordinary over the past year: I wrote about the everyday as it is experienced between languages and silences.

It’s my first book, and it’s called Speak Still. It’s published today 24 July by 404 Ink.

Here’s a little blurb below, if you’d like to find out more. You can also order a copy here.

I’ve done an interview with my friend Tim Tim about this book, and you can read it here on the Tint Journal.

Speak Still confronts colonial silencing by asking out loud: why do non-native speakers of English feel estranged from the English language, despite having known it since childhood? Is it possible for us to own this silence? If so, how can we find our eloquence from our experience of speechlessness? How can we bring the foreign language home?

Blending personal narrative and cultural criticism, Speak Still takes Tong’s bilingual experience in Hong Kong and the UK as a point of departure and reflects on the meaning of language, selfhood, and belonging. Through poignant observations of everyday life as it is experienced between languages, Tong conceptualises a possibility to communicate and connect beyond words: by reclaiming silence as an interlocutor that interrupts cultural homogeneity and creates space for the unheard.

Speak Still shows that this silence, indeed, speaks volumes.

Today is just another Thursday. As the book comes out, I’ll most likely be at work making yet another cup of coffee or sitting through yet another meeting. But I genuinely can’t think a more special day for this little everyday miracle to happen - amidst all the calls, the emails, the chores, and so on.

My heart is so full of joy. Above all, Thursday is my favourite weekday.

I hope it’ll be yours too.

Warmest wishes,
Lam x