west coast line 44

Initially, we found ourselves receiving a number of essays responding to Larissa Lai's novels, "When Fox is a Thousand" and "Salt Fish Girl." Intrigued by this material and what has turned out to be a strong and growing interest in her work, particularly from a new generation of scholars, WCL

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approached Lai about the possibility of lending her name to this issue. To get her consent, we promised we wouldn't do anything "too weird," meaning we would have to come up with a strategy or approach that would somehow work against the usual expectations of the special issue. From the outset, we have attempted to use this issue as a generative occasion, an opportunity to explore the web of cultural connections running through the writing, to meet and read a group of writers who share our interest in the various concerns - thematic, aesthetic, and political - raised in Lai's work, and to otherwise deepen our relationship with contemporary cultural production.

(Abstract from Editors' Notes)

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