The first time I encountered a book with queer characters must have been James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. At the time I remember feeling afraid of its intensity. Now it’s one of my most returned-to books along with Lydia Davis’ The End of the Story.

This is the story of the birth and death of my name, which means that it is a story about transition, which means that it is necessarily a story about the border between two places and the force with which one rends it.

This is the legacy of colonization. It is the mass extinction of identities and languages that can no longer exist because someone else said they were bad.

Through my mother’s recipes, I’m reminded of the resilience that flows in our blood. Instead of disconnecting from my body to survive, I nurtured it. Like me, cooking is hella queer and fluid. Every time I reimagine a dish, it can taste different depending on my mood.“How spicy do I want this dish to be today? “How sweet do I want this dessert?” It’s never fixed or prescribed. That’s what makes these evolving recipes — and the queer experience — so delicious.

When love is a matter of desperation, how do you even begin to know what it is you desire? It doesn’t matter what shape love takes. Or does it?

I don’t think it matters much whether Avatar: The Last Airbender is “respectful” of Asian culture. I think the show is racist, and also I like it. I’m interested in what we do with the sense of agency it gives us, how it allows us to critique the structures that exist and envision our own worlds.

At my Catholic all-girls middle school, I liked to tell people I was Buddhist. It was my feeble attempt at preteen rebellion. I enjoyed interjecting, “Oh yeah? Well, I don’t believe Jesus was real because I’m Buddhist!”

Alice Wu’s “The Half of It” has been for out less than a week, and it’s already become a classic. We brought together some of Autostraddle’s queer and trans Asian editors and writers — along with some of our writer friends and Generation Q’s Leo Sheng — to talk about the film, Alice Wu, and the current landscape of queer Asian media.