How Michelle Yang’s Journey as a Fat Asian Woman with Bipolar Defied All Odds to Find True Love in Phoenix Girl
In my late 30s, when I realized the look I had been looking for still didn’t exist, I decided to heed Toni Morrison’s advice, “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
LL: Writing memoir is a profound experience. How did the act of writing this book change you?
MY: I had been in therapy for nearly 20 years before starting my memoir. I didn’t want writing the memoir to be an act of catharsis or healing. I wanted to have done the processing and write from a place of mental health advocacy and storytelling. Still I didn’t expect how difficult writing some of the traumatic parts would affect me and what unknown insights I would unearth.