Wei Tchou presents Little Seed at Stories Books and Café (LA), in conversation with Sam Cohen.
"Little Seed is what I want the future of literature to be." —Sam Cohen, author of Sarahland
Little Seed is an experimental memoir that braids together the narrative of the author's relationship with her brother and family with a deeply personal field guide to ferns.
The chapters move associatively, commenting on each other indirectly and drawing out questions of assimilation, race, class, gender, nature and the general problem of being and knowing. When the author's brother has a psychotic break, the rigid structure of the book itself breaks apart and the protagonist adventures to the cloud forest of Oaxaca in order to truly live: to know the world by experiencing it rather than reading about it or following the direction of others. Some persistent themes throughout the book: What does it mean to be Chinese? What is love and how best to love? What really is a fern?
Wei Tchou's essays and reporting can be found in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and The Oxford American, among other publications. She likes to write about food, nature, and the complications of identity. She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and has an MFA from Hunter College. She lives in New York City, where she is tending a lemon tree.
Sam Cohen the author of the story collection Sarahland (Grand Central Publishing, 2021). Her short fiction is published in Bomb, Electric Literature, O Magazine, Fence, Diagram, and elsewhere. Before coming to Oberlin, she taught at the University of Southern California, UCLA Extension, CalArts, and many Los Angeles Community colleges.