Dear Readers,
For one of us, it was the first book a librarian gave to her when she finally summoned up the courage to ask for a book recommendation—The Pink Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang. For the other, it was the one book she ever stole from her elementary school library—a book on mythology. (Not that it was okay to steal the book, but she will finally admit to it now, more than thirty years later, with the school shut down for good, and said thief living on the other side of the world from her hometown.)
We both went on to devour other mythologies: Greek and Norse, from Ares to Danae to Thor to Odin. We fell in love with all those myths about powerful gods being vulnerable, about humans becoming heroes. Such stories taught us about mythology, about the beauty of folktales and legends, and about how stories of gods and goddesses are also stories about the human heart.
But we never found similar compilations that were distinctly Asian. And so many times when we found Asian stories, they were ones retold by non-Asian writers that never felt quite right. They were always missing something. The stories felt superficial at best and at worst, quite hurtful. We longed for nuance and subtlety and layers, the embedded truths about culture that—more often than not—can only come from within.
That’s why this anthology is so important to us. Here, diasporic Asians reimagine their favorite Asian myths and legends from their own viewpoints. We would have been overjoyed to have found this anthology, filled with characters with skin and hair and names more like ours, in our beloved libraries. It’s the book that was missing in our lives for far too long.
Beautiful, heartbreaking, moving, and brilliant—there are not enough words to describe how much we love all of these stories. We hope that you will love them, too. To be able to bring this book to you, written by these amazing Asian authors, is a dream come true.
Elsie Chapman
Ellen Oh