Personal Attention Roleplay by H. Felix Chau Bradley

And that meant that everyone saw us as the same person, two bodies with joined names, one personality with two faces, a coil of sameness.” They have been both co-conspirators and adversaries since they were very young: “We weren’t the same, though no one could tell us apart. Poppy is hellbent on getting Lola back – she begins writing her letters, one for each year of their shared and tumultuous lives, in hopes of convincing Lola to return, despite the fact that their relationship is anything but easy.Īs the letters accumulate, the many contradictions of their twinned existence emerge.

Her mother is barely present, and Poppy’s mirror twin Lola has gone missing, but nobody in the family is willing to do anything about it. Tsai, who has a PhD in dance, began her writing life as a poet, later moving into memoir before eventually excavating and reforming her autobiographical work to create Dear Twin, a complex and emotionally intelligent YA novel about mirror twins, family trauma, queer love, and self-discovery.Īfter some discussion over email, we met over FaceTime on the first day of the Lunar New Year – Addie in Houston, me in Montreal – to talk about literal and metaphorical twinning, queer Asian representation, reformulating YA literature, and the possibilities of healing in the aftermath of abusive family dynamics.ĭear Twin is the story of Poppy Uzumaki, a queer eighteen-year-old struggling in the confines of her domineering father’s house in suburban Houston. Addie Tsai’s journey towards publishing Dear Twin, her first book, has been circuitous – with many side roads, some dead ends, and plenty of footnotes, not unlike the novel itself.

Personal Attention Roleplay by H. Felix Chau Bradley