Translation is a gift: Creative Nonfiction by brenda Lin

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緣 The first word I translated from Mandarin to English for my husband was 緣. We had met on a summer study abroad program in St. Petersburg during White Nights, when, at the end of each day, the sun dipped below the horizon, just grazing the night, before it glided back up into the sky, and we felt as though time belonged to us. Or, maybe what we felt was that we belonged outside the borders of time. We were bright-eyed twenty-year-olds, newly philosophical and contemplative, but also wild…

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Umbilical Cord: Creative Nonfiction by brenda Lin

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Before my mother’s wedding day, my grandmother gifted her the umbilical cord that had dried up and fallen off her newborn belly, which Ama had carefully saved all those years. This is a common practice in Taiwanese families because Taiwanese people love homonyms and umbilicus, which is the navel, is pronounced like the word for wealth (臍/財) in Taiwanese, so that when one’s umbilical cord is returned, it is transformed into an ouroboros gift of good wishes. My mother showed hers to me when…

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