LITTLE SEED

A psyche untangling itself from family lore.

In a tense moment in this debut memoir, Tchou describes how she suspected her older brother was having a psychotic break while she was showing him her Times Square office. Not knowing what to do, she played along with his delusions. When the author shared her worries with her mother, she chided her “for being sensitive.” This is how it goes in Tchou’s family. The author grew up in a small Chinese American household, “the baby,” the only girl, the only one with no personal memories of China. Instead of memories, she has inherited stories—of what it means to be a daughter or to be Chinese—and a longing to gain approval by upholding the familial truths. Resisting family stories has always felt dangerous, as though love were contingent on loyalty. Tchou is at her best when she keeps us close to her family dynamics, even as she pauses, achingly and beautifully, to contemplate who she is and who she wants to be: “Though my entire life had been fashioned from overlapping stories, the wild, true thing that animated them had remained unknown to me. I was starting to feel it move under my hands, and though it terrified me, I knew that it wouldn’t go away.” Then there are the ferns: The author delivers long passages about spores, fiddleheads, identification, and classification, creating a book that is admittedly “half fern and half family.” Belonging, guidance, a coherent worldview—Tchou passionately seeks all of these. With ferns, however, she can luxuriate in just “liking,” which “doesn’t contain the desperation of wanting or the cost of a need.” Liking something involves “no stake in what it means about me,” just “my imagination bursting forth.”

An intriguing, occasionally uneven family memoir grafted to a cultural history of ferns.