Book description
'Remarkable' Robert Macfarlane
'Gorgeous' Amy Liptrot
'Urgent and nourishing' Jessica J. Lee
Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo - where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been…
Why read it?
1 author picked Small Bodies of Water as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Reading the personal essays which make up this book, I felt completely immersed in the visceral, poetic scenes she laid out. I followed her as she swam in lakes, ponds, pools, and oceans in New Zealand, China, and England—and I slowly began to understand how she felt about her mixed Asian/European identity.
I love the way Mingya-Powles writes. I particularly appreciated how she uses language to demonstrate distance. In one essay, she described the Chinese characters of her name—‘a sun next to a moon, a tooth next to a bird’—and it made me gain a whole new appreciation for the…
From Emma's list on The best books about Asian heritage and identity.
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