Today is Chinese Language Day! It’s a day that has meaning for me because I speak a Chinese language (a language that isn't easy to learn as an adult), so I'm grateful I didn't have to go through the process of mastering tones later in life! At the same time, I acknowledge that it also brings about mixed emotions when I reflect on my journey of language discovery. Despite Chinese being my first language, I still feel like an outsider to the culture and world because I don’t speak the main Chinese languages that everyone thinks of. It’s been one of my pet peeves over the course of my life where a lot of non-Chinese people have attempted to guess what I speak, maybe not realizing that there are so many languages that exist (guessing for other people doesn’t always bode well 🫠). Lacking Mandarin and only knowing select phrases in Cantonese, this feeling of separation from other Chinese people is even more pronounced in living overseas as part of the Chinese diaspora. While...
This is a sequel that I've been quite excited about for some time, and I'm thankful that I was able to receive it as a birthday gift. I was also able to read it for the Clearly Christian Readathon backlist challenge. Code and Couture by Kristi Ann Hunter is about the "other twin" in the Trinket Sisters series, Amy Trinket, and it's such a wonderful complement to the story about Emma Trinket in Pixels and Paint . Content to be aware of : light editing required for enhanced readability, but not enough to detract from the overall plot Book Synopsis Code and Couture is a romantic story of fashion, faith, and finding your true purpose among everyone else's expectations. Amy Trinket's perfectly tailored life is unraveling. She allowed success and expectations to be defined by her mother, by society, and by an unspoken need for validation. But when she adjusts her priorities and has her questioning everything from her wardrobe to her ambitions, she resolves to...