The Story Game by Shze-Hui Tjoa (Paperback)

Nonfiction - Biography & Autobiography - Memoir - Asian & Asian American - Literary Collection - Essays - Psychology - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

RELEASE DATE: 5/21/2024 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

"Hypnotic, wise, and thunderously innovative."― T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

A transcendent, profoundly imaginative memoir that explores the complexities of sisterhood, the cost of expectation, and the power of storytelling to shape―and ultimately repair―a life.

In the humid dark of a eucalyptus-scented room, a woman named Hui lies on a mattress telling stories about herself to her listener, a little girl. She talks about her identity as the child of an immigrant, her feelings about being in a mixed-race marriage, her opinions on mental health. But as her stories progress, it becomes clear a volatile secret lurks beneath their surface. There are events in Hui’s past that have great significance for the person she’s become, but that have gone missing from her memory. What is it, exactly, that is haunting Hui? Who is the little girl she talks to? And who is Hui herself?

As the conversation continues, what unfolds is a breathtaking, unexpected journey through layers of story toward truth and recovered identity; a memoir that reenacts, in tautly novelistic fashion, the process of healing that author Shze-Hui Tjoa moved through to recover memories lost to complex PTSD and, eventually, reconstruct her sense of self. Stunning in its originality and intimacy, The Story Game is a piercing tribute to selfhood and sisterhood, a genre-shattering testament to the power of imagination, and a one-of-a-kind work of art.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Shze-Hui Tjoa is a writer from Singapore who lives in the UK. She is a nonfiction editor at Sundog Lit, and previously served as fiction editor of Exposition Review. Her work has been published in journals including Colorado Review, Southeast Review, and So to Speak, and has been listed as notable in three successive issues of The Best American Essays series (2021-23). Her work has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Disquiet International, and AWP's Writer to Writer Mentorship Program.

An intimate exploration of a woman's identity. . . . Memory, loss, trauma, and powerlessness emerge as salient themes in this probing memoir.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Shze-Hui Tjoa's The Story Game is a patient excavation of selves: not the I of today, but the version before and the one before that, flawed and flawing, all the way back to childhood, reaching through history and memory to dust free so many cruel reflections. Ardently exquisite, Shze-Hui Tjoa tenders astonishment with blushing tenacity.--Lily Hoàng, author of A Bestiary

Reading this, I forgot about the real room I was in. I felt fully contained in the invented room separating The Story Game's chapters. In The Room, Shze-Hui Tjoa makes make-believe serious the way children do--but she does it by playing with the memoir genre. As her storytelling progresses, she plunges, as the greatest writers have, to The Depths, revealing how the artistic process transforms her understanding of mind and body. Her ascent into The World is startling and powerful. After I read it, I felt a new world of creative possibilities opening. The Story Game is hyper-specific yet ethereal, serious and funny. It's mesmerizing.--Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl