惶然录：夕下图书馆
xia's sublunary library

this is my personal library. inside, you will find a collection of book recommendations, essays & esoterica; ruminations on literature, language, art, and life. i'm 梦霞mengxia, a depressed chinese cybernetic girlthing, very queer, a bit obsessed with literature and memory. i write sometimes, essays and fiction.

interests: literature (obviously), including literature from latin america & asia (including south & southeast asia), cinema, anime & animation, aesthetics and design, foreign languages, visual novels, science fiction, paraliterature, illustration, philosophy, theatre, cybernetics, games, and more. i love teaching and working with others, especially artists, and introducing people to new things!

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here are some of my favorites! as a short introduction. some of these i wouldn't recommend for newer readers of literature, but may be of interest to you regardless.

for novels, i am extremely fond of vladimir nabokov, especially his late era works: my favorite novel is his ada, or ardor: a protean and metaphysical family chronicle exploring memory, music, generational trauma and dreams, scifi, antiterra, dreams, consciousness, inversions, systems, tragedy, etc.

another favorite of mine is operation wandering soul by richard powers, in my opinion one of the most overlooked and underrated novels in american literature: drawing on powers's experience living in bangkok as a child, operation wandering soul follows the head of a pediatrics ward, tasked with treating and keeping morale up with the children under his care who are often hopeless, with rare and chronic diseases, from missing faces to progreria. they often stage children's stories and plays. it deals with themes of american imperialism and its lasting legacy on southeast asia, and especially the children who grow up in the shadow of 20th century imperialism, specifically drawing from the american psychological warfare campaign in vietnam, "operation wandering soul".

as written by deleuze & guattari, "the child is a metaphysical being".

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something connects us, even if you feel like you're the only person in the world. maybe it's just the sadness we share, but maybe it's something else. even if you're the last person left on earth. even if you walk the empty streets, endless, like wittgenstein's mistress, and no one responds to your calls. i love you. take care out there.