This City Is a Minefield is a collection of reflective memoir and personal essays told from a genuine and unique voice about growing up and coming of age as a young gay Chinese man in Vancouver. Thoughtful and honest, the stories and essays recounted are unafraid of analyzing and criticizing the status quo, whether it be Chinese culture’s unfavourable view of homosexuality, or the gay community’s ill-addressed, rampant sexual racism. At the same time an intimate, tender love letter to Vancouver filled with mixed emotions – joy, nostalgia, sadness – Chan weaves together poignant, heartbreaking experiences of navigating and reconciling conflicting cultural and queer identities, complicated romantic relationships, sex and trauma, and overwhelming loneliness that coalesce to form a rounded portrait of a quiet soul on a search for love and belonging. This City Is a Minefield serves as a marker of life as a young queer person of colour in this modern age.
Details:
- Author: Aaron Chan
- Pages: 250 pages
About the Author:
Aaron Chan is a musician, filmmaker, and writer born and raised on unceded Coast Salish territories (Vancouver, BC). He holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and his writing has been published in literary magazines and publications including Plenitude, filling Station, Polychrome Ink, and Xtra. His piece “A Case of Jeff” won subTerrain‘s Lush Triumphant Literary Award in Creative Non-Fiction, and he has published a poetry chapbook, Romantic Hopeless. He is the author of This City Is a Minefield (Signal 8 Press), a collection of memoir and personal essays about growing up gay and Asian in Vancouver, and his first children’s picture book, The Broken Heart, is forthcoming in May 2024 with Rocky Pond Books. He is currently a Creative Writing MFA candidate at the University of California Riverside where he received the L.M. and Marcia McQuern Endowed Graduate Award in Non-Fiction Writing.
