Autobiography of H. LAN Thao Lam
Autobiography of H. LAN Thao Lam
Autobiography of H. LAN Thao Lam
Member Benefits
30% Off All Books - Savings that support storytellers, not stock prices.
Fight Book Bans - Every membership sends a book to LGBTQ+ youth in affected states.
Member Book Price
$18.00
$12.60
Couldn't load pickup availability
Description
Description
Situated between memoir, social criticism, and conceptual art, The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam is an incisive response to a modernist classic and an affecting exploration of the poetics and politics of our times. In her 1933 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein invented a new literary form by narrating her own story from the perspective of her partner, blurring the lines between portrait and self-portrait. Almost a century later, experimental filmmaker and artist Lana Lin has resurrected Stein's project to tell a different story of queer love, life, and artistic collaboration. At heart a candid chronicle of her partner Lan Thao's life journey from Viแปt Nam during the war, and her own troubled history as a gender-queer Taiwanese American, Lin draws in subjects as varied as photography, cancer, tropical fruit, 9/11, and Eve Sedgwick's eyeglasses, weaving an intimate landscape of living that is also a critical investigation of race and gender.
About the Author
About the Author
Lana Lin is a writer, artist, and filmmaker based in New York and Connecticut. She is the author of the book Freud's Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer and film and video works including The Cancer Journals Revisited. Her various works and collaborative projects (with Lan Thao Lam as "Lin + Lam") have exhibited at festivals and art and educational spaces throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, and New Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Gasworks, London; the Taiwan International Documentary Festival and Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute, New Taipei City; Arko Art Center, Korean Arts Council, Seoul; and the 2018 Busan Biennale. Having had three years of psychoanalytic training before dropping out, she sometimes still dreams of becoming a psychoanalyst one day.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Lin's ingenious and absorbingly tender book meditates on dyadic identity while honoring the miracle and the mundaneness of bonded life." -- Megan Milks, 4Columns "Lyrical prose, palpable love, and formal audacity coalesce to make this a must-read." -- Publishers Weekly starred review "Excited to read this! I would 1000% have bought this for the cover alone but Lana Lin is brilliant & I'm excited." -- Andrea Lawlor "A fresh take on a dual biography." -- Kirkus "Taking inspiration from Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Lin chronicles her partner Lan Thao's life and work in this genre-defying portrait." -- The Millions
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Dorothy a Publishing Project
Pub date:
2025-09-30
Length:
224 pages
The Allstora Membership
Membership Perks:
- Save 30% on all online store purchases
- Exclusive access to author's content
- You pay less, but authors still earn double
Membership Terms:
First Month:
$0.00
Monthly price:
$5.00
- To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
- One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.