life rattle show no. 1334

Presented on thursday, March 12, 2015

hosted by laurie kallis

featuring

"Missing"
"Family"
"Scent"
"Off-White Cotton Dress"
"Outsider" and
"I'm Fine"
by Tian Tian Wu

tonight's Show

Life Rattle No. 1334 features six stories by new writer Tian Tian Wu.

Tian Tian Wu was born in 1991, in city Wenzhou, China, on December 26—Boxing Day, which also happens to be the birthday of Chairman Mao. She is an only child. In 1997, when Tian Tian as six years old, her mother left China for Canada. Four years later, Tian Tian and her father joined her in Canada and the family reunited in Toronto, on the other side of the earth from China. Tian lived in Toronto with her parents for three years, then in Wenzhou with her grandparents for three years, then back in Toronto by herself for one year, then in Windsor, Ontario, at a homestay, for four years. Tian Tian Wu now lives by herself in Mississauga where she studies linguistics and writing at university.

Tian Tian has written an incredible series of stories that document the life of a family in transition. From the narrator’s early childhood in China to her young adulthood as a university student in Mississauga, Tian Tian chronicles the breakdown of a marriage and the loss of a child’s sense of home. Her delicate prose both delights and devastates by turn, and nimbly captures the shrewd innocence of the narrator as she courageously adapts to all the changes in her world.