Yi Shun Lai

http://www.thegooddirt.org

Bio

Yi Shun is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, and the nonfiction editor of the Tahoma Literary Review.

Why I Visited A Historic Japanese Internment Camp

The first thing you notice is the remarkable landscape. The day we arrived, early in February, the Sierra Nevada range was entertaining the idea of a snowstorm, and they looked capped, much shorter than they ought to be. Surmountable,…

Politics isn't the End of Love

My parents-in-law are the nicest people on the planet, and although they do live in the heartlands of Wisconsin, I don’t just mean they’re “Midwestern nice”: They came to my MFA graduation. Some friends and I did a triathlon in Switzerland, and they…

Why I Had To Move Away Before I Could Return Home

“Home is where the heart is,” sure, but my parents prefer my brother’s variation. He says “home” is wherever Mom and Dad are. I thought a lot about that as my husband and I made the move from our home in New York to the place I’d left 17 years…

I'm An Aid Worker, And You Shouldn't Go To Nepal

Less than 24 hours after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, killing over 7,500 people and leaving a reported 8.1 million in need of humanitarian aid, relief efforts were in full swing. The aid agency I volunteer for mobilized our first team of…