Co-authored with Nicole Chung

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Excerpt:

If Lea Salonga were your best friend, you’d always be thankful to have her in your life, but you’d also be great at making new friends. When meeting someone, it wouldn’t even occur to you to worry about whether you were coming off as too full of yourself, too insecure, too friendly, too cool, too meek, TOO MUCH. You’d never again dread a party or spend hours trying to pep-talk yourself into going — you’d have the ability to enter any space and talk with any group of people feeling perfectly at ease, while also helping others to relax and be their best selves.

Co-authored with Nicole Chung

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Excerpt:

If LeVar Burton and Yo-Yo Ma were your dads, there would be overflowing floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in all the rooms in your house—even the bathrooms—and every time you borrowed a book, LeVar Burton would make you choose another one to donate to the library. As you got older he’d make sure that every time you bought a book from the bookstore you also bought one to give to someone else, and this would be your religion, a practice you would never stop as long as you lived.

Co-authored with Bich Minh Nguyen and Celeste Ng

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Excerpt:

Another thing, Mr. Chinese Food Expert:

Don’t lecture us, or try to tell us we don’t get it.

We know a satire when it’s actually smart.

But your defense is—what’s the Chinese word?Oh—“horse fart.”

“You’re overreacting; it’s a parody,

You Asians really aren’t being fair to me!”

We’ve got news for you, my food critic friend:

There’s a lot more to Chinese food than chasing superficial trends.

While you were trying to make fun of foodie bourgeoise

You were perpetuating stereotypes of Asians egregiously.

“Increasing our fears”? “Simple days of Chow mein”? All

Offensive and outdated. Can you say “Yellow Peril”?

Co-authored with Nicole Chung

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Excerpt:

If Daniel Henney were your boyfriend, every house you ever considered buying or renting together would already have a window seat and a really classy turret. When the two of you finally settled in your dream home, he’d build you that crazy library you’ve always wanted – you know, the one from Beauty and the Beast, complete with a ladder on a track that you can swing around on when you’re in there “reading.”

The Rumpus's Dear Sugar asked for letters on what they were grateful for.  She published 94. Mine is the very last one of the entire series.

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Excerpt:

Because I believe in karma. Not the kind of self-absorbed karma that focuses only on your own life. But the kind of pay-it-forward karma that says good karma can be spread around, like positive energy that keeps jumping and building momentum. I think gratitude is like that too. That when you’re grateful for the good things, you want to help others have the good things too. So even if life SHOULD be filled with just good stories, in a way, it’s the gratitude that helps keep the good existing.