Beating Heart Baby

God, tear me to pieces Lio Min. This choked me. This book hit me in some very particular and intimate ways and it hurt so much to read but also I love love love it. There’s definitely something about reading a story of found family in the literal place in which you grew up, grew away from, and left your own family. This book presses up on a lot of old bruises and I am very emotional about it. This is a debut and an excellent one. There were some things that didn’t quite work, some character choices that felt a bit off, but I mean, it’s a debut and it was still phenomenal. I am so excited to read Lio Min’s next work and see the progression of their writing as they hone their craft! I’m officially a stan. I’d like to share some quotes that I liked/ made me extra emotional: “‘Us’: a universe in a word” (Min, 16.) “Anyone who’s lived through history instead of learning about it carries that knowledge differently. But I also have to live as who I am” (Min, 61.) “But if Suwa really wants to pursue the musician life, that’s how he’s going to live. Passing through places, a comet with no destination except: farther” (Min, 98.) “Suwa and I love hard. You have to, when you grow up in an environment where all you know is loss but no one ever talks about it. So the things you don’t talk about sit in your chest and rot and rot and take over your heart. Until it becomes painful to even remember it exists, so in the moments when you actually feel, it’s like you’re being ripped apart. But I’m done living that way and I refuse to let him pretend he can, too” (Min, 110.) “‘...I’m so proud of you. You’ve grown into yourself here. Now the wake of your life is pulling you back.’ Then softly, ‘Let it happen, Suwa’” (Min, 139.) “I’d just turned ten when I came out to her. The first thing Sayo asked me was, ‘Do you want this to change us?’ I think about her phrasing all the time, the implicit understanding that gender both did and didn’t matter in how we acted toward each other” (Min, 145.) “All my faith has left my body / All my flowers bloom on graves / So maybe I can pass this body / On to someone who can still / Remember roses in the wild” (Min, 172.) “The worst thing about music is that other people get to hear it. [...] But I’ve always been listening for you” (Min, 217.) “‘Moonflower’s a breakup album, but it feels like it’s about a different kind of breakup, now. A message to the ones who loved me enough to let me go.’ ‘Your exit music.’ [...] ‘Like the opposite of entrance music. The music that plays when you have to leave’” (Min, 226.) “‘Isn’t this what it’s all about?’ I can practically hear Cola warn, Don’t. But I continue, ‘I’m here to share my story, the pain that’s shaped me into someone interesting, and you’re here to witness and regurgitate it for listeners. ‘I suffer, thus I’m relatable. I’m real. You can see yourself in me.’ But I didn’t get into music so other people would feel, I don’t know, reflected. Because I made music despite my own reflection, to make myself believe that what I saw in the mirror wasn’t all that I was or could become. Things are turning out okay for me now, but they were bad for a long time. All you see now is the shiny stuff, but it gilds a lot of darkness. And I don’t want anyone to go through what I did. I don’t want to draw a connection between my upbringing and my art. No one should have to justify their art with their suffering” (Min, 227.) “The world was always bigger than my world. I was always bigger than the outline that people who didn’t even know me drew for me. But now I’m stretching my arms out and letting the wind lift me higher” (Min, 230.) “These were the streets where, when Sayo and I were younger, all the neighborhood kids would run around, screaming in delight. The purest kind of scream, where your chest and your lungs and your ribs seem to disappear and it’s just energy blazing out of your heart. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m here. I’m alive. I catch the rapid bus right before it