City Lights and Graywolf Press celebrate the publication of
The Memory Museum: Stories
by M Lin
Published by Graywolf Press
“An astounding talent with an unforgettable voice. The Memory Museum is a book for the ages.”—R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit
Stretching from the present day to the near future, from China to America and beyond, M Lin’s piercing and melodious debut captures the spirit of China’s One-Child Generation as its characters navigate homes and cultures, hopes and contradictions, survival and resistance. These frank, tender, and playful stories offer profound insight into the ambivalence of migration, the perverse ways race and class can operate, and what it means to be Chinese today.
The collection begins with “Scenes from Childhood,” in which a lonely, elderly woman in a dystopian reality remembers her grandfather’s village. In “Magic, or Something Less Assuring,” a politically divided couple goes on a divorce honeymoon in Morocco. “You Won’t Read This in the News” features four migrant workers during one night of petty theft and connection. In “Tough Egg,” a filmmaker thwarted by censorship untangles her fraught relationship to motherhood. Other stories portray a photographer reuniting with her first love in Beijing; the historic White Paper protests that ended the zero-COVID policy; and generations into the future, a newly instated Memory Museum where two sensory architects share their vision for a utopian world.
With daring political and creative commitment, The Memory Museum brims with joy even as Lin exposes the knife’s edge between powerlessness and agency, pain and intimacy, our memories and our futures.
M Lin is a Chinese writer and living in the US. Born and raised in Beijing, she writes in English as her second language. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, swamp pink, Joyland, Guernica, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. The Memory Museum is her first book.
R. O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Exhibit and a recipient of the Lambda Literary Duggins Prize. Kwon’s bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Prize. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon co-edited the bestselling Kink. Kwon’s books have been translated into seven languages and named a best book of the year by over forty publications. Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She is a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris.
Praise for the work of M Lin
“These stories are a treasure—moving, kaleidoscopic, ingenious. The Memory Museum marks the arrival of a bold and brilliant voice.”—Madeleine Thien, author of The Book of Records
“M Lin builds worlds bursting with all the complexities that humans hold—longing, hunger of all sorts, and the joys that make impossible any true shunning of the grief we must feel for having loved and lived.”—Dantiel W. Moniz, author of Milk Blood Heat
“Deeply felt and grounded in an intimate acquaintance with contemporary China, these wide-ranging stories portray villagers, protesters, artists, and petty thieves alike with empathy and grace. Nothing is easy for them, and the questions they raise are not easy for us. What an absorbing, probing debut! Wonderful.”—Gish Jen, author of Bad Bad Girl
“A book of astonishing vitality and vision, The Memory Museum encourages us to ask: What is and what ought to be the relationship between self and society?”—Megha Majumdar, author of A Guardian and a Thief
Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation