on belonging, grief, and identity (with special guest Eddy Boudel Tan) Live at the Book Warehouse

What happens when you've spent your whole life fitting a mold — and you finally decide you've had enough?

This week, James sits down with Eddy Boudel Tan, Vancouver-born author of The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, recorded live at Book Warehouse on Main Street.

In this episode:

• The experience of being second-generation Chinese Canadian — caught between cultures, between expectations, between versions of yourself
• What Eddy calls "Asian rage" — the anger that builds when you're expected to minimize yourself to move through the world
• The loneliness of being surrounded by people who love you but don't really know you
• Why Casper, the novel's protagonist, keeps people out even as he falls apart
• The Buddhist concept of impermanence, and what it actually does to your relationship with fear
• Going home when home doesn't feel like home anymore
• Identity as oversimplification — and the liberation of letting go of the label
• The fleeting, morbid, weirdly hopeful thought: What if this is the happiest I'll ever be?

The Tiger and the Cosmonaut is available now wherever books are sold.

Find Eddy on Instagram at @eddyautomatic.

REMINDER: May 19th at the Book Warehouse on Main (4118 Main street) An Asian Heritage Month Celebration of Authors with guests Eddy Boudel Tan, Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho, and Donna Seto. Doors at 6:30pm

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