Excerpt from But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'You're fine there, are you?' the man said.

'Yep,' I said. 

'It's the Australian in you. Tough outback stuff.' 

I'd never been called Australian before. It was nice. The last time I had really thought of myself as Australian had been in grade one. It was play lunch. There were these older girls sitting in the crotch of the big tree. We called it the Paper Tree because of its soft, tearable bark. Ugly sunburnt skin on the outside, but when you peeled it off, it showed a secret peach colour. They told me to come play with them. Their faces were smooth as stones. They asked me what I was. When I told them I was Australian, they told me no. Then they sang a strange song that I had never heard before: ching chong ching chong. They dragged the skin at their eyes back, till their eyes were cuts. They asked me to drag the skin of my eyes back and I did it. They laughed and I laughed because it was funny and we were all good friends now. The weather was warm and the sun was gold and I. I was happy. 

Much later on Ma told me that when I was young, I thought I was white. I didn't want to be white or anything like that that. I just thought that was what I was because I knew I was real. I knew I was real and not made up because sometimes I tested it. Sometimes I bit my lip till blood came out and when the saltine pain came, I knew that I was non-fiction.

I took the tube from Heathrow to Green Park station. Green Park had deckchairs laid out and people were sunning themselves even though it was twelve degrees and looking like rain. I had only seen London in movies and I was pleased to see it looked and felt the exact same in person as it did on screen: grim and beautiful. This probably meant that I wasn't looking hard enough, but I was so tired of being clever. I was born clever because Ma was very sharp and shrewd and Ikanyu was very thoughtful and deliberate and they had passed these qualities on to me. And like immigrants everywhere they played without sheet music or instruments; every song they sang was improvised from start to finish. So, I had that too, a certain kind of freedom. It was the only real resource I had been born with and I exploited it fully. But I was starting to get sick of grinding my bones back into the dust to win scholarships and prizes and money and an existence. I was ready to enjoy the newborn pleasure of knowing nothing.

The philanthropic society's clubhouse looked right onto Green Park. I knew from the pamphlet Leon had sent me before 

I arrived that it was a Georgian building with yellow bricks. Rusticated quoins darted up and down the sides. I loved that new word: quoin. There was a cartouche that showed two angels holding up a globe with a ship sailing across it and, as if that wasn't enough, it had a festoon made of fruit and foliage dripping off of it. I walked up what I would have called the front steps but I now knew was a portico and peered at the Ionic columns with their scrolling, acanthus leaves. According to the guide, they meant eternal life, as well as sin and pain and punishment. That seemed to me like a lot of symbolic pressure for a thorny leaf. 

I was directed to my room and discovered it contained crystallised ginger biscuits on a plate with scalloped edges and a teapot and a pen and a white dressing gown and letter-writing paper embossed with the crest I had seen on the cartouche. That made me happy. The long trip had caused a long and mysterious problem with my back to play up again. It was stiff and sore from sitting on the plane and I massaged the places that burned bright with pain. Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I had an email from Leon asking me to meet him in the clubhouse's foyer. He arrived in rolled-up shirtsleeves and the kind of linen shirt that is very nice when initially put on but gets so creased it becomes three dimensional in places after a day's wear. 

Excerpted from But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu. Copyright © 2024 by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu. Excerpted by permission of The Unnamed Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.