Something Inside Me Knows: a Memoir

National Book Award winner and New York Times bestseller Malinda Lo delivers an inspiring memoir in verse about losing her language, finding her voice, and honoring her ancestors.

In 1978 when Malinda Lo was three years old, she sat on her white American grandmother’s lap in a wheelchair as her father pushed them across the wooden bridge at the border between the People’s Republic of China and British-controlled Hong Kong. She does not remember the crossing that redefined her life; she has only been told the story.

Lo brilliantly weaves a nonlinear story of immigration and identity, connecting her childhood in small-town Colorado to her grandmother’s experiences in wartime China.

Incorporating free verse, found poetry, and lyric essay, Lo’s debut memoir excavates the tangled roots of her hybrid heritage, exposing the unspoken pain of migration and the long shadow of the American myth.