#xiaolu guo

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo (orig. 芬芳的37.2度, 2000)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onDec 9, 2025

[every-momento]

navigating grief?

a concise chinese english dictionary for lovers, xiaolu guo // fleabag (2019), phoebe waller-bridge // staying with the trouble: making kin in the chthulucene, donna haraway // dalton day // the stranger, albert camus // on earth we’re briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong

[lazyydaisyyy]

I like what Flaubert said about Greeks. If you are a real artist, everything in your life is part of your art. The art is a memorial of the life.

Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

[dk-thrive]

I often find myself embarrassingly earnest as a person – it’s not very cool.’

Xiaolu Guo: ‘It would be tacky to ask: can you forgive me for writing this?’ Interview by Hephzibah Anderson in The Guardian, April 8, 2023.

[straycalico]

People always say it’s harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It’s exactly the opposite—a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you’ve lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there’s still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there.

Fenfang, from Xioalu Guo, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

Art by Toshi Yoshida

[verbal-betrayal]

“I feel sad about my life” you once told me. “Why?” “Everything feels empty and endless.” “What you want then?” “I want to find happiness.” “You can’t feel happiness at all times. Sometimes you will be sad. Don’t you think?” “But I don’t see any happiness in my life.” “Then what’s the most near happiness?” “… The sea.”

Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

[bookpillows]

Xiaolu Guo, A Lover’s Discourse

[krishnakhakhria]

One of my first articles for the BBC. (link here)

Published during my apprenticeship 15th March 2018.