SHORTLISTED FOR THE LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETS PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARD
“Required reading for the untamed soul . . . reminded me how to love others and myself.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed
A transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.

What happens when we imagine loving the people—and the parts of ourselves—that we do not believe are worthy of love?

Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, counselor, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she's always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred.

But then Kai Cheng found herself in a crisis of faith, overwhelmed by the violence with which people treated one another, and barely clinging to the values and dreams she'd built her life around: justice, hope, love, and healing. Rather than succumb to despair and cynicism, she gathered all her rage and grief and took one last leap of faith: she wrote. She wrote letters that were prayers, or maybe poems, or perhaps magic spells. She wrote to the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.

Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. She is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir Metonymy Press), the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2018), and the children's picture book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching and Wai-Yant Li. Her latest book is the essay collection I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes at the End of the World (an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in 2020). Kai Cheng won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers in 2017.

Kai Cheng Thom's profile page

• Short-listed, League of Canadian Poets Pat Lowther Memorial Award

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETS PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARD

“[An] intimate expression of self-acceptance and forgiveness, tenderly written to fellow trans women and others.”
—The New York Times

“Required reading for the untamed soul . . . In these tender and revolutionary poems and prompts, Kai Cheng Thom promises that there is no part of ourselves beyond saving. The collection reminded me how to love others and myself.”
—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed

“Heartrending . . . Thom's unvarnished honesty and earnestness immediately draws readers in. . . . This fierce and tender volume leaves a mark.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Kai Cheng Thom embodies revolutionary love. She shows us how to love others bravely, even those hostile to us, as a way to heal our own tender hearts. Her poems are vivid love letters, confrontations, invitations. This tiny collection contains all the wounds and caresses in the world.”
—Valarie Kaur, author of See No Stranger
“[This is] a gentle and radical book that’s ultimately loving and inclusive of all the nuances and contradictions of the world. At a time when it can be hard to love humanity, this book offers compassion for where we are and dreams for where we could be.”
—Shondaland
“Kai Cheng Thom’s new collection is a tender incantation against the failures of hope. In these letters, Thom reaches toward lost souls of all kinds: outlaws, movement martyrs, fellow trans femmes of color, and ‘the ones this world was never made for,’ to whom she sends poems that read like prayers, rituals to lay down our collective hurts. What is most astonishing, however, is the way Thom refuses to turn away from those who have inflicted harm, writing: ‘the world i dream of is big enough for both of us.’ I am grateful for these spells and balms, for the worlds of generosity this book dares into being.”
—Franny Choi, author of The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On