Yi Shun Lai

Yi Shun Lai, author of Pin Ups, does not fit the mold – whatever that is. When she was a pre-teen, Yi Shun\’s mother tried to curb her physical energy by giving her a subscription to \’Teen magazine, hoping it might influence her to be more of a girl. However, instead of absorbing makeup and clothing advice, Yi Shun clipped articles of girls who raced BMX bikes, played powder puff football, skied, and surfed. She pinned them all to her wall, creating a vision board for her ideal future.

How Yi Shun Lai achieved her goals was a bumpy ride, literally and figuratively. In third grade, the character Mole in the classic children\’s book Wind in the Willows became her beacon. Already, at a very young age, Yi Shun was looking for something she couldn\’t find or define, like Mole, who was looking for home with his best friend Ratty.

Childhood feelings and activities morphed into teen and then adult experiences. At 16 years old, Yi Shun Lai studied abroad in Austria, living with a family in a tiny village. It was there that she felt the exhilaration and freedom of living an outdoor life while bike riding through the woods with her host sister. The biking seed was planted. She would later develop her athletic skills in mountain biking, adventure racing, long-distance running, orienteering, skiing, volleyball, and more – some being quite a challenge. Outdoor sports seemed to be reserved mostly for men – at least that\’s what Yi Shun initially witnessed. Therefore, she gravitated toward super athletic guys, though the female athletes represented by the magazine clippings pinned to her childhood wall were also out there. She found women \”tribes\” and began to team up with them, too.

And then there\’s the Asian thing, the elephant in the room. Taiwanese American Yi Shun Lai grew up privileged in a community of White Americans in Southern California and not singling herself out as different. However, as she pursued the outdoor sports life, she realized that that\’s how people saw her – different. She was Asian and was supposed to be soft-spoken, more intellectual than athletic, and even foreign. In Pin Ups, she wrote about the annoying encounters and expressed the way she sometimes felt:

You know, I used to think it was good to stand out. But now I know better. You get tired of being the girl who\’s \”so articulate.\” Or \”so outgoing.\” Or \”so loud.\” Or \”so outdoorsy.\” Because all of that stuff, if you\’re living here in America, comes with the unspoken addendum: \”…for an Asian girl.\”

Yi Shun Lai has moved beyond the uncertainties of fitting into outdoor life and has discovered other women of color – Asian, Brown, and Black – who hike alone and do other things not expected of them. Pin Ups, Yi Shun\’s mini-memoir (extended essay), reflects how she has found, and can easily define, the fulfillment of physical activity and comfort in freely displaying it. Mole from Wind in the Willows would be happy for her.

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\”Dirt is bad; good girls don\’t get dirty.\” Yi Shun heard this as a child but sensed the belief\’s inaccuracy and continued to \”play\” in the dirt – then and now – and named her website, The Good Dirt. Visit it to read more about Pin Ups and her other books, including Not a Self-help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, an impressive Semi-Finalist for the Thurber Prize in American Humor. Yi Shun Lai was in good company with Trevor Noah, who won that year. 

As a writer and editor, Yi Shun Lai teaches in MFA programs. She also speaks regularly on communication, both business and literature. And when not busy there, Yi Shun writes her column for The Writer and is the Features Editor for Undomesticated, a travel website for, by, and about women. These are two of her many writing projects. She also volunteers for ShelterBox, an international disaster-relief organization.

Sign up for Yi Shun Lai\’s monthly newsletter, Reads & Eats, a book and foodstuff combination that highlights emerging writers.

Yi Shun, I love that this postcard is from your trip to Seoul, South Korea! It\’s beautiful, and I feel specially chosen to have it. Thank you for the note, too, with your added doodles and stickers. (Yes, I love the fish stamp.) Like you, I feel lucky to belong to the social media book community tribe!

Best wishes, Yi Shun. 🙂

~Anita~

For those who can\’t read sideways (which makes this postcard even more impressive), this is the written note:

Dear Anita,

Can you believe it\’s December already? How this odd, odd, year [2020] has flown by. Launching a book during a pandemic isn\’t something I would have said I would appreciate. But it has allowed me to see how deep the book community – readers, authors, & practitioners of great literary community like yourself – runs.

My extended essay, Pin Ups, is now on the shelves of a retailer I\’ve always wanted to work with, in part because of that community.

 This postcard is from Seoul, where I visited 4 years ago. I have been hoarding if for just the right reason. Looks like I found it! Cheers – 

Yi Shun

Pin Ups is published by Little Bound Books and can be found at Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI), major book retailers, and Indie book stores.

Postcard by Somssi