“Both a song of survival and a summoning of ghosts, “How to Build a House” is not only a record but a recovery, a shipyard of stories that reckon with what it means to be displaced, to haunt your own home. In this reclamation of history and lineage, a “house” is more than a place: it’s a body, a blade edge, a belonging to the wounds that birthed us. With hunger and tenderness, Liang writes the Taiwan Strait as a specter, a gutter of grief. But he also shows us where loss makes its second life in the light. I am grateful for this haunting, for the way Liang sets all maps ablaze and rebuilds a home from the ashes. I belong to this book like a bloodline. When Liang asks, “When is a boat considered an island,” he answers by writing migration as mother tongue, showing us that we are our own homelands.”
– Kristin Chang
