* Specially recommended by Hong Kong writer-in-exile Chung Yiu-wa, psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Wu Yi-cheng
* Illustrations by Hong Kong artist and indie singer-songwriter Tsang Wing-hei
* The "backstage" of The Book of Departure author Kim Kei-kei's life theater, a work that peels back layers and reveals the self.
After years of preparation, Xiaoxie Publishing House launches a brand new series: Writing Diaries. The first release is a collection of diaries and poems written by The Book of Departure author Kim Kei-kei between 2019 and 2024, titled "After I Die, I Also Want to Turn Blue."
As a form of record, diaries have always held historical significance as personal histories, and have gradually gained importance in modern humanities, social sciences, and psychology. "Writing a diary" itself involves deconstruction, collage, picking up, gathering, cutting the seemingly continuous daily life into fragments, and then reassembling these fragments into meaningful segments. Through diaries, individuals can summon the experiential subject and engage in dialogue with it.
Over the five years of writing this book, Kim Kei-kei, through continuous creative journals, poetry, and essays, never stopped dialoguing with her inner self, delving into the depths of language, in search of a more appropriate name and a more authentic way to describe experiences and emotions such as pain, suffering, agony, depression, and trauma. As the book states, the only way to place them is to write them down. Writing them down is like a ship dropping anchor in the ocean; the hook of the anchor delves deep into the seabed, allowing the drifting and aimless person to temporarily find their place in the world.
In this book, recommender Wu Yi-cheng quotes a passage from Iranian-American anthropologist Orkideh Behrouzan's ethnography "Prozak Diaries": "Sometimes, we adopt languages that comfort us and help us understand our experiences (such as the language of psychiatry). These words can alleviate the burden of uncertainty and shame, and certain tones can best project our desires. Over time, these languages, tones, and silences gradually change how we understand our stories, including ourselves, and how the world continues to operate." This is the power of language and words, and also the power of writing and narrative.
