The Astonishing Color of After

Emily X.R. Pan is a Taiwanese American author of young adult literature. Pan’s parents immigrated to the United States from Taiwan. Her father is a college professor, and her mother teaches piano and guzheng, a Chinese stringed instrument. Pan began writing creatively in elementary school and was in contact with literary agents by age 15. She graduated from NYU with a degree in international marketing. Pan went on to receive her MFA in fiction from the NYU Creative Writing Program, where she served as editor-in-chief of the Washington Square Review. While in graduate school, Pan developed the idea for her debut novel, The Astonishing Color of After (2018), which received numerous accolades including the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Honor Award and the Walter Honor Award. The novel was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Together with author Nova Ren Suma, Pan co-founded Foreshadow, an online serial anthology of young adult short stories. Her second novel, An Arrow to the Moon (2022), was a finalist in the 2023 Locus Awards. Pan has taught at various institutions, and she currently serves on the creative writing faculties of The New School and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She divides her time between New York and New Jersey.

Although Pan’s novel is set in modern times, she references many historical Chinese and Taiwanese traditions and practices. Tongyangxi, or Shim-pua marriage, is the practice of selling young daughters as brides to be raised in their future husband’s adoptive family. This kind of arranged marriage was prevalent in pre-modern China and Taiwan, particularly among impoverished families. Pan’s own grandmother was sold to another family in this way, providing the basis for Waipo’s life in The Astonishing Color of After (2018). Shim-pua marriages ended in Taiwan in the 1970s. Ghost marriages, on the other hand, are still practiced in some countries to this day. In China, the practice dates back to the 200s B.CE. and involves a union in which one or both parties are deceased. The reasons for ghost marriages vary: they can preserve the lineage of the deceased, they are believed to soothe lonely spirits, and they can even be a form of bereavement therapy for the living. Finally, according to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, in 2018, Asian Americans were 60 percent less likely than non-Hispanic white people to receive treatment for mental health. In 2019, suicide was the leading cause of death for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders between the ages of 19 and 24. Mental Health America reports that one out of every ten Asian American or Pacific Islander young adults struggles with major depression.

Emily X.R. Pan’s second novel, An Arrow to the Moon (2022), explores similar themes of family secrets and parental expectation through the magical lens of Chinese mythology. For readers seeking to delve deeper into themes of parental death and the difficulty of living between cultures, Blessing Musariri’s All That It Ever Meant (2023) follows a grieving Zimbabwean family guided by a mysterious spirit. For a realist perspective on mental health as it intersects with racism, Maybelline Chen’s The Silence That Binds Us (2022) follows a Chinese Taiwanese American protagonist as she copes with her older brother’s suicide. Readers who enjoyed Pan’s focus on teen romance and art may be drawn to Kelly Loy Gilbert’s Picture Us in the Light (2018), in which artist Danny Cheng faces the ghosts of his family’s past while navigating the discomforts of young love. Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride (2013) is an adult novel which investigates the practice of ghost marriages in colonial Chinese culture. For readers who enjoyed Pan’s use of magical realism to untangle familial trauma, Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune (2019) by Roselle Lim follows an Asian American woman who inherits her grandmother’s restaurant after her agoraphobic mother’s death. Finally, A. S. King’s Still Life With Tornado (2016) provides a deeper look at the intersection of art, emotion, and mental health through the lens of a teenage girl.