For Thomas Dai, names are maps-maps that have the power to define our identities. In Take My Name but Say It Slow, Dai writes of a river that runs only in the mind and a queer map housed on the internet; of love carved on the rocks of Chengdu and Arizona; of pounding the racetrack in Wenzhou, watching his grandfather fade from the world. He recounts a relationship that would literally go the distance from the American Southwest to China and back again, and a road trip chasing the memory of Nabokov the lepidopterist. And he reflects on the paths his parents took to build a life in America, and what it means to "return" to a place he never felt was his own.

Incisive and gorgeously written, Take My Name but Say It Slow offers a fresh perspective on motion, placelessness, yearning, and belonging, and introduces a sparkling new literary talent.