Yao Xiao

Yao Xiao is a writer and artist based in New York City. She is the author of graphic novel Everything Is Beautiful, And I’m Not Afraid, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Catapult, and Autostraddle. She is working on a book of essays about becoming an artist as a first-generation immigrant from China.

How an Ancient Chinese Painting Helped Me Understand My Place in America

In a time when she couldn’t visit her family in China, writer Yao Xiao visited the Met—and one painting in particular—once a week. What she learned was as much about herself as the history.