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    How I Chose My Pen Name: On Racialized Names and the English Literary Canon

    Hello, my name is Charmaine Anne Li. That is my full legal name on all my documents, and everyone calls me “Charmaine.” However, I sign off on all my literary pieces as “Li Charmaine Anne.” Truth is, I’ve always been a little sensitive as to how “Asian-sounding” my name is. “Li,” after all, is the most common surname in the world, and is almost iconically Chinese. Growing up, the books I read and the movies I saw with Asian names attached to them were almost always exclusively about “Asian issues.” This gave me the impression that Asian writers can only ever write about Asian Issues and nothing else: no medieval adventure…