• In 2017 26-year-old Kai Cheng Thom burst onto the literary scene with a novel (Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, Metonymy Press), which in spring 2019 was chosen by actress Emma Watson for her feminist bookclub, which has over 200,000 participants. Kai Cheng is also the author of a poetry book (a place called No Homeland) and a children's picture book (From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea). A place called no homeland was a finalist for both a Publishing Triangle and Lambda Literary Award for trans literature, and Kai Cheng herself won the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ Writers. From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea has been acclaimed for its warm portrayal of a non-binary child who tries to figure out what they want to be with the love and support of their mother; it recently appeared in a New York Times article listing "12 Books for Feminist Boys and Girls" (link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/upshot/twelve-books-for-feminist-boys-and-girls.html).
• In addition to her books, Kai Cheng has published many passionate and engaged essays, in venues such as xojane and Autostraddle, on her experience as a trans woman of color as well as many questions that delve into the murky waters of personal and socially progressive politics. This book, I Hope We Choose Love, is a collection of Kai Cheng's essays, both new and previously published over the past four years, as well as a new suite of poems that provide a literary counterpoint yet are as fiery and personally engaged as her essays.
• Kai Cheng was influenced by the work of queer and trans writers in the field of transformative justice, as well as queer essayists generally, especially Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha, Mia Mingus, and Sarah Schulman's Conflict Is Not Abuse. The book is also influenced by Kai Cheng's day job as a social worker working with young LGBTQ people in crisis.
• Subjects include society's culpability in a person's decision to choose suicide; the problem with enabling in queer culture; fragmented identity politics and the performance of virtue within the leftist community; the complexities of #MeToo and consent, especially from a trans woman of color's perspective; and the fallacy of "justice" as a means to address situations of conflict, violence or abuse.
• In Kai Cheng's own words: "I wanted to create a book that inspired us to remember love, mercy, and forgiveness as political values while also remaining honest about the reality of violence and abuse."
