Day 18: "As Big As You Make It Out to Be"

Austin Woerner (Ploughshares, Fall 2023)

In this twenty-two-day series, we are counting down the days to publication (October 22, 2024) with a brief passage from each of the twenty-two essays included in The Best American Essays 2024. These excerpts were curated by Best American Essays Editorial Assistant Cheyenne Paterson and are presented in the order of the volume’s table of contents.

“It was true; I’d never been in love. Would that really make a difference in how well I could translate this book? ‘Love is one of the most central, universal human experiences,’ Su Wei said to me. ‘Every writer should have it—you should too.’ It wasn’t a stretch to see how romantic experience was relevant to this novel, but I sensed that Su Wei was perhaps more concerned for my growth as a human being. Though I aced all my Chinese tests, he would later tell me that he’d noticed how I rarely came to or left class together with other students. I was du lai du wang: solitary, someone who ‘comes and goes all alone.’”

—Austin Woerner, “As Big as You Make It Out to Be,” Ploughshares, Fall 2023.