“A gimmick, menace, curiosity” – those were the “nice” adjectives the men threw at Shirley Muldowney when she showed up to drive in her first drag race. They made it clear they didn’t want her around. But when she beat NHRA stars like Don Garlits, Don Schumacher & Connie Kalitta - NOTHING in drag racing would ever be the same.

After graduating from college, a first-gen Chinese-American revisits the places that defined each era of his life: early adolescence in the suburbs, fresh independence in a big city, and his ancestral hometown in China. Using the “method of loci,” or “memory palace technique,” he reflects on the relationship between familiar spaces and the vivid, often-poignant memories they conjure.