The Memory Museum: Stories

by M Lin

An expansive debut collection exploring the complex lives of women in China and the Chinese diaspora

Stretching from the present day to the near future, from China to America and beyond, M Lin’s piercing and melodious debut captures the spirit of China’s One-Child Generation as its characters navigate homes and cultures, hopes and contradictions, survival and resistance. These frank, tender, and playful stories offer profound insight into the ambivalence of migration, the perverse ways race and class can operate, and what it means to be Chinese today.

The collection begins with “Scenes from Childhood,” in which a lonely, elderly woman in a dystopian reality remembers her grandfather’s village. In “Magic, or Something Less Assuring,” a politically divided couple goes on a divorce honeymoon in Morocco. “You Won’t Read This in the News” features four migrant workers during one night of petty theft and connection. In “Tough Egg,” a filmmaker thwarted by censorship untangles her fraught relationship to motherhood. Other stories portray a photographer reuniting with her first love in Beijing; the historic White Paper protests that ended the zero-COVID policy; and generations into the future, a newly instated Memory Museum where two sensory architects share their vision for a utopian world.

With daring political and creative commitment, The Memory Museum brims with joy even as Lin exposes the knife’s edge between powerlessness and agency, pain and intimacy, our memories and our futures.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, China, Short Story Collection, Aapi

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 21, 2026

About the author

M Lin is a Chinese writer living in the US. Born and raised in Beijing, she writes in English as her second language; her mother tongue is Mandarin, which she favors in speech. Her short story collection, The Memory Museum, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in April 2026.

Her work has been published in Ploughshares, swamp pink, Joyland, Epiphany, Fence, and Best Debut Short Stories 2023 (Catapult). Her nonfiction can be read in The New York Times, Guernica, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her translation appears in Harper’s Bazaar China, Words Without Borders, and Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins.

M holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College and a BFA in Film from New York University. An amateur pianist and a certified yoga teacher, she lives in New York with her partner and two furry children, Lisbon and Rothko.

Please follow her reading and writing musings at @the_memory_museum on Instagram.

***
M Lin是生长于北京的英文写作者和译者，现居纽约。她的首部短篇小说集《记忆博物馆》将于2026年4月由Graywolf Press出版。

Reviews

[可欣 · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best, and most technically well-written short story collection i've read so far this year... ive never, ever imagined id see a book that so intimately and honestly reflects my life, my conversations, my thoughts and feelings in this world. you think you get used to the constant sense of displacement you feel in both china and the US, that no one will truly understand parts of your life that are important to you, the memories of your childhood, and suddenly you see yourself in these pages. you go home every year a different person, and yet people who have stayed remember you as the one who has never left. the yulan trees smell the same as in your memory, and the memories bring you to tears. thank you m lin for writing this book; it's so close and dear to me.

[bookcookery]

While I enjoyed several stories in this loosely thematically linked collection, especially those set during the pandemic, some pieces were so brief they felt more like vignettes. These shorter stories lacked the distinctive insight to stand on their own, and the collection would have benefited from either fewer entries or more fully developed ones. The futuristic framing stories, in particular, were underdeveloped, with insufficient worldbuilding to support their speculative premises, and added little overall. They felt like a gimmick aimed at science fiction readers, and the collection would have been stronger without them, allowing more space to delve into Lin's exploration of the malleability and unreliability of memory. But overall, I enjoyed Lin's voice and areas of focus and will be keeping an eye out for future work.

Thanks to Graywolf Press and NetGalley for the advance reading copy.

[nathaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant and inspiring. several of the stories pay homage to cinema, while others draw from that tricky generational wellspring of collective chinese diasporic memories—but lin manages this with grace and skill and tasteful sentimentality. i cried a few times throughout this collection, although i was also high whenever tears fell. lin has a great command over tone. she has a deft touch with cruelties, subtly bringing forth their pains. and she has an even defter touch with kindness, how such a small thing can be so powerful and disarming. the only thing i couldn’t fully appreciate is the political stance toward china—at times the explorations felt like they were missing key points for why china is the china it is now. (or, as one character astutely describes it, why china, the chinese people, the chinese government, and the ccp are four different things.) but political semantics aside, a truly wondrous short story collection. excited to read more of lin’s work. and it’s so heartening to see excellent chinese american fiction published this year!!!

[Emi]

Writing a piece about M Lin and this collection of stories!

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of stories describing life in China in both the past and present. My favorite story was “Tough Egg” about motherhood, familial expectations, reproductive technology and taboos.

Some of the stories were strong and some were interesting ideas that had solid character studies but left me a little unsatisfied. A couple of the stories touch on life in China during the zero-COVID days and strict lockdowns of 2020—either by having characters argue about the issue or by describing life in some cities during that time. It was an interesting perspective to consider as an American who lived during very minimal lockdowns for a relatively short amount of time. It’s a very contentious topic and I think this collection captured some of that emotion but didn’t really leave me with much to chew on.

I also liked how these short stories touched on poverty, industrialization, life abroad, censorship, and authoritarianism. It was a very interesting collection of short stories and I appreciated having the opportunity to read it.

[Lyndsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

in the debut short story collection THE MEMORY MUSEUM, a pair of thieves keeps adopting the misfits they set out to rob, a couple on the brink of divorce embarks on a very last trip to morocco together, a woman lives in the shadow of her asymptomatic brain tumor. a "memory museum" allows you to visit your most treasured (or traumatic) memories, as well as the collective memories that make up a nation's forgotten history. stories are told from both china and america, and capture the complexities of people living between two cultures. i was especially gripped by the glimpses into china's zero-COVID policy, as i really wasn't fully aware of how devastating the lockdowns were, and the power of the protests that followed.

these stories were insightful, emotionally poignant at times, and completely original. i was blown away again and again by the prose, when a particularly striking turn of phrase would have me reading the same line over and over again.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

So exciting to find a new voice in fiction about China & Chinese diaspora !! These stories were so loving, and god bless, class conscious. Lots of fiction I’ve read about China tends to be flattening or tell a very simple cliché of an “immigrant narrative,” while M Lin draws characters from all walks of life, of different classes and provinces and life trajectories dealing with the shifting realities of modern capitalist China.

[Vivek Raman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. Reminds me of unaccustomed earth which I recently read, but actually explores some deeper class/political/gender commentary that I think was really poignant. I especially loved the chapter with commentary on class - the accountants relationship with the masseur, and the chapter that explored the relationships between the four strangers who were all experiencing poverty but found community with each other

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

M Lin gifts us a collection of refreshingly original stories, written with sophistication.

She also achieves what few writers who don't use punctuation for dialogue accomplish: Her writing is coherent without the punctuation. Their absentents does NOT interfere with the story. The reader is not left to tediously decipher who is speaking, and is left to, instead, focus on the content.

The Memory Museum was a joy to read.

[angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

imagine having madeleine thien and tony tulathimutte as ur teachers 😵‍💫