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Kali Z.’s Grand Prize-Winning Essay:
I am a yin-yang.

I love watching my aunt’s hands. They’re full of wrinkles with hidden crevices, each line the vestige of a beautiful motion. I’m sure they’ve been through tough times, but that’s a secret too. Her hands are soft but deft, hands made for art but honed by labor. My aunt’s hard life is her yin, her lovely hands are her yang, one cannot exist without the other. She quickly twists a small piece of wire, pulls light pink mesh tights over it, and a petal miraculously appears. All around her quaint and modest home in the outskirts of Beijing, there are vases full of flowers – pink cherry blossoms, white daisies, yellow daffodils – shaped alive by my aunt’s hands. How much I’ve treasured these hands. When I was little, they knit brightly patterned sweaters to keep me warm. As I grew, they crocheted cats and dogs as gifts. Now, these same two hands thrust 2000 Chinese Yuan in mine, possibly more than she could afford to give but enough to let me know that I’ve grown up now. I want to force it back into her hands, tell her to use it on herself, on her sister who’s battling cancer, anyone else but the one person who needs it the least. But I’ve grown up now. Chinese courtesy means to accept it with humble appreciation, but always keep it in my heart, so that one day I can return it in my own way.

I am a yin-yang.

I love the brightness in an orphan boy’s eyes. His name is (Tian Duo Duo): the sky, so much, so many. So much what? Stars, perhaps. Love, maybe? Joy and perseverance and courage. He has eight toes so they had to amputate his foot. A small blemish in his complexion and his parents left him. Here, at the ChinaCare orphanage, his smile is wider than the sky. At the instant I look into those precious brown eyes, I know: Tian Duo Duo may be crawling now, but one day, he will walk on his own two legs. His yin may be his disabled leg, but from that comes his yang, his intelligence and will. I reach out, he grabs my finger. With the other hand, he makes a fist and pumps it up and down in the air: “ ! Kali, keep fighting!” I promise at that moment to keep fighting, to work hard to achieve my dreams as soon as possible. Only then, when I am a doctor, will I be able to treat my aunt’s cancer, my grandmother’s hypertension, and my mother’s incessant worry. If a one-year-old orphan can have such unwavering belief, I can too.

I am a yin-yang.

Here I am after twenty years of identity crisis, years of “can you speak Chinese?” and “do you eat Chinese food?” and “can you use chopsticks?” and I can resolutely reply, “Yes, I can!” I’ve finally figured out how to answer, “You’re lucky to be American.” No – I’m lucky to be American and Chinese. And the truth is, I love China. Once, I believed it was the land of pickpockets and Communism, but the truth is, China is the land of arching stone mountains, graceful green lakes, and people. People like my aunt and Tian Duo Duo, full of a liveliness and strength that inspires. Each person is a tiny piece of rice, filling the copious rice bowl called China, a rich bowl of many cultures, languages, and appearances. We may be loud, rude, and at times downright shameless, but underneath that, emanating from every person, is an everlasting love of life. Studying abroad in Beijing, I’ve found my own Chinese patriotism.

My yin is America and my yang is China.

I love McDonald’s as much as warm scrumptious chicken feet. I love the place that gives me freedom as much as the one that teaches me to embrace it. I love driving down peaceful suburbs as much as biking down treacherous lanes in Beijing, amid a hotpot of cars, bikes, and people, fearing for my life. I love quiet family dinners in front of the TV as much as eating with family friends, sharing drunken shrimp, white wine, and boisterous laughter. Like a body that dies without its yin or yang, the truth is, I cannot live any other way. I am as much American as I am Chinese, an amalgam of black and white, blending together to form a perfect whole.

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