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Reading is migratory, an act of transport, from one life to another, one mind to another. Just like geographic travel, reading involves estrangement that comes with the process of dislocating from a familiar context. I gather energy from this kind of movement, this estranging and unsettling, and I welcome it precisely because it’s conducive to examination, interrogation, reordering. Travel, imaginative or physical, can sharpen perception and force a measuring of distance and difference.

— Jenny Xie

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Reading is migratory, an act of transport, from one life to another, one mind to another. Just like geographic travel, reading involves estrangement that comes with the process of dislocating from a familiar context. I gather energy from this kind of movement, this estranging and unsettling, and I welcome it precisely because it’s conducive to examination, interrogation, reordering. Travel, imaginative or physical, can sharpen perception and force a measuring of distance and difference." in the context of "As quoted in "The Self Is a Fiction: Jenny Xie Interviewed by Mariam Rahmani" in Bomb Magazine (12 April 2018)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Jenny Xie" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Jenny Xie

About Jenny Xie

Jenny Xie is a Chinese-American poet and teacher. She is also the recipient of the 2017 Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets.