“On the face of it, the title of Sonia Leung’s new book suggests that her dreams were something like aspirations – something that she was able to achieve despite the barriers that she encountered in the first few decades of her life. In addition to such ‘aspiration’, though, another face of her dreams can be understood by looking at the familial relationships of the word itself and how its DNA mutated during the violent Norse invasions of Britain. Even if taking place outside of the strict etymologies of the terms, there is an interesting relationship to explore between the modern English word ‘dream’ (traum in standard German) and ‘trauma’ – which Leung also weaves into her memoir. Here, then, the shape of the narrative structure that makes The Girl Who Dreamed such a compelling read: a double helix of trauma and aspiration, linked by base pairs of lived experience and metacognitive reflection.” 

 

—Paul C. Corrigan in Hong Kong Review of Books​