stephenhongsohn
27 May 2012 @ 01:16 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview review for May 27, 2010: Allen Say spotlight (Part 1).  
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview review for May 27, 2010: Allen Say spotlight (Part 1).

A Review of Allen Say’s Tree of Cranes (1991); The Boy of the Three-Year Nap (illustrated only, authored by Dianne Snyder, Sandpiper, 1993); Tea With Milk (Sandpiper, 1999); Home of the Brave (Sandpiper, 2002); and Allison (Sandpiper, 2004).

I’m really starting to enjoy reading children’s books as a form; of course, they are some commonalties to discuss among them: very short length (often around 32 to 40 pages), short text blocks accompanied with large pictures, and linear narratives that inexorably resolve. The topics and narratives that children’s book writers and illustrators tackle can obviously be severely limited based upon these genre concerns, which is why I’m impressed by Allen Say’s work as a whole. I read Say’s books out of order, so the logic of my review is going to reflect that order.




In Allison, for instance, Say tackles the topic of transracial adoption. The titular Allison has a doll named Mei-mei who looks like her, but not her adoptive parents. This moment, a mirror stage moment if you will, causes her to think about her identity and after discovering that she is indeed adopted, she proceeds to act out her issues by destroying particular objects—a Blonde Barbie doll for instance—that serve to complicate how she understands herself and her sense of family. The conclusion of the story sees her make a “passionate attachment” to a stray cat with whom she identifies because the cat also does not know where her parents are. The narrative basically ends here and you can’t help but think that the cat is but a temporary salve for a much larger issue Allison will have to deal with and of course, the story does not even begin to attempt to explore the larger social context dealing with the trafficking in human babies. Despite these shortcomings, Say’s work is commendable to exploring difficult topics; the texts and the images provide a starting point for larger conversations about the form and the politics of children’s literatures.



In Tea with Milk, Say also takes on a rather “adult” topic in the exploration of an older teenager named Masako (nicknamed May) who grows up in the United States, but later moves back with her family to Japan. She does not do well with the move and feels extremely alienated by Japanese culture and still prefers her “tea with milk.” Chafing against Japanese cultural norms that encourages her to marry young, May moves to the city to start a life on her own and works as a department store elevator girl and later as a hostess and tour guide. A man from Shanghai named Joseph (who was adopted) who can speak English becomes a good friend to May and they begin a tentative and sweet courtship. When he reveals that he has been transferred to Yokohama, both May and Joseph realize that they must make life altering decisions about whether or not they should stay together. As with Allison, this book deals with fairly complex issues: female independence in contemporary Japan and given the fact that Say was born in 1939 and this text is a biographically inflected work, we can’t help but think about Joseph’s colonial connections growing up in China.




Diane Snyder’s The Boy of the Three Year Nap was the first of Say’s collaborative publications I read. This work differs markedly from the dynamic and realist watercolors from Allison and Tea with Milk. Say experiments with a yukio-e inspired drawing style that compares favorably with the narrative context of Snyder’s story, which focuses on a young man Taro, who seeks to find a wife despite the fact that he is presumed to be lazy. He hatches a plan to frighten a local and wealthy merchant into believing that his daughter will be turned into a clay pot unless his daughter is married off to the widow’s son, who happens of course to be Taro himself. The brilliance of Snyder’s story is that the widow also has other plans for Taro and is able to get the merchant to improve their living situation (patching up the house and adding new rooms), but also forcing him to give Taro a job and thereby effectively ending his status as the local lazy man.




Tree of Cranes also focuses on a Japanese context. Its illustrations are reminiscent of the detailed watercolors found in Tea with Milk and Allison. The basic narrative revolves around a young Japanese boy who is out enjoying the winter weather, but when he returns home, he realizes that he is not feeling entirely well. His mother is also acting a little bit strangely and he’s unsure as to the reason. His mother puts him under a sickness regimen, which includes sitting in a steam bath and eating particularly unsavory foods. When he wakes up, he is feeling much better and he discovers the fact that his mother is making a Christmas tree, one that will be outfitted with paper cranes. The boy, unaware of the American holiday, comes to learn about the ritual of gift giving and delights in the beauty of the tree. This story is a rather self-contained narrative about the delicate relationship between a Japanese mother and her child; that the mother had once lived in California reminds us of the character of Masako from Tea with Milk, suggestive of the narrative’s more autobiographical leanings.




In Erika-San, Say depicts the life of the titular character first as a young girl, who is very much impressed with a particular photo and history related to her grandparents who once lived in Japan. Erika, who looks to be Caucasian, grows up cultivating her interest in Japan, learns the language, studies the culture, and eventually travels there with the intent to take on some sort of instructional position. Interestingly enough, she arrives in a major city and finds the atmosphere too claustrophobic and requests that she be transferred to another location, but the next location is still too busy for her and she finally ends up at a rural village and begins to make a life there. She establishes herself as the teacher and then also embarks on a romance with a local Japanese man. She coincidentally discovers the very same house that was depicted in a photo her grandmother had on the wall that spurred Erika’s initial interest in Japan. That house ends up being a tea house, which encourages Erika to learn how to make tea Japanese-style and she even employs her skills as part of her courtship to the local man, serving him in a tea ceremony. They marry and settle in the local area.


(clearly inspired by the ansel adams photo set)


Home of the Brave is probably my favorite of Say’s works so far because it is the most surrealistic in its narrative approach. The Boy of the Three Year Nap had a folktale quality, but the other four works I have previously read were more firmly rooted in a realist tradition. Home of the Brave tackles what might be considered an ur-narrative of Asian American literature: the Japanese American internment. Home of the Brave involves a Japanese American man who seems to be out on an adventure, sightseeing from one location to another; all the vistas recall the American Southwest, but then he comes upon two children seemingly lost in the desert, wearing name tags, and proclaiming something about a camp, which leads him to find out where they are actually from. Of course, we discover that those kids are from a Japanese American internment camp but the Japanese American man comes to realize that these children are related to him somehow. The story thus speaks to a kind of repressed history that comes to the surface. The level of complexity within this very short narrative makes me wonder how much it would relate to the younger audiences it was intended for, but nevertheless makes for an interesting read for critics and those interested in picture books and graphic novels.

I’ve never personally dabbled in the inclusion of picture books to any of my courses and I rarely have included young adult oriented books in general, so these past couple of months have really opened my eyes to other possibilities for these kinds of texts in terms of their instructional capacities. Of the titles reviewed here, something like Allen Say’s Home of the Brave might be paired up with any sansei-oriented narrative such as David Mura’s Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire.

Stay tuned for another Allen Say Mega Review next month!

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Allison-Allen-Say/dp/0618495371/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1335709621&sr=8-15

http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Milk-Allen-Say/dp/B006J45484/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1335710144&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Three-Year-Dianne-Snyder/dp/039566957X/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1335710211&sr=8-19

http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Cranes-Allen-Say/dp/054724830X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1335753039&sr=8-5

http://www.amazon.com/Erika-San-Allen-Say/dp/0618889337/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335891452&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.com/Home-Brave-Allen-Say/dp/061821223X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335891894&sr=8-2
 
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stephenhongsohn
20 May 2012 @ 09:55 am
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for May 20, 2012: Creative Nonfiction Megapost  
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for May 20, 2012: Creative Nonfiction Megapost

In this post, reviews of Sunny Che’s Forever Alien: A Korean Memoir: 193-1951 (McFarland, 2000); Paisley Rekdal’s Intimate: An American Family Photo Album (Tupelo Press, 2012); Mel Ramaswamy’s An Immigrant Celebrates America: Reflections on America through the Fresh Eye of an Immigrant (University of Indianapolis Press, 2007); Laura Ling and Lisa Ling’s Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home (Harper, 2010); Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist (Michigan State University Press, 1999); Charles N. Li’s The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China before Mao (Harper, 2008).


A Review of Sunny Che’s Forever Alien: A Korean Memoir: 193-1951 (McFarland, 2000).



Sunny Che’s Forever Alien: A Korean Memoir is another work that I have not even heard about and only discovered based upon late night, random web searches. These moments are always evidence to me of the practical impossibility of keeping up with the field of Asian American literature as it is traditionally defined and complicates assertions that ethnic studies is in fact just a “ghetto.” Che’s work provides an important edition to the personal documentation of the overseas Koreans during the Japanese colonial period. Che’s family lived and work in Japan for a couple of decades, dealing with their status as inferior beings and “aliens” as the title suggests. With Japan’s increasing instability in the face of World War II, the Che family moves back to Korea. Che painstakingly details her family’s many difficulties: a sister Kiyon has a pregnancy out of wedlock; another sister Duli runs away with a man, only to return home (like Kiyon) with her reputation in ruins; her brother Taiam clashes mightily with their stepmother. Che also has one other brother named Taikun and a stepsister named Jinju. Che excels in school and it is her academic capabilities which provides her with a significant mode of independence. She is able to attend a college with the help of mentorship from local missionaries. One of the most harrowing sequences deals with Che’s experiences as a refugee during the Korean War. In the final arc of the memoir, Che details how she escapes Seoul before one of the main bridges explodes, but then must move continually southward (either by train or by foot) until she is at the Pusan Perimeter. America’s ability to repel North Korean forces at Pusan was a major turning point in the early period of the war. Unfortunately, Che’s memoir ends with her receiving a passport and traveling to the United States. I wanted to know more about Che’s acculturation process and have no idea if there is or ever were any plans for a second installment to the memoir. The other element that I found interesting in terms of the Che’s life is its depiction of friendships and relationships. Though Che has fleeting moments where she reveals some of her romantic sentiments, her life is largely devoid of significant attachment to those who would be considered her peer groups. But it is clear to a certain extent that her intense desire for independence and her dream to see the United States pushes her to work extremely hard in schooling to the detriment of making other social connections. A fascinating work and definitely a memoir that requires more critical attention.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Alien-Korean-Memoir-1930-1951/dp/0786421541

A Review of Paisley Rekdal’s Intimate: An American Family Photo Album (Tupelo, 2012).




I read Paisley Rekdal’s Intimate in one sitting last night, simply couldn’t put it down. The work has all of the qualities of creative nonfiction that I absolutely love; Rekdal’s Intimate is genre-bending, confessional, speculative, self-consciousness and analytical, and historically textured. There is poetry, there is historical fiction, there is autobiography and memoir, there are many photographs. The major players in this work are Rekdal’s parents—her mother is suffering from cancer and her father appears as a larger-than-life figure who commands an authoritative voice—and Rekdal’s interest in Edward Curtis, a famous American photographer, as well as one of his native guides, Alexander Upshaw, who would also be the subject of some of his photographs. In some ways, Rekdal’s autobiographical narrator is more interested in reconstructing Upshaw’s life, of which there are very few details, so much of Intimate is a fictionalization of his background. At the same time, Rekdal’s interest in Curtis’s work gives her an avenue to explore the politics of representation. Rekdal’s investment in Curtis’s native depictions is multi-faceted. On the one hand, there is an obvious cross-racial identification simply based upon the fact that as a mixed race subject Rekdal realizes that she could be mistaken for someone of indigenous ancestry. On a more ambivalent level, Rekdal seems to be working out her interest in Curtis’s photographic approach, one that while aiming for authenticity of the native subject, nevertheless instills a kind of performance, the dignity of the vanishing Indian that while problematic in its stereotypical conception, she still somehow finds beautiful. These contradictory and paradoxical elements seem to be at the root of so many acts of cultural production—the blockages as one attempts to seek out the authentic, the seduction of particular representations, and finally still: the ways that one cultural production allows us to meditate upon the very difficult tensions in our own personal lives. A beautiful work!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-American-Family-Tupelo-Lineage/dp/1932195963/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335367162&sr=8-2


A Review of Mel Ramaswamy’s An Immigrant Celebrates America: Reflections on America through the Fresh Eye of an Immigrant (University of Indianapolis Press, 2007).




Mel Ramaswamy’s An Immigrant Celebrates America: Reflections on America through the Fresh Eye of an Immigrant is an interesting example of the creative nonfiction form. Rather than a traditional memoir, the “reflections” that Ramaswamy provides are short one page narrative pieces on a particular topic or issue, many focusing on elements of language and everyday activities. In the preface, Ramaswamy explains: “I became an immigrant in 1967 and a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985. This book is my humble way of celebrating America. It contains observations made over the years on wide-ranging topics relating to America’s people and processes from an Indian immigrant’s viewpoint.” One of the challenges that the text presents is how to convey a “celebration” without necessarily succumbing to n kind of positivistic apoliticism (especially from the point of view of many of our interests here). Certainly, one must read the social contexts around Ramaswamy’s reflections. He is of the “brain drain” generation that occurred in the wake of the Immigration Act of 1965. As a man of a high educational background, Ramaswamy’s various writings here also reflect that mobile transnational upbringing and many of his pieces tangentially explore issues such as colonialism and assimilation. There are also many moments of levity, which I believe to be this work’s strongest quality. In “Indian Names,” for instance, Ramaswamy writes “By American standards, my last name is long. But it is short by Indian standards. The intricacy of a South Indian last name such as Venkatashivasubramanyam (24 letters) is enough to liven up the dullest conversation” (62). The reflections often include comic strips to accompany such humorous considerations. For those looking for a strong narrative, there is none to be had here, but consider this work as a novel approach to the creative nonfiction genre.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/An-Immigrant-Celebrates-America-Reflections/dp/0880938684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335284504&sr=8-1


A Review of Laura Ling and Lisa Ling’s Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home (Harper, 2010).




I was partly interested in reading this title for the simple fact that it was a co-written memoir and certainly, it has one of the more unique structural qualities, as it is narrated in alternating perspectives throughout. Laura, who is the captive, and Lisa, the older (and more famous due in part to her stint on the nationally known program called The View), the sister who campaigns and works on Laura’s behalf to get her home, both provide the grounding narrative voices for this nonfictional text. Of course, given their collective journalistic backgrounds, the memoir offers them a form to also focus on the lives and histories of others. The memoir opens quite quickly with the capture and captivity of Laura and her coworker, Euna Lee, who are both working on a documentary focusing on North Korean refugees who live illegally in China and who seek asylum but are often deported back to North Korea. When they inadvertently cross over the North Korean border, they are apprehended by soldiers and are taken prisoner by them, though they are only captured and dragged when they are officially still on the Chinese side. Laura and Euna endure many days of interrogation and are separated. Stateside, when Lisa finally discovered what has happened to Laura, diplomatic channels are opened to negotiate Laura and Euna’s release. Like Roxana Saberi’s memoir, this one reveals the tenuousness of journalistic freedom in totalitarian and autocratic regimes. And like Roxana’s experiences, Laura faces endless days in confinement, having to find ways to keep her mind and both from withering completely. While Laura is continually interrogated to find out if she may be working with the CIA, it is also clear that one reason she has become a target is because both she and Lisa have reported about North Korea in less than flattering ways. The memoir is quite illuminating in terms of revealing the complicated and tortuous path of diplomatic processes, especially given two countries who are basically sworn enemies of each other. With very few accounts of the notoriously secretive North Korean regime, this memoir offers an invaluable look of the country’s culture, especially in relation to its political structure and bureaucratic intricacies.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Somewhere-Inside-Sisters-Captivity-Others/dp/0062000675

A Review of Kazuko Kuramoto’s Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist (Michigan State University Press, 1999).




I have no idea how I found out about this book. I must have been trolling through amazon.com late at night like I often do to find some random new title. Though published over a decade ago, no one has ever mentioned Kazuko Kuramoto’s Manchurian Legacy and I think it’s a text that certainly could have more critical and readerly attention directed toward it. Kuramoto’s memoir focuses on a little known historical context that I first encountered while reading Mary Yukari Waters’s brilliant short story collection, The Laws of Evening. The first story, “Seed,” focused on the lives of Japanese colonial elites living in China and demonstrated the complicated nature of colonial power, especially as it depicted the lives of a seemingly ordinary family not directly connected to the military. In some sense, the story clarifies the heterogeneous communities formed out of the Japanese imperial project, a social context that Kuramoto illustrates quite wonderfully in Manchurian Legacy. On the one hand, Kuramoto is intent to show that as a colonial subject living in China prior to the fall of the Japanese empire in 1945, she possessed particular cultural, social and economic capital. On the other, as Russia attacked the Japanese colonial holdings in China, Kuramoto and her family were subjected to incredible hardships and became refugees. Later still, Kuramoto along with numerous others were forced to repatriate to Japan, though many considered parts of China their home. The second half of the memoir focuses much more on Kuramoto’s attempts to carve out her own identity as a modern Japanese woman. Certainly, she realizes that she is culturally different than her native Japanese counterparts; her independent and progressive attitudes put her at odds with many of her peers and she finds some refuge in romances and friendships borne of the American forces occupying Japan. This memoir is definitely one to consider in any course exploring postcolonialism and Asian American literature.

buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Manchurian-Legacy-Memoirs-Japanese-Colonist/dp/0870137255/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330926246&sr=8-1

A Review of Charles N. Li’s The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China before Mao (Harper, 2008).




Charles N. Li’s The Bitter Sea adds to the ever-growing body of Chinese American memoirists detailing the incredible transformations that China under the space of half a century’s time (see also: Diane Wei Liang’s Lake with No Name, Xiaoda Xiao’s The Visiting Suit, among others recently reviewed). In The Bitter Sea, Li focuses on his childhood and early adult periods. The memoir focuses mostly on Li’s tortured relationship with his domineering father, a man whose single-minded focus and ambitions would later lead to his family’s financial downfall and eventual disintegration. Li’s father came from humble backgrounds but through an incredible determination and poise was able to rise up to a top governmental post, serving during the “Vichy” Nanjing regime under Japanese colonial rule. His family is able to live in an affluent area and is protected from the chaos of the 1937 invasion. But because Li’s father aligned himself with the Japanese colonialists, he is eventually prosecuted for his support of enemy nationals and his family must endure new lives living in a local Nanjing Slum. At one point, Li ends up moving to Shanghai to live with his aunt, a period of time which he looks upon with fondness, but he is later reunited with his family as the communist government comes to power and the entire family has relocated in Hong Kong. At this point, Li ends up throwing himself further into his studies, but he is not necessarily academically oriented (though he still excels rather admirably). His mother ends up leaving his father to pursue studies in the seminary; this moment also reveals the ways in which his mother had quietly suffered under the continued ambitions of her husband. Indeed, Li’s father continued to harbor dreams that he would be elevated in some way to his former political stature. Despite their rather intricate relationship, one of the ways that Li and his father do end up bonding is over the discussion of politics. It is in this realm where the Confucian boundaries between parents and their children become the most mutable for Li and he is able to come to a more sophisticated understanding of national and international contexts and histories. Li’s memoir is a compelling read and rather directly confronts the thorniness of familial tensions and large reversals of fortune. Given its accessibility, it is also certainly a text that could be adopted in various classroom formats.

Buy the Book Here:


http://www.amazon.com/The-Bitter-Sea-Coming-Before/dp/B0046LUF2W/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
 
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stephenhongsohn
13 May 2012 @ 10:04 am
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for May 13, 2012: Hawaii Calling (part 2)  
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for May 13, 2012: Hawaii Calling (part 2)

In this post, reviews of: Taro Yashima’s New Sun (originally published in 1943, reprint by University of Hawaii Press, 2008); In The Company of Strangers (Bamboo Ridge Press, 1999); Mavis Hara’s An Offering of Rice (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2007); Milton Murayama’s Dying in a Strange Land (University of Hawaii Press, 2008); Joe Tsujimoto’s Morningside Heights: New York Stories (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2008).

A Review of Taro Yashima’s New Sun (originally published in 1943, reprint by University of Hawaii Press, 2008).



Wow! Taro Yashima’s New Sun is definitely the most surprising read for me for this calendar year. I am continually amazed at how deep the “rabbit hole” of graphic narrative goes. Much like Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s Four Immigrants Manga, Taro Yashima’s New Sun provides us an invaluable pictorial account of an earlier historical period. In this case, Taro Yashima, who published New Sun in 1943 under a pen name, uses the graphic memoir form to represent the difficult years he spent being investigated and tortured by the Japanese secret police for his background as an artist of the progressive moment in the early 20th century. The memoir employs a more impressionistic style, no doubt the particular influence of Yashima’s painterly inspirations, which diverged from the realist traditions that predominated many of his contemporaries and certainly did not draw from radical abstract approaches of the modernist artists. The panels appear as one per page along with a handful of lines that accompany the pictures. The memoir moves quite quickly and opens ominously with the death of Taro and his wife’s child and then later their imprisonment. Taro is forced to compose his life story while he is a prisoner, which enables later chapters to narrate how Taro became part of a progressive art movement that was considered to be subversive. The representations of life in prison are appropriately and not surprisingly austere: some panels are absolutely excruciating in their level of insinuation—for instance, the panel that depicts Taro having to hear his own wife being tortured, the screams being illustrated as violent swirls that surround his head. This work reminds somewhat of Xiaoda Xiao and J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians in the representations of the kinsd of traumas related to prison life and acts of brutality. Certainly, University of Hawaii press has done a tremendous job in reprinting this incredible work, one that can likely be paired alongside something like Mine Okubo’s Citizen 13660 in a course.

Buy the Book Here

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Sun-Intersections-Transcultural/dp/0824831853/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335890608&sr=8-1


A Review of Michelle Cruz Skinner’s In The Company of Strangers (Bamboo Ridge Press, 1999).



LOVE THIS COVER

I have wanted to review Michelle Cruz Skinner’s work for some time, but some of her publications (like the Mango Seasons) are only readily available in other literary markets. In the Company of Strangers is a collection of both creative nonfiction and fictional pieces, most of which are shorter sketches rather than extensively plotted narratives. Three of the stories are subtitled with the phrase, “a memoir,” and certainly possess a far more autobiographical voice than other stories. The “memoir” pieces are definitely some of the strongest and I would not be surprised if we see a longer publication in that form, as it seems to be one in which Skinner is able to reflect upon the complicated status of the Filipino diasporic subject. In the final piece, entitled, “Paper {A Memoir},” our autobiographically-inflected narrator admits: “Clearly there was a sense of paranoia over such papers. One of my friends says that there aren’t really any secrets in Filipino families. But I think there is something about growing up under martial law that made me keep my mouth shut and my papers close. Keep a close eye on anyone official. Because I never knew what might matter. And my family was never the talking type. Not when it came to truly important things anyway. I had to read about that” (169). If papers offer the Filipino subject the possibility of a kind of legitimacy, it is one that is always already tenuous. Many of the other stories thus explore the tenuousness of identity, national affiliation, and belonging. In this vein, the piece that achieves the most narrative coherence is a linked set of three stories that also doubles for the title. In “The Company of Strangers,” broken into three parts (“Yellow Jasmine,” “The Company of Strangers, and “The Exchange Rate), Skinner depicts the lives of a motley crue of Filipino diasporic service personnel working at the Filipino embassy in Italy; these include Sal, a garden, Mrs. Taguba, who loses her rosary; and Cely, a housekeeper who quits, but intends to stay in Italy despite an expired visa. Cely’s dilemma is precisely that she does not have the required papers to stay for longer than a given period and she must think carefully about who to trust. Issues of migration and legitimacy thus arc out as one short story calls out to another. My favorite story in the collection appeared early. In “Natural Selection,” Skinner experiments with form and offers a short piece written as an epistolary, focused on a man named Harry who is writing his sister, Anna—letters during the early days of the American occupation of the Philippines. The story rather inconspicuously narrates the ways in which colonizers could come to identify with local populations. Another standout story was “Second Marriage,” which focuses on a couple, Clem and Heidi, who assent to having a second wedding ceremony take place in the Philippines, one that is more lavish so that more individuals can attend. Though many of the stories might have benefitted from a carving out a stronger plotline, Skinner’s keen eye for description certainly makes In the Company of Strangers a strong collection overall, one that speaks to the heterogeneity of the Filipino diaspora.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Company-Strangers-Bamboo-Ridge-Special/dp/0910043817/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1333230409&sr=8-4

A Review of Mavis Hara’s An Offering of Rice (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2007).



Mavis Hara’s An Offering of Rice is a mixed genre collection consisting primarily of poems and short prose narratives, with a couple of illustrations included. These pieces seem largely autobiographical in tone and are roughly arranged with a chronological trajectory in mind. The first prose narratives are more historically situated, exploring issues of plantation labor and Japanese migration to Hawai’i. The tone of the collection shifts considerably with the middle section with standout stories like “Chemotherapy” and “The House.” Though the titles are relatively and admittedly generic, the stories themselves are largely reflective and very personal pieces that showcase some wonderful storytelling. “The House,” for instance follows a mother’s quandaries as she engages the adoption process, with all of the anxieties that come with it. We discover, for instance, the difficulty that she has with bonding to the baby and fears that she may never truly feel like the baby’s mother. Some of the later prose pieces focus on Japan, as the narrator—it really seems as though at some point (after the historical portions in the front) the stories are unified by a specific narrator—travels back to her ancestral homeland. The process of disorientation is made evident when she arrives only to discover her husband has been held up and cannot meet her at the airport. Later, the narrator divulges: “Tokyo made me anxious. Not only was it the largest, most crowded cit I had ever seen, many highways and train tracks rose high above the streets, while subway trains ran on multiple levels beneath the roadbeds as well. I felt that people who did not speak English were pressing in against me from all directions. I was relieved when we boarded the train back to the base” (114). The strength of this collection appears in these sorts of unadorned observations; there is a strong and meticulous narrative voice that guides us through the work. For those looking for catastrophic suspense plots, definitely look elsewhere: these are stories and poems of an understated domestic variety. Hara’s text is of course strongly rooted with respect to Hawaiian regional geographies and adds to the rich body of writing produced by Asian American writers from that state.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Offering-Bamboo-Journal-Hawaii-Literature/dp/0910043760/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336849762&sr=8-1

A Review of Milton Murayama’s Dying in a Strange Land (University of Hawaii Press, 2008).




So, I’ll admit I haven’t read Plantation Boy and Five Years on a Rock; my knowledge of Murayama’s work is limited to the canonical publication, All I Asking for Is My Body, which I have assigned in courses a couple of times. Dying in a Strange Land is the last of a quartet focused on the Oyama family. The novel is told in alternating first person perspectives. There’s Tosh who rises above the family’s plantation background to become a well-respected architect and remains the most connected to the local Hawaiian geographies that the family has known so well. Tosh is the voice that provides the most consistent narrative concerning the changes that Hawaii undergoes over the last half of the 20th century, including the demographic shifts, the shift in the economy from plantations to tourism, as well as the dynamic political climate. Sawa, the matriarch of the Oyama household, is the narrator who provides us with a sense of the generational differences, as she observes the many interracial relationships engaged by her children as well as the desire for so many of them to leave plantation work to find new occupational trajectories. She is also one of the characters who provides a more consistent link to the Japanese homeland; one chapter detailing a return visit records her own surprise at the many changes that the country has undergone and her feelings of estrangement from the so-called ancestral homeland. Kiyo is probably the most dominant narrator of the three and certainly the most connected to the arts and cultural representation. A struggling writer, he embarks on a disastrous first marriage while also attempting to pen a number of novels. He eventually settles down in a second marriage with a woman named Maud and begins to succeed in his professed career. Kiyo is the bawdiest of the narrators and his comments and observations are often unforgettable. All three narrators share a diary-like writing process, though they are distinct enough that you can see how Murayama worked to carve out personalities of their interior monologues. Sawa, for instance, is the most reserved and often employs the most interlingual registers in her storytelling. All three narrators continually give us an account of the historical events and social contexts that affect their lives over time. This particular mode of recounting, though, occasionally bordered on reportage and it was the one element that I found distracting. What is particularly impressive about this book is Murayama’s command over such a large archive of familial interrelationships. At a certain point, if you read this novel over a period of many days as I did, you will have to employ the very useful family tree that opens the novel because the Oyama family is so extensive.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dying-Strange-Land-Latitude-Book/dp/0824831977/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1335798890&sr=8-3

A Review of Joe Tsujimoto’s Morningside Heights: New York Stories (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2008).




Joe Tsujimoto’s Morningside Heights is an interesting work to consider in relation to question of genre. Though billed as a work of “stories” as in its subtitle, one might also consider it as an episodic novel. The protagonist, Kenji, tracks throughout each story and we generally see his development over time, making this work something more akin to a bildungsroman. Besides its wide temporal arc, Morningside Heights also takes on a number of different geographic sites: the New York City neighborhood from when the title originates and where the protagonist grows up as a child; the various locations that Kenji travels to in his stint in the U.S. Air Force; and finally, Hawaii, where Kenji resides in his later life. Part of Tsujimoto’s project is clearly his investment in the historical texture of New York City in the rowdiness and political dynamism of the sixties and seventies. The “stories” open with this description of Morningside Heights: “We lived on 119th Street between Morningside Drive and Amsterdam Avenue, on the edge of Harlem, across the street from Columbia University, which would later buy up the apartment buildings in the neighborhood, virtually wiping it clean with families, middle class or otherwise. While children were anathema, whatever their color, unless strapped in carriages” (10). This opening keys us to a particular class and racial context for the work and reminds us of the way that urban spaces are swiftly changed and gentrified. The stories chronicle Kenji’s life as he bounces around from one job to another, then gets kicked out of school, enlists in the military, goes back to school, marries, suffers from a serious medical condition, and later divorces. Not surprisingly, given Kenji’s increasing interest in the arts and his occasional job as a library assistant, he finds a great love for the arts and the stories are peppered with numerous literary references. If the historical texture and literary intertextuality of the work are two of its greatest strengths, the other is Tsujimoto’s gift for dialogue. These moments often crackle off the page and Tsujimoto has an obvious ear for bringing a diverse set of characters to life through the direct speech representation. Though the title seems to suggest that Kenji thinks of Morningside Heights as home, the ending leaves us with this sentiment: “ ‘New York?—Hawaii is my home. Has been, I guess, for thirty years now. Maybe pretty soon I’ll be a local’” (227).

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Morningside-Heights-New-York-Stories/dp/0910043787/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336927715&sr=8-1-spell


A Review of R. Kikuo Johnson’s Shark King (Toon Books, 2012).




Pylduck reviewed R. Kikuo Johnson’s Night Fisher in the post found here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/115393.html

I’m always excited about a new graphic novel to read and Johnson recently published Shark King, a graphic novel directed toward young readers. Johnson has a great comic drawing style and the story is in essence one that explores Hawaiian local history, myth, and what I would consider to be a metaphorical rendering of the mixed-race experience. In this case, a woman ends up marrying the mythic “shark king” and bearing him a son who is of “mixed species” background: part god, part shark, and part human (named Nanaue). Nanaue grows up to be a strong boy and part of the storyline involves how he would still the catch of other local fishermen and generally create some mischief. When he is discovered to be the source of the bad catches, Nanaue must flee his life with his mother and live out at sea. At one point, the cape that his mother used to cover the fin growing upon his back washes ashore and she knows that he is safe. A useful link involving the actual myth can be found here:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/hft/hft27.htm

Apparently, the figure of Nanaue has been used in other popular culture formats, especially in the comic book world more largely. I thought Johnson’s work was both fun and informative and a very useful way for young readers to begin to inferace with issues of folktales, myth-making, and specific cultural contexts.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Shark-King-Toon-Kikuo-Johnson/dp/1935179160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335282781&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
09 May 2012 @ 10:39 pm
Lavanya Sankaran's The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories  
In The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories (Dial Press, 2005), Lavanya Sankaran offers eight short stories featuring young adults making their way in the cosmopolitan, well-to-do milieu of Bangalore, India, which as a city has recently developed rapidly into a leading center of globalized industry.



The perspectives in the story flit back and forth between the young men and women, their parents, and the servants in their homes. I actually found the stories told from men's perspectives most fascinating and insightful. The opening story, "Bombay This," for example, concerns Ramu, a young man so intent on finding a wife that he even authorizes his mother to make suggestions for him as a matchmaker. Ramu's view of Ashwini, a woman from the bigger and more cosmopolitan Bombay, forms the backdrop of the story that also sketches out the personalities of others in his circle of friends. The second story, "Closed Curtains," focuses on Mr. D'Costa, a man of an older generation who is the neighborhood busybody intrigued by the young couple across the street who, despite an education and work prospects abroad, have decided to move back to India.

What I like so much about this collection of stories is how it pokes at and explores the aspirations of Indians educated abroad in the United States, England, Australia, and elsewhere. The stories ask what this cosmopolitan education offers generations of youth and how such worldly lives affect older generations. One story, "Alphabet Soup," very pointedly considers American educated Priyamvada, pursuing her PhD and studying India in the context of postcolonial, feminist U.S.-ethnic studies. The story pits her academic/activist views of culture and labor against her parents' immigrant belief in the American Dream and their back-home Indian contemporaries' own sense of the modern world.

I found the collection of stories very nicely assembled as well, with the stories complementing each other in their range of perspectives. The characters all seemed well-rounded and distinct, unlike in collections where purportedly different characters sometimes come across as the same character under the guise of different names. Tying the stories together is the city of Bangalore with its nouveau riche and its complicated relationship to British colonialism and American neocolonialism. There are also a few characters who pop up in more than one story, helping to create a web of people loosely connected in social networks of the well-to-do in the city.

This story would be wonderful to think about along with other short story collections set in India and Pakistan like Nalini Jones's What You Call Winter and Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, both of which sketch out the milieu of particular locales and explore the connections between South Asia and its diaspora.
 
 
Current Mood: enthralledenthralled
 
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stephenhongsohn
06 May 2012 @ 08:21 am
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for May 6, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for May 6, 2012

In this post reviews of: Linda Sue Park’s When my Name was Keoko (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2004); Linda Sue Park’s Project Mulberry (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2005); Linda Sue Park’s Keeping Score (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2008); Linda Sue Park’s A Long walk to Water (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2010); Rana Dasgupta’s Solo (Houghton Mifflin, 2011); Annam Manthiram’s After the Tsunami (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2011).

A Review of Linda Sue Park’s When my Name was Keoko (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2004); Project Mulberry (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2005); Keeping Score (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2008); and A Long walk to Water (Houghton Mifflin Children’s Division, 2010).

Pylduck already reviewed Archer’s Quest and I wanted to review as many Linda Sue Park titles as I could, so here are a handful, with the hopes that I will be able to review many more. Pylduck’s review for Archer’s Quest can be found here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/109179.html




Linda Sue Park’s When My Name Was Keoko delves into the Japanese colonial period of Korea. Like Yuko Taniguchi’s The Ocean in the Closet and Tabitha Suzuma’s Forbidden, this work is told in alternating first person perspectives, one offered from the viewpoint of Sun-hee (Keoko) and the other from her older brother Tae-yul (Nobuo). As the novel moves forward to the World War II period, tensions heighten on the Korean peninsula; Sun-hee and Tae-yul must only speak in Japanese, take on Japanese names, and offer support for the Japanese military. Some of Sun-hee’s classmates are recruited into the war effort supposedly to work in factories in Japan, but as Park reveals in her author’s note, such a strategem was employed by Japanese military forces to hoodwink young women and they would later become “comfort women,” and forced into sexual servitude. Sun-hee and Tae-yul’s uncle must go into hiding, as it is discovered that he had been using his printing press to publish an underground resistance paper. For his part, Tae-yul enlists in the Japanese army in order to prove his mettle as a Korean citizen. Indeed, he is incensed when Koreans are not considered brave. To disprove this sentiment, Tae-yul signs up for the air force unit training kamikaze pilots, realizing that he will ultimately end up on a suicide mission. Park deftly takes a difficult topic and reorients it toward a young adult audience. Certainly, one of the issues about genre, market and audience is the question of traumatic representation. The novel, while taking on a difficult moment in history, attends to a family and narrators who are particularly vocal and resistant to their colonial subjectivities. At the same time, Park notes that there were colonial sympathizers, ones who might have tactically offered their support of Japanese forces and government in the hopes of securing their individual futures. In these rough waters, the line between heroes and villains becomes much more fraught.




Linda Sue Park’s Project Mulberry brought back memories I had as an elementary school student in which I engaged a “project” much like the main character, Julia Song, the narrator, and her best friend, Patrick. They embark on a science project involving silkworms. Julia is pretty resistant to the project at first, so much so that she even considers sabotaging their progression. Indeed, Julia feels that the project is “too Korean,” especially as it is her mother who gives them the idea about the silkworms. Concurrently, Julia gets interested in embroidery and after warming up to the idea of the silkworm project, she decides that she wants to use the silk from the silkworm cocoons in a sewing type project. What she doesn’t realize is that she will have to kill some of the actual silkworms in order to extract the silk that comprises the cocoons. Will Julia go through with killing some of the silkworms, especially as she has become considerably attached to them or will she decide to forfeit that aspect of the project? The other major tension in the novel involves Julia’s mother and Julia’s belief that she is a racist. Early on in the project, they realize that to raise silkworms they are going to need leaves from a Mulberry Tree, but the only such tree in the local area is owned by Mr. Dixon, a man who happens to be African American. Julia states at one point pretty bluntly that her mother does not like African Americans and she ruminates upon that issue at various points in the novel. The novel’s conclusion includes an author’s note that refers to the interracial tensions between African Americans and Korean Americans in the wake of boycotts and the race riots in New York and Los Angeles respectively. I would not have connected the representations in the fictional world directly to those external referents, so it’s always interesting to hear about authorial intentionality and the rather circuitous ways that creative inspiration gets translated (for lack of a better term) into the fictional world. In any case, this novel is a quick read and is certainly ideal to the younger audiences at which it is primarily directed.




In Keeping Score, Linda Sue Park delves into a different form of historical fiction, which perhaps might be a good pair with When my Name was Keoko as a kind of “flip side” to the Korean transnational experience. In this case, the story revolves around a young girl named Maggie Fortini who becomes a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan. She devises her own fun way of keeping a score sheet of various statistics for particular baseball games and befriends a fireman named Jim, who is later drafted into the military and sent to Korea. Intending to remain friends, Maggie writes letters to Jim consistently, but he soon stops replying and Maggie is unsure of what has happened and she fears that he may have been injured or even killed. Finally, Maggie’s father reveals that Jim had suffered from some form of PTSD and had been transferred to a mental health institution. Though her father had been forwarding her letters, he had not told her because he was waiting for the right moment to reveal what had gone on. From there, the novel explores how Maggie works to re-articulate the friendship. The novel is interesting insofar as it elliptically narrates the historical contexts of the Korean War through Maggie’s friendship with Jim. But, at the same time, any particular narrative that explores the PTSD of the war veteran also seems to push the civilian deaths at wartime into the background, so I would have to teach a novel like this with Viet Thanh Nguyen’s article, “Speak of the Dead, Speak of Viet Nam.” While the Korean conflict is not necessarily the focal point, it does color how the narrative resolves, as Maggie must think about baseball alongside war, conflict, and violence. The novel is also part of a tradition of young adult fictions complicating normative gender expectations for young women, as they depict young girls and adolescent females as avid sports fans and athletes (see Justina Chen Headley’s Girl Overboard or Wendy Wan Long Shang’s The Great Wall of Lucy Lu).



Linda Sue Park’s A Long Walk to Water was the first book I’ve read by Park, who is also the author of the Newberry award winning A Single Shard. The story is bifurcated. Each chapter starts in the contemporary period with a character named Nya, who lives in Sudan and is part of the Nuel tribe; her family is constantly on the lookout for water. Indeed, it is the kind of dependency that structures their daily lives. After the introductory sequence with Nya, we get the story of Salva, which begins in Southern Sudan in 1985. He is fleeing the area as a conflict between the rebels and the government results in violence and brutality. Salva is separated from his family and travels with a group of refugees where they walk all the way to Ethiopia. Along the way, one of Salva’s friends is killed by a lion and Salva’s uncle is killed by a rival tribe. We discover that the Nuel and the Dinka are tribes that have been in conflict with each other for some time; thus the two narratives are linked in that we know that Nya and Salva come from tribes such that each character would likely think of the other as an enemy. Salva bounces around from refugee camp to refugee camp, moving from Ethiopia to Kenya, escaping listlessness and rebel factions and in one harrowing sequence, must cross a river while avoiding being shot or eaten by crocodiles. He eventually arrives in the United States, only later to discover that his father is actually still alive. The conclusion sees a felicitous family reunion and a possible beginning to a rapprochement between tribes. It is discovered that Salva has become something of a hydro-engineer and is installing wells and pumps for the Nuel tribe. Salva and Nya are thus linked not by their status as enemies, but working toward the common problem of finding more potable sources of water.
A Long Walk to Water is an interesting study in genre because it is a fictionalization of an oral history and thus shows us the porous boundaries between the make-believe and external social contexts. The work includes a note from the individual the narrative is based upon and then an author’s excerpt that provides a larger historical background. After having read through a large handful of these works, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the YA genre is being used as a pedagogical apparatus as a more digestible form through which young adults can interface with historical events and sociocultural circumstances. The author’s note that accompanies the work is important insofar as it continually reminds the readers that a narrative cannot be seen solely as entertainment.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/When-My-Name-Was-Keoko/dp/0756929288/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1333386344&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Project-Mulberry-Linda-Sue-Park/dp/B005IUQZSS/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1333640700&sr=8-11

http://www.amazon.com/Long-Walk-Water-Based-Story/dp/0547577311/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332525533&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Score-Linda-Sue-Park/dp/0547248970/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1336278825&sr=8-12

A Review of Rana Dasgupta’s Solo (Houghton Mifflin, 2011).




There were two works by English language writers of Asian descent that entirely surprised me in 2011. One was Jessica Hagedorn’s Toxicology. I was not prepared for Hagedorn’s quite inventive and no-nonsense 80 year old narrator. The other was Rana Dasgupta’s Solo. In terms of structure, Dasgupta’s Solo reminds me so much of Ondaatje’s Divisadero because there seem almost to be two novels folded into one. This novel is exactly the kind that makes you want to run out and find someone who has read it so you can discuss what it means. The second half, in particular, which takes on a dream-like quality, makes you wonder about the nature of fiction and reality. In any case, the protagonist, Ulrich, is older than Toxicology’s Eleanor. Indeed, he is 100 years old, blind, and recounting his life. Though Ulrich, Dasgupta is able to explore the quite twisted and difficult history of Bulgaria as a nation intent on an aggressive modernization strategy; he effectively represents the the governmental corruption and policies that end up causing so much damage to its citizens over time. Ulrich gives up his dream to play the violin, ends up becoming a chemist, working in a factory for the government, but his life is full of unanswered questions, regrets, and lost contacts. Thus, the second half of the novel is some sort of fabulist rendering of what life could have been for various “parts” of Ulrich’s dreams had he been able to pursue them. This section is not all rosy by any means, but it does reveal psychological branching points with respect to the ways that Ulrich conceives of his own passions and how those play out in a contemporary Bulgaria. A beautifully written and surprising work and especially interesting given its focus on a country that, to my mind, has not received much attention from English language fiction writers. This kind of novel also makes me quite curious about writerly process, especially since it is quite clear that there must have been extensive ethnographic and historical research that went into the construction of the novel.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0547397089/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0007182147&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1JMQKNRVE718KVZ1GJ59

A Review of Annam Manthiram’s After the Tsunami (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2011).



After perusing the plot summary for Annam Manthiram’s debut novel, After the Tsunami, I knew it might be relevant to my course on trauma and Asian American literature. This year I’m focusing on narratives in the “first person” and trauma aesthetics more than I have in the past and Manthiram’s work fits the bill to a T. The plot involves a South Asian immigrant man named Siddhartha who has made a successful life in the United States, with a wife and children, but his family knows nothing about his life as a child and they are increasingly interested. Siddhartha’s daughter in particular is increasingly invested in getting to know more about Siddhartha’s past, especially as her impending marriage gets her to think about ancestry and family lines. The novel is split into two time frames, suggesting two simultaneous narrative perspectives by the same person, one from the adult Siddhartha and another from the adult Siddhartha who is looking retrospectively on his childhood living in an orphanage. As we move from one time period to another, we see how much the adult Siddhartha has repressed, and so the novel also slowly unfolds in an Indian orphanage. It’s not clear at first what the problem is: the young boys’ lives are filled with misadventure, but there are issues with food availability and it becomes clear that the orphanage is entirely corrupted, with mothers embezzling government subsidies and others committing sexual abuse upon the children. A shocking and rather gruesome death in the latter half of the novel clarifies the kind of gothic orphanage that Siddhartha has survived and we see that to engage a new life, the trauma victim wills the past to disappear. The novel is useful in terms of thinking about the aestheticization of trauma insofar as we see the split temporalities appear, the evidence of a schizoid subject attempting to compartmentalize abuse and violence in order to move forward. Though this novel is a grueling read, Manthiram shows a nuanced understanding of the ways that trauma manifests and helps contour complicated motivations that attend to migration.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/After-Tsunami-Annam-Manthiram/dp/1936205432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334935433&sr=8-1
 
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skim666
skim666
05 May 2012 @ 12:56 am
Cambodian American Memoirs: Sichan Siv & Loung Ung  

Three memoirs by two Cambodian Americans – Sichan Siv’s Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America (HarperCollins, 2008) and Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (HarperCollins, 2000) and Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind (HarperCollins, 2005) – remind us that life writing is always a highly ideological and contested form. Sichan Siv is a staunch Republican who served in both father and son Bush administrations and chaired Asian Pacific Americans for Mitt Romney in 2008, while Loung Ung is a feminist and activist who has worked on issues of land mines (many of which still remain), sex trafficking, education, and AIDS in Cambodia. Both Siv and Ung come from an upper-/middle-class background in Cambodia, and both lost family and friends and suffered horribly under the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror (1975-79). But their memoirs have different relationships to the U.S., Cambodia, and the Cambodian diaspora, and they have starkly contrasting depictions of the individual, family, and community.

As May-Lee Chai notes in her review of Golden Bones in Asian Affairs (June 22, 2009), the first part of the Siv’s memoir is useful in that it describes life in Cambodia after the French colonizers had departed but before the advent of the Khmer Rouge: “this golden age of increased educational opportunities, openings to the world, and a sense of hope” (98). In recounting Siv’s childhood, education, and work as a airline steward and then a teacher, this section includes a lot of historical background and cultural explanations to an American readership (e.g. why baguettes were so popular 31-33), which stylistically produces some awkward moments. For instance, as a literary work, Golden Bones probably did not need a detailed list of all the different kinds of planes that the Royal Air Cambodge (RC), the national airline, had in its fleet over the years (fyi, a few DC-3s, a DC-4, a DC-6B, and a Caravelle jetliner), and as a reader, I felt I really didn’t need to know who manufactured these planes and how fast and far they could go. But as a document of life in postcolonial, pre-communist Cambodia, these details are a fascinating testament to the always-already transnational and globalized nature of domestic economies and politics.

But after the advent of the Khmer Rouge, the memoir becomes riveting; the displacement, devastation, and butchery follows April 17, 1975, which Siv remembers ironically as “the first day of peace,” when the Khmer Rouge take over. Siv is relatively silent about his family, whom he had to leave behind and who were mostly murdered. There is obviously emotion, but in both the content (he talks about hiding his tears from a taxi driver) and the form of the memoir, the trauma of that period and the feelings of loss and grief seem curiously suppressed. While emotional distance or absence can sometimes be an act of narrative and/or ideological resistance, in Siv’s memoir it just seems odd.

The second part of the memoir is, to again quote the Asia Affairs review, “a traditional rags-to-riches immigrant story” (98). While Siv undoubtedly works hard and his account of the inner workings of the United Nations is interesting, it’s hard not to be repulsed by his embrace and praise of both Bush administrations, given both invasions/bombings of Iraq and Afghanistan and the “War on Terror,” none of which he mentions (and Sept. 11, 2011, is mentioned only in passing). Siv may be culturally interested in Cambodia, but his political loyalties are wholly to the Republican presidents he serves and his adopted country.

The most disturbing part of the second half, in my view, are Siv’s random accounts of Africans/African Americans criminals and his curious (non-)reaction to these crimes. Other than warm mentions of Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and some ambassadors, black people appear in his memoir two other times. First, he describes being swindled by a con artist in 1978. While “New Yorkers were generally friendly,” he recounts being approached by a black man who claims to have just arrived from Soweto and been robbed; the man and another woman trick Siv into revealing his ATM pin number, and they steal his entire life savings. But his reaction is “I still had forty-three cents left….It could have been worse!” (200).

A few years later, in 1981, Siv is walking down the street at night when:

 A black guy wearing a sweatsuit with a hood overtook me and turned around, holding a gun at my ribs.

“Give me your money,” he ordered.

“I don’t have any money,” I pleaded with the robber.

“Give me your waller. Now! Don’t eff with me, asshole, or I’ll blow your brains out.”

A second guy behind me was pushing me with something hard and pointed. I saw no reason to bargain with these robbers and reached for my suit pocket. (213)

When they take off with his wallet, Siv’s reaction is, “I lost a few credit cards and about $100, the largest amount I had ever carried. Piece of cake! It could have been worse!” (213). The language of the encounters convey Siv’s disdain and indignation, and simply including these anecdotes is telling – but the narrator’s reaction (“It could have been worse!”) is puzzling. Siv might be comparing these crimes to his suffering under the Khmer Rouge, but he never explicitly makes this connection, and moreover this comparison makes little sense to me. These depictions are delinked from any understanding of racial formations and systemic racialization in the U.S., and they’re certainly not linked to Siv’s passing mentions of his own experiences with racism. Siv implies these crimes are isolated instances by dangerous individuals within a larger framework of American meritocracy and open-mindedness, rather than products of systemic exclusions that he is partially participating in (and which the Republican party particularly exploits).

Just as odd and disconnected are Siv’s accounts of his experience with anti-Asian racism. For instance, he’s identified as an illegal alien other when he first attempts to find a job in New York. Although Siv is a legal refugee, his papers include the terms “alien” and “parole number,” so despite his explanations, he overhears someone say, “we are not finding jobs for illegal immigrants who just got out of jail” (194). But then the narrative blithely goes on to recount how he obtains as a data coordinator. Similarly, very late in the book Siv recounts being thrown from a horse while riding with his friends. They are far from help, and when a park police member finally arrives, he has trouble understanding that Siv is an American ambassador (the policeman asks repeatedly, “Ambassador? From which country?” 315). Siv treats the anecdote as a humorous story – concluding the book with “This is a beautiful country!” – instead of reflecting on what it means that officer would be puzzled by the fact that Siv is U.S. ambassador. Again, it’s significant that the memoir includes these moments, but they totally lack any reflection or analysis or even some basic emotional reactions.

Overall, the oddest thing about the memoir is its emotional distance; in Siv’s memoir, there is no post-traumatic stress disorder, no extended family members to worry about and care for, no apparent material or emotional remnants of his Cambodian past to prevent upward mobility in the United States. While I do not find it possible to criticize someone’s actions and mindset under the Khmer Rouge, it is possible, perhaps even necessary, to hold someone as prominent as Siv responsible for his politics, his determined individualism, and his treatment (or lack thereof) of trauma, memory, and history.

In thankful contrast, Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers and Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind grapples with all the complexities that Siv’s glosses over. A young girl during the 1975-9 rule of the Khmer Rouge, Ung makes her own narrative inseparable from that of her Chinese-Cambodian family, and her eventual immigration to the United States is fraught with memories, emotional trauma, and self-questioning. Both of Ung’s books depict the particular experiences of women in these various historical and social contexts. Furthermore, and again in stark contrast to Siv’s memoir, Ung explores the complexities of being Cambodian American and Asian American in the U.S. 

First They Killed My Father (FTKMF) begins before the Khmer Rouge take over, but as Ung is born in 1970, her memories of pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia are primarily of an idyllic – if rambunctious – childhood. The first pages of FTKMF depict a young Loung who refuses to act like “a proper young lady” (2) and “ask[s] too many questions” (10), yet who is the apple of her father’s eye. Ung vividly portrays her parents and six siblings as unique individuals in 1975: her laughing and generous father; her glamorous, ladylike mother; the responsible, serious eldest brother Meng (18); the tough and restless second brother Khouy (16); the fashionable and lovely older sister Keav (14); the joking “little monkey” brother Kim (10); the quiet and shy Chou (8); and the happy baby of the family, little sister Geak (3). They live a comfortable middle-class existence in Phnom Penh, in a large apartment with modern amenities (plumbing and a television, but no refrigerator). Five-year-old Loung is aware of the poverty around her, but she is curious and questioning.

Ung’s father is a military police captain, a major in the Lon Nol government, so when the Khmer Rouge take power on April 17, 1975, he must – like Siv – hide his background; he instructs his family to pretend that they are peasants. The family’s descent into starvation, disease, and death are explored unblinkingly; although the events are horrific, the prose is controlled and measured. The use of present tense (in both books) contributes to the sense of unpredictability and constant dread. The young narrator relays the incessant fear, the desire to survive at any cost, the guilt, and most of all the powerlessness of those living under the Khmer Rouge. The family struggles to stay together but is eventually separated, and several die in horrible circumstances.

Young women are taken away and raped; entire families commit suicide; people fall into madness. Ung’s brother Kim must bear the abuse of Khmer Rouge soldiers to obtain a little more food for his family; children are brainwashed and become informers and bullies. Horrors become banal; rotting corpses and unimaginable suffering become a daily fact of life. Everyone in the family is forced into hard physical labor, except Geak, whose growth is stunted by lack of nutrition. Ung uses italics to indicate speculative sections when she imagines the death of those family members with whom she could not be when they actually died; it is a clear attempt by the narrator to – if not make peace – then at least try to grasp the facts of their deaths. I really could not put the book down; the reader mourns for the family, the senselessness and needlessness and the sheer scale of suffering and death.

One particular story captures the complexities of the struggles to survive and the emotions of survivors: the six-year-old Loung, desperate with hunger, one night steals rice from the family’s meager store. She is consumed with guilt yet did it anyway: “I wish I had been still in between the sleeping and waking worlds when I did it, but that is not true. I knew exactly what I was doing when I stole the handful of rice from my family. My hunger was so strong that I did not think of the consequences of my actions” (89). This deed repeatedly comes back to haunt the narrator – the guilt of a starving six-year-old girl struggling to survive.

Another principle difference between Ung and Siv’s memoirs is that these atrocities fill Ung with anger – all-consuming, unfocused, unrepressable anger, particularly as a child who does not understand what is happening (even less so than the adults, that is) and whose maturation process is physically, emotionally, and mentally marked by her traumatic experiences. Ung is so angry that she is taken out of a work camp and “promoted” to a child soldier training camp. The narrative skillfully immerses the reader in the complex emotions; and while sometimes memoir as a genre can be problematic in this way, I think this content demands this kind of near-visceral immersion. The memoir ends after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, with Ung, her older brother Mend, and his wife leaving a Thai refugee camp and boarding a plane to the United States.

Ung’s second memoir, Lucky Child, picks up where FTKMF left off, with Ung arriving in the U.S. – in Vermont, of all places. Lucky Child juxtaposes the narrative of Loung’s life in the U.S. with that of her older sister, Chou, growing up in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. As she acknowledges in the preface, Chou’s narrative is mediated by Ung as writer, language (translated from Khmer and Chinese into English), and memory, but nevertheless the book “is [her] best attempt to piece together her wstory from our numerous conversations, interviews with family members and neighbors, and our many literal and emotional walks down the memory lanes our childhoods” (xiv).

In Loung’s narrative, she describes both the generosity and subtle racism of their American sponsors. She represses her experiences in Cambodia; her brother and she adhere to an unspoken agreement to not discuss their wartime experiences. She postpones contact with her family in Cambodia (including her sister Chou and her brothers Khouy and Kim), even when, in later years, she has the chance to communicate and/or meet with them.

Growing up, Loung is a welter of contradictions and conflicting emotions. Particularly at first, she is full of anger (she fantasizes about beating up the Brady girls on The Brady Bunch) and suffers from PTSD (a fireworks display triggers flashbacks, she absolutely cannot stand to be hungry and becomes enraged when a date delays their dinner). When she gets into fights at schools and her brother lectures her, Ung thinks, “In my mind the war rages on, even though I know I live in a peaceful land” (69). She also experiences disdain when watching The Killing Fields on television. She thinks, “Americans will never know what it was truly like….They won’t remember the smell, the sound, or the heat. For two hours, they’ll sit in the dark and watch but they’ll never know what it was like to be there for three years, eight months, and twenty-one days. What it was like thinking everyday that I was going to die and not knowing if the war would ever end. When the credits roll after two hours, the lights will come back on, and they’ll leave the war. But I can’t” (124).

She also shows a budding sense of Asian American consciousness; living in mostly-white Vermont, Ung feels more comfortable around the adopted Korean daughter of their white host family. At a fourth of July barbecue, Ung notes, “With her black hair and Asian features, Ahn is the only other girl who looks similar to me in the crowd, and she makes me feel accepted. Her acceptance warms me” (30). Of another Asian American boy in her class, she says, “Even though Tommy and I rarely spoke, I felt tied to him in our Asian-ness. When everyone else would play together during recess, I oculd always count on him to stay near me” (66).

But at the same time, particularly as she gets older, Ung does her best to be an “all-American girl,” watching a lot of TV; in junior high, she writes, “I wear jeans and baseball caps wherever I go, listen to Loretta Lynn, and watch Crystal Gayle on TV” (108-9). She develops crushes on boys and sneaks off to parties. Ung internalizes and desires the dominant “normal,” i.e. white, middle-class, certain notions of femininity, etc. Speaking of her Asian American friends Ahn and Li, “at school, I want new friends who are not Asian, who aren’t ‘different.’ Even though I pretend it doesn’t matter, I hate that whenever the three of us are together, people stare at us as if we are as rare a sight as a three-headed snake. My normal friends at school will have blond or brown hair and blue eyes, very much like the girls I see on TV. On the small screen, these white girls always seem so light and happy. I just know that if I’m friends with them, I’ll be normal and happy, too!” (59). She hates her body, her hair, her appearance as she grows up, asking “Why can’t I be normal?” (160).

More engaging to me was Chou’s narrative, probably because it was not as familiar to me as Ung’s Asian American coming-of-age tale. Even after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, life is not easy for Cambodians, and international politics prevent Meng from even communicating with his family in Cambodia, let alone bring them to the U.S. In addition to poverty and general devastation wrought bythe Khmer Rouge, Chou and her family must avoid land mines and survive Khmer Rouge attacks on villages, and civilians are sometimes caught in battles between Vietnamese-occupied Cambodian government soldiers and the Khmer Rouge. In the years after liberation, Chou’s family still lacks electricity or plumbing, live in a poor shelter, and they cannot even afford soap (34). Chou also suffers from traumatic flashbacks. Her days are occupied with work: gathering wood and water, cooking food, taking care of her cousins, cooking for her large extended family, and worrying about whether they will have enough food. In the night she cries from fear. A niece falls into the cooking fire and dies from lack of medicine and proper treatment; she witnesses people horribly maimed and dying from landmines left by the Khmer Rouge. Chou struggles to attend school; she chastises her brother for thoughtlessly washing his bicycle with the precious water she so laboriously gathered in the morning so that she could go to class in the afternoon. But all her household duties ultimately prevent her unable to attend school; this so upsets the gentle Chou that she stabs another girl in the hand with a pencil. While life is difficult for everyone, this part of the narrative details how Chou’s life is particularly circumscribed and hard because she is a woman.

Chou’s narrative is also interesting for its discussion of the situation of Chinese Cambodians, particularly in Vietnamese-occupied Cambodia. Just as Loung is negotiating her Cambodian American identity, Chou is also divided; she “sees herself as both a Cambodian and a Chinese” (118), and she fears being deported to China, a country she’s never been to. Chou gets married in “a truncated Chinese-Cambodian marriage ceremony” (171), combining a Chinese tea ceremony with a Cambodian string-tying ceremony.

When the sisters meet again in 1995, it is initially awkward but soon they become close. The Epilogue recounts the process of the sisters’ reconnecting, Ung’s reconnection with Cambodia, and her work with the campaign to ban land mines (258-9). As Cathy Schlund-Vials writes, “Lucky Child – focused on sisterly frames and narratives – becomes a literary monument to the role of women in forging a post-Democratic Kampuchean selfhood. Such selfhood is constructed through memory of the past and reunification” (“Between Ruination and Reconciliation: Dragon Princesses, Cambodian American Heroines, and Loung Ung’s Lucky Child” in Transnationalism and the Asian American Heroine, ed. Lan Dong, McFarland 2010; see also Cathy Schlund-Vials’ forthcoming book on Cambodian American cultural production, War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work, U Minnesota, 2012).

So, overall, count me a fan of Loung Ung’s books as well as her activist work.

I’m currently also reading Haing Ngor’s Survival in the Killing Fields (coauthored with Roger Warner, Carroll & Graf, 2003; initially published as A Cambodian Odyssey by Macmillan in 1987). All three – Ngor, Siv, and Ung – come from upper-/middle-class backgrounds in Phnom Penh; I would be interested in how narratives from other classes and places would or would not differ from their narratives. Chanrithy Him, author of the memoir When Broken Glass Floats, was born in Takeo province (slightly south of Phnom Penh), but I haven’t read it yet so I don’t know where it is set. Will report back later!

 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
03 May 2012 @ 10:06 am
Happy APA Heritage Month!  
May is APA Heritage Month, and I'd like to invite everyone to share their favorite APA books, stories, poems, authors, etc. If you had to pick one or two books by APA authors to introduce a friend to the literature, what would they be?

A couple of my favorites are:

Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night: A beautifully written novel about a "madwoman" on a Caribbean island in the context of English colonialism and the South Asian diaspora. The nested narrative structure is wonderful to get lost in, featuring a gay male nurse who makes a connection with the woman and learns about her story.

Kenji Yoshino's Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights: I credit this memoir/legal analysis as one of a couple books (including Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood) that broke me of my aversion to memoirs. In addition to being a poetic account of Yoshino's sense of his queer self, the book also offers an insightful discussion of legal frameworks for anti-discrimination protection. Yoshino argues that these frameworks ultimately homogenize behavior and normalize identities.

How about you? Feel free to comment in reply to this post or create your own post this month!
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
29 April 2012 @ 07:49 pm
International Press Spotlight: Oberon Books (part 1)  
Asian American Literature Fans: International Press Spotlight: Oberon Books (part 1) - April 29, 2012

A review of Ash Kotak’s Hijra (2000, Oberon Books); Tariq Ali’s Illustrious Corpse (2004, Oberon Books); Tanika Gupta’s White Boy (2008, Oberon Books); Hideki Noda & Colin Teevan’s The Bee (2006, Oberon Books); Neil D’Souza’s Small Miracle (2007, Oberon books); In-sook Chappell’s This Isn’t Romance (2009, Oberon Books)

A general note about Oberon Books, which can be found here:

http://www.oberonbooks.com/

They have a tremendous catalog of Asian British playwrights. Better yet, they publish their bound works in perfect trade paperback form, something I wish would happen to the single publication plays that come out in the United States. I appreciate a study printed copy that would obviously survive numerous readings, moves, and the potential possibility that it would be routinely accessed as one devoted a critical reading to it.



I’m going to be reviewing a number of plays published out of Oberon Books centered in the United Kingdom and this post is the first of a series of megareviews for the press. The first play I chose was Tariq Ali’s Illustrious Corpse. Ali is the author of numerous novels and nonfiction studies; I picked Illustrious Corpse simply based upon its intriguing title. The play explores modern politics in the United Kingdom and focuses on the murder of Sir Huntley Palmer Jones, the Home Secretary, who is killed by his wife, Desdemona Jones. The motive seems a little strange, as it seems as though she kills him because he has ultimately betrayed the progressive political vision and identity he first cultivated when they initially met and fell in love. As Desdemona explains it, “After all, he murdered his past and became part of the government that’s murdering the present and, by extension, the future. So I executed him. Had to do something. You could call it a pre-emptive strike, to encourage regime-change. You feel that someone is going to do something terrible and you take them out before they can. Couldn’t just sit and watch Huntley and his chums murder everything I valued” (29). Interestingly enough, though Desdemona admits to the murder, the government covers it up in the hopes of reducing any negative fallout connected to the administration in power. Thus, Ali’s Illustrious Corpse is definitely a play about philosophy and politics. Its speculative premise is one that is best taken more allegorically in terms of the frustration over post-9/11 governance and international conflict. How does one “encourage regime-change” without a radical act the play seems to ask? Without firmly answering this question, the play speaks to the murky gray zone of revolutionary change and radical activist approaches.

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Illustrious-Corpse-Oberon-Modern-Plays/dp/1840023821/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333925904&sr=8-1



The second play I read was The Bee by Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan. I wasn’t exactly sure how the co-writing worked here, because it seems that some of Hideki Noda’s work was translated in other contexts. The Bee is “based on an original story by Yasutaka Tsutsui.” In any case, The Bee is not unlike The Illustrious Corpse in that it exists in a realist context though explores what would seem to be rather exceptional circumstances and situations. In this case, a man named Ido arrives at his home to discover that his wife and son have been taken hostage by an escaped convict, Ogoro. Ido must face inquisitive reporters looking for the latest sound bites and ineffectual policemen, as he figures out what way he must act. In a surprising turn, Ido ends up going to the home of Ogoro’s wife and takes her and her son hostage. While Ido seems to be the ostensible victim at first, he believes that by taking Ogoro’s wife hostage, he has given himself a measure of agency. Indeed, he begins to enjoy his role, so much so that in order to gain more leverage over Ogoro, he threatens to commit violence upon Ogoro’s son. At one point, he even severs the fingers of Ogoro’s son and sends it to him in a package. The rather gruesome storyline of the play seems to be a meditation of the media circus that surrounds hostage scenarios and other moments of potential catastrophe. The “bee” of the title is a strange literary device that appears in a couple of the scenes. Ido, we discover, has an inordinate fear of bees and at one point, there is on flying around Ogoro’s wife’s home. The bee obviously functions as a metaphorical device related to the question of power and agency in the contemporary context. An interesting and thought provoking play.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bee-Oberon-Modern-Plays/dp/1840026812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333997277&sr=8-1




The third play I read was Tanika Gupta’s White Boy, which was more social realist in tonality. It explores the contemporary high school milieu in an Asian British context. In a note preceding the play, Paul Roseby, artistic director of the National Youth Theatre explains why he commissioned Gupta to write the play: “The fact that Tanika knew it was now uncool to be white in inner city schools was in one way no surprise, but in another way I knew theatrically the play would be a revelation and an important piece of contemporary drama. This conflict of identity, set against the ever-increasing tragedy of knife crime by young people, most certainly hit the mark and made our packed audiences of all ages see a moving story that will remain with them for a long time to come” (5). The titular “white” boy is Ricky who “speaks with a Caribbean/ street accent” (7). While he contemplates an uncertain future, turmoil surrounds him. A high school thug by the name of Flips is harassing a 15 year-old Sudanese immigrant and refugee named Sorted. Flips is the primary instigator of the play’s tension, as he also aggressively flirts with a black woman named Zara, who is completely uninterested in him. The play’s climax leaves two high school students dead (though I won’t spoil how or who is involved exactly), but Gupta’s work is clearly in line with the growing question of violence occurring directly on school sites, problematizing how we police, oversee, and regulate sites of learning. This play also speaks to the urban milieu which creates what we might call a counterculture in which minority identities are valued in different ways, so much so that the titular “white boy” would rather be hailed as a Caribbean.




Neil D’Souza’s Small Miracle is a quirky play centered one family that has decided to go on a caravan trip (I’m using the publicity jacket wording for this sightseeing venture, because I’m given to think the caravan trip is another name for a road trip, no?) in Ireland with the hopes of reconnecting with one another. There is Arjun, a 34 year old father of South Asian descent; Meera, Arjun’s mother who is in her 60 and is supposedly of Hindu faith; Bronagh, Arjun’s wife; Sadie, Arjun and Bronagh’s daughter who is 13 years old; and Barry, a janitor that they meet at the religious site that they are visiting. There are a lot of tensions and complications: Meera is suffering from a serious health condition; Meera and Bronagh don’t seem to be getting along; Arjun is flailing (and failing) under his dream of becoming a writer; and Sadie, perhaps in typical teenage fashion has begun to draw away from her parents, especially her mother. The “small miracle” of the title might actually refer to a number of inexplicable events, including many involving Meera: there is positive change in her health condition, the fact that Meera herself idiosyncratically supports Catholic spiritualism despite her Hindu background and that Meera will go on to have sexual intercourse with Barry, a perfect stranger. But, the biggest revelation occurs late in the play and concerns Sadie and the increasing problems arising between Sadie and Bronagh. Sadie sees a vision in a field, a vision of someone who has died—her best friend was killed in a tragic car crash along with a number of others. Sadie had been the only survivor, thrown clear of the car. Sadie harbors considerable guilt precisely because she had given her friend an ultimatum and believes she had pushed her friend to take the car ride that would eventually kill her. Thus, the play explores the various fissures and cracks that have emerged among the family members and the tentative steps they take to address their issues. What I appreciated most about this play is that there are moments of humor among the very serious themes. Meera, in particular, is an unforgettable role and it would have been interesting to see this staged simply to see the actress perform her dynamic personality. Also, as I get more interested in issues related to staging, I was impressed by the length of some of the monologues that the actress playing Sadie would have to pull off. It reminds me of the incredible talent and memory it takes to inhabit these roles.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Miracle-Oberon-Modern-Plays/dp/1840027843/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334114708&sr=8-2



In-Sook Chappell’s This Isn’t Romance was probably the grittiest of the first set of Oberon plays I had decided to review. It focuses on a 32 year old Korean British woman named Miso who travels back to Korea to be reunited with her long lost brother Han. As we discover, Miso had left her brother behind at a location where she thought he would be better cared for, while Miso gets routed into the Henry Holt adoption agency, where she will be later adopted by a British couple and raised in Essex. Miso’s relationship with her brother is complicated; he blames her for leaving him behind; she feels tremendous guilt. While Miso was raised in a relatively stable home, she travels to Korea in the wake of a declining modeling career and with limited funds. When she discovers that Han is in major debt and that he is attempting to distance himself from the life of a gangster, Miso decides to prostitute herself in order to win Han’s freedom. At one point, Miso reconsiders her connection to a rich white transnational named Jack; she believes she might be able to extract a large portion of funds from him that would go a long way to help pay off Han’s debt. The desperation of their situation is mirrored by their intense feelings for each other, which border on the incestuous. The conclusion was a little bit abrupt for me and felt as if Chappell rushed the outcome of what would have certainly become a much longer play, but the configuration of these roles and characters were absolutely riveting.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/This-Isnt-Romance-In-Sook-Chappell/dp/1840029102/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334162286&sr=1-1




In Hijra, Ash Kotak explores the complications of a modern day queer South Asian British man named Nils who must closet his relationship with a man from India named Raj. As explained in the introductory note, “Hijra concerns itself with identity. It is only when we are true to ourselves that we can hope to find real happiness. Yep that old chestnut! It is also a play about hypocrisy. How can Hindua accept Hijra (eunuchs) but not gay people? But above all Hijra is a romantic comedy with the obligatory feelgood ending.” The “romantic comedy” aspect of Kotak’s drama separates it from many other works concerning Asian Anglophone and Asian American queer contexts, which tend to have a more dramatic or tragic flair. In this work, Nils and Raj must find ways to sidestep immigration, perform as man and wife, and then come to understand how coming out may not be nearly as traumatic as they were both expecting. In having this “obligatory feelgood ending,” Kotak’s play is far more optimistic than say Chay Yew’s Porcelain which also has an UK context and which explores a young gay Asian British man who is in jail for murdering his lover. With “queer optimism,” as a kind of recent catchphrase circulating currently in queer theory and studies, we might place this drama within that discourse, suggesting that even in the levity of this genre there is a particular urgency in imagining a romance plot that does not necessarily end in death or destruction.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Hijra-Ash-Kotak/dp/1840021918/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335148832&sr=1-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
29 April 2012 @ 09:00 am
reviews are for everyone  
We've gained a few new members recently, and I thought I'd post a hello as well as a reminder that everyone is welcome to contribute reviews. Once you join this community, you can post your reviews of whatever Asian American literature you please. Duplicate reviews are entirely welcome and even encouraged since we are interested in different viewpoints on this broad body of literature (check out our Library Thing catalog for easier searching of posted reviews). Our community is also fairly informal, and we don't have set guidelines on how or what to review. Just be respectful and thoughtful! Also feel free to use this space just to ask questions or think out loud about Asian American literature. Not all posts need to be book reviews.

Happy reading!
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
26 April 2012 @ 08:11 pm
Kimberly Pauley's Cat Girl's Day Off  
My friend spark*, who is an assistant professor of library and information science, received a review copy of Kimberly Pauley's new young adult novel Cat Girl's Day Off (Tu Books, 2012) with a letter from the publisher that begins, "We know that science fiction and fantasy have been crying out for more diversity, and we're thrilled to share with you the latest from Tu Books, our new science fiction fantasy imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS: Cat Girl's Day Off by award-winning young adult author Kimberly Pauley (Sucks to Be Me)." I jumped on the chance to borrow the book and am really happy to have read it!



This book is awesome on a stick! It has cats, dogs, superpowers, and hug-attacks (as in hugs used as attacks). In short, it's like the author wrote the novel for me!

The story is about Natalie Ng, who goes by Nat, a mixed-race teenager whose father is Chinese and mother is "Nordic." She also has a "Talent," which in the world of the novel is what superpowers are called. Her Talent is being able to talk to cats, and she feels inferior in comparison to the rest of her family who have more highly rated Talents such as lie detection, levitation, supergenius, and chameleon-like ability. Her best friends are Oscar, a mixed-race, gay, celebrity-culture obsessed Asian American, and Melly, a beautiful white girl who aspires to be an actress. The plot of the story involves the three friends getting involved in saving a kidnapped celebrity blogger named Easton West during a movie shoot at their high school and elsewhere in Chicago. The movie is called Freddie's Day Off, and it is about a teenager who decides to relive the adventures in the iconic teen movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

The beginning of the novel reminded me of Charles Yu's title story in Third Class Superhero. In Cat Girl's Day Off, Nat tells us about how her Class D (according to the Bureau of Extrasensory Regulation and Management or BERM) power is nothing compared to the powers others in her family have. She actually hides her powers from everyone else because she doesn't want to be called "Cat Girl" and mocked at school. In a cheeky play on the classic narrative of the model minority Asian, Nat feels that she doesn't measure up to her supergenius younger sister who, though a few years younger than her, is ahead of her in school grades. Nat also has an older sister in college whose multiple Class A Talents has her working part-time with BERM already as an agent.

The novel does a wonderful job of presenting Nat's insecurities as a teenager (with respect to her Talents, in comparison to her sisters, and regarding her love interest). Nat likes a boy Ian in her trigonometry class, and of course the adventures she gets sucked into in the novel jeopardize her budding flirtation with him. I also loved how Ian gets a bit of action as well with a boy named Garrett.

One of the interesting things about the novel is that while the bulk of it is in Nat's voice and perspective, there are a few blog posts from Easton scattered throughout, including one that starts off the text. Each chapter also begins with an epigraph about cats from actual authors, falsely-attributed comments, and characters in the novel.

I also loved the character of Oscar, the gay best friend, as someone who has created a safe world around himself even as he has faced the difficulties of coming out to his parents, being openly gay in school, and breaking up with a boyfriend.

Pauley is also clearly enamored with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and it is fun to see how the novel traces the locations and adventures of that movie in the places and things that the main characters visit and do.
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
22 April 2012 @ 09:33 pm
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for April 22, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for April 22, 2012

In this post reviews of Nury Vittachi’s The Feng Shui Detective (The First Master Wong Mystery and The Feng Suit Detective Goes West (The Second Master Wong Mystery) (Felony and Mayhem, 2011; first published in Australia in 2008 by Allen and Unwin); Frances Park’s Hotline Heaven (Permanent Press, 1998); Wendy Wan Long Shang’s The Great Wall of Lucy Wu (Scholastic Books, 2011); Shyam Selvadurai’s Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (Tundra Books, 2007); and Marie G. Lee’s Saying Goodbye (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).


A Review of Nury Vittachi’s The Feng Shui Detective (The First Master Wong Mystery) (Felony and Mayhem, 2010; first published in the US by St. Martin’s in 2002); A Review of Nury Vittachi’s The Feng Suit Detective Goes West (The Second Master Wong Mystery) (Felony and Mayhem, 2011; first published in Australia in 2008 by Allen and Unwin).


(such a lurvely cover, no?)

Nury Vittachi’s The Feng Shui Detective certainly gets major kudos for its hilarious title, which will be sure to immediately snag Asian Americanists and American Orientalists alike. The first book in the “Master Wong” series is different than most traditional detective stories I’ve been reading lately. There’s no murder to investigate, though there are mysteries are all over the place. The Tsai-Leibler family call in Master C.F. Wong during a period in which their home is almost torched to the ground. Later on the novel, a Malaysian mystic, Ismail, will consult two of Master Wong’s trusted occult experts, Madame Xu (psychic and palm reader) and Dilip Sinha (astrologer), to help him try to discern whether or not there is any way to save a young woman named Clara, from her dark fate. Clara has disappeared. The disappearances do not stop there: another young woman Danita Mirpuri is likely kidnapped and later, Maddie Tsai, also seems to have gone missing. Further still, there seems to be a ghost haunting the dental practice owned by Mr. Tsai-Leibler. So many mysteries, so LITTLE time! It is a testament to Vittachi’s writerly skills that he manages to cover practically all the bases by the end. Of all the colorful characters to grace us in this novel, I found Vitacchi’s presentation of Master Wong’s intern, Joyce McQuinnie, to be the most endearing and intriguing sidekick-type figure that I’ve seen in a long time. Joyce is truly the product of a transnational upbringing and she is representative of the younger generation, so much so that an early chapter that sees Master Wong in a hip-hop dance club is one of the most hilarious sequences that I’ve read in a very long time. The later sections move to Australia and the novel gets an increasingly transnational feel that will set up the mystery quite well for the second installment.



The beginning of The Feng Shui Detective Goes West sees Master Wong in a bit of financial trouble, so when Joyce comes to him with a major opportunity to make some quick cash, he immediately takes it. The problem here is that it will require him first to travel to Hong Kong to inspect the spatial properties of a new airplane and then later to work in London to investigate the feng shui spatial practices of British royalty. Joyce is again in fine form in this novel. Her former friendship and relationship to a man named Paul Barker ends up being instrumental to shifting the plot’s course. You see: Paul is charged with having murdered an oil executive who had traveled on the new plane and Joyce does not want to leave Hong Kong until he is exonerated. Master Wong at first balks, but another offer with cash incentives does encourage him to stay longer to see what all the fuss is about and find out who might have perpetrated the murder of the oil executive. Nevertheless, they have not solved the mystery before they are heading off to London on Skyparc company’s newest and most innovative plane. Like the first installment of Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh series, there is a serious ecocritical element to this novel, as Paul is associated with an environmental activist group called Pals for the Planet. Over the course of the novel, we begin to see that there was likely a frame-up, but there still remains the question of motive. The oil executive was not necessarily central to Skyparc’s new plane, which was touted as a greener alternative to the many planes that have been central to the reliance on pollutive fossil fuels. For his part, Paul was hired to release a crafty computer virus that functioned with subliminal messages and would influence high powered business executives to make more environmentally-conscious decisions, but he was not motivated to kill anyone. Consequently, the second half of the novel shifts to the motives behind the killers and to survive the terrorist activities of the Earth Agents, who have rigged the Skyparc plane with bombs, which are set to disable to plane before it lands in London! As always, Vittachi adds flair to the novel, as a sideplot with Joyce involving her interest in a certain member of the royal family who is on the plane to London, soars to its flirtatious heights. There is a little bit for everyone in this second Master Wong mystery. An exciting installment in the Master Wong series and I thought superior in many ways to the first (more focused in terms of plotting). Unfortunately, I can’t seem to see if there are more in the series that are available. It looks likely that there are some other titles, but they are not readily available for purchase. These include:

▪ The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (2002)
▪ The Feng Shui Detective’s Casebook (2003)
▪ The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics (2006)

Buy the Books Here:

http://felonyandmayhem.com/book/the-feng-shui-detective/

http://felonyandmayhem.com/book/the-feng-shui-detective-goes-west/

A Review of Frances Park’s Hotline Heaven (Permanent Press, 1998).




I was familiar with the Permanent Press because I have occasionally taught Kim Ronyoung’s canonical Asian American work, Clay Walls. I was browsing their website the other day and noticed another novel by a Korean American author, Frances Park, one half of the duo who penned the memoir that was earlier reviewed, Chocolate, Chocolate! Hotline Heaven takes on a topic that is similar in scope to Chocolate, Chocolate at least with respect to the occupation of the protagonist and our narrator, Jo, who is a baker and works in a small town shop called The Cake and Coffee. The title refers to the hotline that Jo would call in order to seek out counseling for suicidal tendencies; this hotline leads her to her future husband, a man by the name of Monk, who works for a hardware company, Home Mart and is working diligently to open the first mega-store. Marital tensions arise as both Jo’s and Monk’s pasts continually haunt them. Jo’s father committed suicide, while Jo’s mother died of cancer; she’s estranged from her only sister. Jo still occasionally suffers from depression, though visits from a neighbor named Clyde (who once owned the house Jo and Monk live in) as well as her friendship with the manager of The Cake and Coffee, named Jane, help buoy her up. On Monk’s end, the death of his son, Mickey, who succumbed to a brain tumor, is the ever-present specter that disrupts his life. As Jo and Monk struggle to put their pasts behind them, their occupations present them with considerable challenges. Jo must help Jane with designing the perfect cake, part of a campaign to garner a larger clientele for The Cake and Coffee. Monk is fired from Home Mart and is replaced by a man (with an Ivy League pedigree) who will now oversee the megastore construction. Park has a wonderful writing style and she paints a very lively picture of local characters in a Pennsylvania small town, but the political and social texture of the work lacks in comparison to a narrative like Clay Walls. Indeed, I do not have an issue so much with the lack of a racial discourse or specifically an Asian American one, as I’ve attended to many such texts in this blog in the past, but rather the ways in which the narrative seems rather disassociated from a historical or social thickness—that is, I could only vaguely sense what time period the story might have been set in, though the work functions in a more or less realist format. Of course, my interest as a critic and a reader tends to be the interplay between individual characters and larger social forcers. Certainly, what this text most predominantly brings to bear is a regionalist aesthetic and working-class politic in the struggles that both Monk and Jo encounter with their blue-collar lives.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Hotline-Heaven-Frances-Park/dp/1579620116

A Review of Wendy Wan Long Shang’s The Great Wall of Lucy Wu (Scholastic Books, 2011).



Wendy Wan Long Shang’s debut novel, The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, is yet another entry in the Asian American young adult genre, narrated by the titular Lucy Wu, an intriguing contemporary heroine. Lucy Wu certainly herself as the child lacking in particular talents or special skills, without the apparent intelligence and beauty of her older sister Regina, who is about to go to college and without the model minority math whiz skills of her brother, Kenny. Indeed, Lucy’s greatest interest is basketball. Her life gets complicated when the long lost sister (Yi Po) of her deceased grandmother visits the United States; her parents decide that Yi Po will share Lucy’s bedroom. Thus, the “great wall of Lucy Wu” is born, as Lucy makes sure to create a clear diving line between her side and Yi Po’s side of the room. It is apparent that Lucy feels some racial and ethnic shame. In one sequence involving Chinese dumplings and an upcoming party, she is flabbergasted to see her friends so interested in ethnic cuisine. At first, she is embarrassed when her mother and her great aunt arrive to make dumplings for the party, but her feelings change once she sees her classmates so invested in the cooking process. The other major dilemma that Lucy faces appears in relation to her interests in basketball. She decides that she will try out for her school’s team captain, but must go up against her arch nemesis, a girl named Sloane (who also happens to have two fearsome and tall friends). With the help and support of Madison, her Caucasian friend, and Talent Cheng, the local Chinese American model minority, Lucy Wu finds the courage to go up against Sloane. Shang’s created a very readable novel with a plucky heroine that is reminiscent of the work of Justina Chen Headley, especially Headley’s first two novels. The one element that I kept thinking of throughout the basketball storyline is how the text might have changed had this book been published after the Jeremy Linsanity craze began. There are moments in the text where characters give Lucy a hard time for wanting to be an Asian American basketball player, suggesting that there are no such racially identifiable superstars. As of 2012, we know Lucy would have a new idol to help spur her to great sporting heights.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Wall-Of-Lucy/dp/0545162157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334012834&sr=8-1

A Review of Shyam Selvadurai’s Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (Tundra Books, 2007).



Like Paul Yee’s Money Boy, Shiyam Selvadurai explores the life of an adolescent who is coming to grips with an emergent queer sexuality. In this case, our protagonist is Amrith, a 14 year-old, who lives with the close friend of his deceased mother, Auntie Bundle and Auntie Bundle’s husband. Amrith’s parents died in a motorcycle accident when he was just a young boy and he begrudgingly takes on this new life under the wings of Auntie Bundle (which also includes her two daughters, Mala and the older, Selvi). Amrith’s status as an orphan and the conditions under which his parents died leave him to be marked as a social pariah. When his cousin Niresh visits and his extended family begin to offer friendly overtures, Amrith’s life is turned upside down. On the one hand, his Uncle (Niresh’s father) has come back into Amrith’s life with a particular financial purpose in mind, to sell off a piece of land that was meant to eventually be bequeathed to Amrith that was a refuge for Amrith’s mother. On the other, Niresh’s friendship to Amrith forces Amrith to consider his growing attraction for others of the same sex. Selvadurai certainly takes a difficult topic on for the young adult genre, but again, like many of the other works reviewed, I think Swimming in the Monsoon Sea obviously can be directed to multiple audiences. It’s increasingly clear that the YA genre is a marketing tool as much as it is a directive or suggestive of the ideal audience for a particular textbook. The historical contexts of this book are more muted than in Selvadurai’s other novels, Cinnamon Gardens and Funny Boy (which I teach occasionally), but there is always a sense of the postcolonial tumult that is indicative of so much of Sri Lankan Anglophone literatures.

Buy the book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Monsoon-Sea-Shyam-Selvadurai/dp/0887768342/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

A Review of Marie G. Lee’s Saying Goodbye (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).



I’ve still been catching up on the young adult fiction genre; it seem as if that rabbit hole will never end (in a good way). My latest foray into this area took me to Marie G. Lee’s Saying Goodbye, which focuses on Ellen Sung, a Korean American freshman attending Harvard University. While Ellen’s elite educational background might seem to suggest that the novel could traffic in the model minority stereotype, the author steers clear insofar as she focuses on Ellen’s transformation from apolitical college-bound subject to the activist-oriented subject who explores both the pitfalls and possibilities of interracial alliances and friendships. Her roommate, Leecia, is African American; Leecia helps Ellen consider the importance of race and ethnic studies to the formation of the minority’s subject identity. To that end, Ellen begins attending KASH, which is Harvard’s Korean American Student Association, and meets a fellow Korean American named Jae. Because Ellen grew up in Michigan in an area with few other Korean Americans, the prospect of an ethnic identification is particularly tortured. She feels unable at first to really connect to her fellow Korean Americans, but over the course of the novel, she gradually learns to accept the uniqueness of her own life trajectory and tentatively considers the importance of her ethnic ancestry to her continuing studies, to her intellectual growth, and to her sense of social equality. While she believes she will engage a career in the sciences, she shows a clear talent in creative writing to the extent that a very renowned faculty member takes an interest in her. She even manages to publish a short story in a reputable print source, but also offends one of her childhood friends, Jessie, in the process. The final arc of the book takes flight amid the growing tensions between the African American and Korean American student populations at Harvard, especially as the African American Student Association supports the invitation of a rap artist who is targeted by the Korean Americans for a song that they deem to be racially prejudiced. Lee is clearly infusing her book with a number of social contexts, including but not limited to the Los Angeles race riots, the Latasha Harlins killing, as well as Ice Cube’s controversial song, Black Korea, but Lee chooses to fictionalize this story for the most part. The conclusion is particularly unsentimental and understated in a way that I always appreciate, showing us how difficult it can be to forge both lasting friendships and interracial coalitions.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Saying-Goodbye-Marie-Lee/dp/B001P5HDJA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335155199&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
20 April 2012 @ 09:30 am
asianamlitfans at AALR  
Just a note to say that The Asian American Literary Review, an excellent journal of creative and critical writing, has a new website design that includes a widget listing the most recent asianamlitfans entries! Hello AALR!
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
12 April 2012 @ 11:30 am
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 12, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 12, 2012

In this post, reviews of Laurence Yep’s The Magic Paintbrush (HarperTrophy, 2003; illustrated by Suling Wang); Laurence Yep’s The Earth Dragon Awakes (HarperTrophy, 2006); Laurence Yep’s City of Fire (Starscape, an imprint of Tor Books, 2009); Laurence Yep’s City of Ice (Starscape, an impint of Tor Books, 2011); Thrity Umrigar’s The Space Between Us (Harper, 2007) and Thrity Umrigar’s The World We Found (Harper, 2012).

A Review of Laurence Yep’s The Magic Paintbrush (HarperTrophy, 2003; illustrated by Suling Wang); Laurence Yep’s The Earth Dragon Awakes (HarperTrophy, 2006); Laurence Yep’s City of Fire (Starscape, an imprint of Tor Books, 2009); Laurence Yep’s City of Ice (Starscape, an impint of Tor Books, 2011).




Laurence Yep’s The Magic Paintbrush is the story of a young boy named Steve who is forced to move in with his grandfather and Uncle Fong in a small, run down tenement in San Francisco’s Chinatown, after his parents pass away. He is clearly intimidated by his relatives, as he fears coming home after receiving an “F” on an art assignment. His paintbrush had become so threadbare that his painting could not be done properly, which results in his grade. When he reveals his mark to his grandfather, he expects a severe rebuke, perhaps even to be thrown out, but instead, his grandfather bequeaths him with a new paintbrush, one that he does not realize at first is magical. The story takes its surreal turn at this point when they begin to explore the limits and possibilities of what they can do with a magic paintbrush—they can enter paintings, go into alternate universes. In one, they go back into time and meet Uncle Fong’s dead sister; in another, they leave behind the apartment manager, Pang, to fend for himself and only rescue him when he promises to improve living conditions. Thus, the magic paintbrush is not simply something to be trifled with, as Steve, his grandfather, and Uncle Fong realize that who they depict can come to control them. As always, Yep is particularly masterful at combining difficult social contexts with a delightful narrative. The illustrations by Suling Wang and a nice match for the story itself.




In the Earth Dragon Awakes, Yep returns to historical fiction as the tapestry upon which the story takes place. The main characters are two families: the Travises (who have one young son named Henry) and their hired domestic help, Ah Sing and his son, Chin. Henry and Chin, being close in age, are friends. The two families are separated when the 1906 San Francisco earthquake hits. While each family struggles for survival, they eventually run into each other and enjoy a felicitous reunion. In a change of power, Ah Sing invites the Travises to live with him, Chin, and his cousin, Ah Bing in Oakland, giving the Travises time to rebuild in San Francisco. There are a couple of interesting things to note about this narrative. On the one hand, one of the most devastating aftereffects of the earthquake became the fires which could not be put out due immediately, as fire stations were overtaxed and roads were badly damaged. Second, given all the racial tension among the Chinese and white Americans at the time, the Travises rather positive relationship with Ah Sing and Chin struck as particularly anomalous. Yep doesn’t always make this so clear, so one has to read into the moments where the Chinese are forced to live in their own separated refugee camps. The historical revisioning at play certainly offers a more politically conscious audience a chance to identify with particularly forward thinking characters, but nevertheless gives me pause as an academic committed to the social context approach as much as the freedom of the writerly imagination.



Laurence Yep’s City of Fire returns us to the speculative and fantasy terrains that marked the earlier Dragon Series (I still have yet to read the other three out of print titles from that quartet). City of Fire takes place in an alternate time and space based upon our own reality, but shifted out of focus. The year is 1941 and the novel opens in San Francisco. A daring museum heist leaves two important figures dead: one, a daughter of Kushan royalty, and another, the loyal friend of a young street urchin surviving on the streets. From this point, a band of adventures from together to track down the perpetrators (a nefarious figure known only as Mr. Roland and another dragon known as Badik) and to retrieve important artifacts and exact revenge, but their motivations for doing so are all fairly different. The narrative focuses on a number of different characters, including: Scirye, a young woman of Kushan Afghani ancestry; her pet griffin Kles; Bayang, a dragon in disuise; Leech, a young boy who is unaware that he holds magical powers; and Koko, Leech’s friend, who also possesses powers but does not reveal them until later on in the narrative. Yep is an expert on the fantasy genre, so die-hard fans of this form will find the narrative to be exactly down their alley. The action never stops and Yep keeps our attention precisely because the band of adventurers, though united in one cause, still must learn to work together.




Laurence Yep’s City of Ice continues the adventures that began in the first book of the series. In this case, Bayang, Scirye, Koko, Leech and Kles all travel to the arctic. With the help of a Sodgian guide (the Sodgians are a trade group connected with the Silk Road, which apparently in this reality extends into the arctic) named Roxana, they are able to penetrate the most challenging and dangerous arctic regions, including an ominous area known as the Wastes. They also enlist the help of Uncle Rezak, a spirit of the Arctic of takes the form of the polar bear; he may have information that will help lead them to Roland and Badik, who have gone into the arctic seeking more treasure and artifacts. This book complicates some of the earlier friendships and relationships and pushes characters in new directions. Scirye, for instance, having made a deal with a goddess to exact revenge, finds herself increasingly beset by visions, which prove to confuse her. Leech battles an internal war with himself; there is a strange inner voice inside of him that is beginning to emerge and plant negative thoughts about Bayang. In City of Fire, we learned that Bayang was a dragon-assassin dispatched to kill Leech precisely because Leech was the reincarnation of an individual who killed dragons. In City of Ice, Leech’s schizoid personality develops further, causing increased tension among the adventurers. When the novel concludes, we realize there is one book left in the trilogy and it is likely going to be something related to a city of death, a place in the Kushan Empire that appeared in one of Scirye’s visions. Stay tuned!

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Magic-Paintbrush-Laurence-Yep/dp/0064408523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333861344&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/The-Earth-Dragon-Awakes-Earthquake/dp/0060008466/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333861360&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/City-Fire-Trilogy-Mass-Market/dp/0765358794/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333861375&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/City-Ice-Trilogy-Laurence-Yep/dp/076531925X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333861430&sr=1-1

A Review of Thrity Umrigar’s The Space Between Us (Harper, 2007) and The World We Found (Harper, 2012).




The Space Between Us is probably Umrigar’s most well-known work; it appeared on a number of bestseller lists and reveals the complicated gender and class politics that root families together in contemporary India. Set in Bombay, the novel is most prominently concerned with a friendship between two women, a middle class housewife named Serabai and her servant, Bhima, who lives in a slum area. Both Serabai and Bhima have seen marital troubles. Serabai husband ends up tragically dying, but she also is able to escape a cycle of domestic abuse and violence. Much of her survival is predicated on Bhima’s support and it is Bhima who helps Serabai raise a wonderful daughter, Dinaz, who will come to marry a man named Viraf. Bhima’s life is filled her own tragedies. Her husband runs away with their one son, Amit, while Bhima must survive on her own wages and the wages earned by her daughter, Pooja. Pooja will later die after having contracted AIDS unknowingly from her husband Raju and by the time the novel opens, Bhima is raising her adult-aged granddaughter, Maya, who is pregnant out of wedlock, with no wedding prospects, and who is essentially dropping out of college. The opening arc involves Bhima enlisting the help of Serabai and in some ways transgressing the proprietary boundaries of servant and master by asking Serabai to accompany Maya to get an abortion. The second half of the book involves detailing the complicated family histories of each major female character and we finally get a sense of the incredible and perhaps unbridgeable gulf between those in the middle and lower classes in India. When an irreparable gulf opens up between Serabai and Bhima, one that concludes the novel, we see Bhima’s resolve harden and we see a kind of survival instinct kick in that suggests that despite her financial circumstances, she will find a way to persevere. I couldn’t help but feel though that the conclusion was a tragic one and Umrigar’s novel is a testament to the asymmetrical and shifting power dynamics that occur across friendships borne under capitalistic circumstances. How can Bhima be both worker and friend, confidante and servant? Unfortunately, the answer to this question seems to be a bleak one.




I have read some of Umrigar’s previous work, including If Today be Sweet and The Weight of Heaven, though I still have not had a chance to read her memoir, First Darling of the Morning or her first novel, Bombay Time. In her latest, Umrigar focuses on the topic of friendships, as they have disintegrated over time. The four women at the center of this novel, Laleh, Kavita, Nishta (Zoha is her Muslim name), and Armaiti, have all grown up and for the most part lead separate lives. Only Laleh and Kavita seem to have much regular contact with each other. Kavita is a closeted queer woman, while Laleh lives an upper-class existence and is married with kids. Both women live in India. They reconnect with Nishta when they both find out Armaiti, living in the United States, is dying from brain cancer. They realize that they must try to visit Armaiti before she passes away, but getting Nishta to go presents a major problem. Nishta, who was Hindu, marries a man of Muslim background (Iqbal) and has converted her religious background and lives a solitary existence. Iqbal will not allow Nishta to go and begins to severely regulate any contact she has with Laleh or Kavita. In the meantime, we discover a couple of important things: Kavita once harbored romantic feelings for Armaiti, who ends up breaking Kavita’s heart by marrying an American named Richard (they have one child named Diane). Laleh divulges her guilt over a protest march that the four attended as young activists and which Laleh had left. That same protest march results is where Armaiti suffers a concussion; Laleh believes she failed to protect Armaiti and that Amraiti’s cancer might have been connected to that event.

Umrigar is particularly invested at conveying the importance of the friendship to the lives of these women, who have drifted apart, but realize that they once had something special together. If there is an area that could have received more attention, it appears in the guise of the activist period of the four characters, which seems to gesture toward a historical and social context that might have had a more prominent space in the novel. One other representation that will bear more discussion is the character, Iqbal, who appears as the primary novelistic antagonist, especially to the “friendship plot” that will conclude the novel. Umrigar takes great care in giving this particular figure a prominent enough backstory to ground some of his more distasteful characteristics and shows us why he would turn from a more liberal and activist to becoming a man of such devout Islamic faith. How do we place this figure in relation to the post 9/11 context of Muslim representations? Finally: one of the more depressing elements to me in relation to the novel is that it seems all four characters entirely turn away from their progressive and activist pasts, a sense that there is little possibility to meld together a traditional career and a concerted attention to addressing social inequality. At the end of the narrative, as the three friends journey toward Armaiti, I couldn’t help but hope that other priorities might be born anew and that the “world they found” as young activists might continue to alter the course of their lives.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Space-Between-Us-Novel/dp/006079156X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1332691632&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Found-Novel/dp/0061938343
 
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stephenhongsohn
05 April 2012 @ 08:35 am
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 5, 2012.  
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 5, 2012.

It is my little brother’s birthday today and a day of celebration deserves reviews of Asian American literature.

In this post, reviews for Marina Budhos’s Ask Me No Questions (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006); Marina Budhos’s Tell us We’re Home (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2010); Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder (Felony and Mayhem, 2009; reprinted in the US also by Minotaur Books, 2010); Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul (Minotaur Books, 2011); Bette Bao Lord’s In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (Harper Trophy, first published in 1984, reissued by Harper in 1986 and then again in 2003); E.C. Myers’s Fair Coin (Pyr, 2012).

A Review of Marina Budhos’s Ask Me No Questions (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006) and Marina Budhos’s Tell us We’re Home (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2010).




I’ve been meaning to read something published by Marina Budhos for awhile. I still haven’t gotten to her two adult novels, The Professor Light, and House of Waiting. In Ask Me No Questions, Budhos turns to the young adult genre to explore the complicated post-9/11 milieu. Narrated in the first person, the novel is told from the viewpoint of Nadira, a fourteen-year-old girl who immigrated to America from Bangladesh. Nadira, along with her sister, Aisha, and her parents, are all undocumented immigrants. In the post-9/11 period, with all of the increased scrutiny and attention focused on those of Islamic faith, Nadhira and her family attempt to flee to Canada and to plea for asylum. They are turned away at the border; Nadira’s father is subsequently detained by the American police in connection with some money he had apparently donated to a mosque. Because of his status as an undocumented immigrant, his detainment of course complicates his residency and there is a possibility he will be immediately deported. Thus, the novel turns to Nadira and Aisha’s attempts to try to win his freedom. Aisha, in particular, begins the novel as your stereotypical model minority figure, but the stress of familial disruption increasingly affects her and her grades drop precipitously. It is up to Nadira to maintain the hope that their father will be freed, that their family will be reunited and that they will be able to claim residency somewhere. I’ve noticed that many young adult books have an endnote that often comes with something like a bibliography or pages of research based on historical contexts represented in the actual plotting. Budhos does include such an endnote; she explains that in the post 9/11 period, “During this period, hundred of immigrants, not sure what would happen to them, fled to the Canadian border, though many were turned back only to be arrested by U.S. immigration authorities. Many of these people were immigrants who had lived years in the U.S., and their children had been raised as Americans” (162). What I find fascinating here is the turn to the northern border, which definitely has not been the subject of as much “border theory” for U.S. ethnic studies overall. Certainly, Budhos’s young adult work possesses the kind of historical texture that I prefer admittedly as an Asian Americanist, an attentive consideration of the ways that individual experiences collide against larger power structures.



About halfway through Marina Budhos’s Tell Us We’re Home, I realized that Budhos had used the same narrative technique that I’d found in the work of Melissa de La Cruz in the Au Pairs series. If you recall, de la Cruz brought labor and service work to the Hamptons in the guise of three young, but beautiful women, only one of which really had working class roots, Mara. In the Au Pairs series, de la Cruz consistently shifted narrative perspective among the three principles: Jacqui, Mara, and Eliza. In Tell us We’re Home, Budhos also has three principles: Jaya, of Indo Trinidadian roots; Maria, who is from Mexico; and Lola from Slovakia. All three happen to be the children of mothers who work as domestics in a suburb in Meadowbrook, New Jersey. All three characters possess their particular family dilemmas. Jaya’s mother is fired and blacklisted from domestic service work when she is accused of theft. Maria must contend with a blooming romance with a Caucasian high school student, Tash, while also confronting the growing racial tensions that embroil her Mexican immigrant community and family members. Lola has clear anger issues and a dysfunctional family life; her father is depressed and her mother suffers from diabetic problems. In a relatively recent post, I wrote about the narrative move toward closure in so many ethnic young adult fictions I had been reading. Though Budhos works toward resolution in most of the conflicts in the story, there are certainly some elements left dangling, which I really appreciated. Like the Au Pairs series, Budhos is really working toward how feminist communities and friendships are created in the midst of labor-oriented economies. Jaya, Maria, and Lola, though hailing from very disparate ethnic backgrounds, come together based upon a similar class register. The other element that’s clear from having read a number of children’s work is the emphasis on courage and bravery in the primary characters. To a certain extent, it is far more important that in the youth-oriented genres, the protagonists are characters upon which the young readers can not only identify but potentially model their own personalities and choices upon.

Buy the books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Me-Questions-Marina-Budhos/dp/1416949208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332033287&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Were-Home-Marina-Budhos/dp/1442421282/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333563692&sr=8-1

A Review of Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder (Felony and Mayhem, 2009; reprinted in the US also by Minotaur Books, 2010); Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul (Minotaur Books, 2011



Here is the mystery checklist from Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder: Our investigative team includes Inspector Singh, a Singaporean of Indian background and of Sikh religious persuasion and Inspector Mohammad, a Malaysian police officer and his subordinate, Sergeant Shukor. The murdered is Alan Lee, a wealthy business magnate, based in Mayalsian and owner of a logging company based out in Borneo. Our primary suspect is Chelsea Liew, a Singaporean and former beauty queen, and also Alan Lee’s ex-wife. Her motive is apparently related to the fact that during divorce proceedings Alan had attempted a sleight of hand to gain control of their three children, proclaiming status as a Moslem, thus ensuring his custody. There are other possible suspects: Jasper Lee, Alan’s younger brother, and an environmental activist and researcher, who will soon admit to killing Alan; Kian Min Lee, Alan’s youngest brother, the one who wants to take over the family company; Sharifah: Alan’s mistress; Ravi: Chelsea’s “mister”; Marcus: Alan and Chelsea’s adult son and former boyfriend of Sharifah; Douglas Wee: business conglomerate from Hong Kong based in bio-fuels and associate of Kian Min Lee; and Rupert: an Englishman based in Borneo. Inspector Singh is sent to Malaysia to help out with this investigation in part because Singapore has a vested interest in a case involving a former celebrity of high stature. Chelsea Liew was a former model and held high notoriety in Singapore, but Singh’s jurisdiction in Malaysia is tenuous and he realizes how difficult his investigation is going to be. Not surprisingly, Singh takes a liking to Liew and he’s naturally convinced she cannot be the killer, and so are we, since as seasoned mystery readers, we tend to understand that the most likely culprit is probably and actually the least likely to end up being the actual murderer. The texture of Flint’s narrative is tremendous, as she weaves together a crackling plot and adds other dimensions that speak to the complicated transnational social contexts that link both Singapore and Malaysia. Like Thrity Umrigar’s The Weight of Heaven, this novel also explores the havoc that global capitalism plays on local and indigenous groups. Thus, the novel contains a considerable ecocritical rhetoric that could obviously be the subject of a longer academic study. Certainly, this mystery is one that I would consider adding to a course with postcolonial themes or genre foci. Also, I give Flint kudos for her alliterative title, which is just fun to say aloud =).



In A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul, Singh is dispatched to Indonesia to help investigate a suicide-terrorist plot that kills scores of people in Bali, the island best known as a tropical island getaway in the popular imagination. He is there to aide a female Australian investigator named Bronwyn. They make a spirited pairing, as each does not conform to what we might expect in a Hollywood power couple. Singh, in particular, is overweight and his turban becomes the target of anti-Islamic sentiment despite the fact that he is of Sikh faith. The investigation is thrown a huge wrinkle when Bronwyn and Singh are specifically routed to another mystery which has occurred. One of the victims of the bombings, Richard Crouch, was found to have been killed prior to the bombings (in the location known as the Sari Club), as a bullet wound was found in the remains of his body. The list of possible suspects in his murder is long; it could be his wife Sarah, who is engaged in an affair with a younger man, a surfer named Greg. Perhaps, it could be any of his local associates who are of the Muslim faith: a man named Ghani or his wife, who had harbored feelings of love for Richard Crouch. It would be any number of expatriates living in Bali, such as the couples: Julian and Emily Greenwood or Tim and Karri Yardley. Everyone seems to have a motive and Singh intends to found out who is behind the “bali conspiracy most foul.” Like Flint’s first novel, A Bali Conspiracy most foul combines the best in genre fiction with a strong political and social texture. Here, Flint explores the religious tensions that have mired Indonesia, which possesses a large Muslim population. Bali is one of the few locations in Indonesia with a very strong Hindu community, so religious tension that opens up the novel is obviously positioned within this background. Another wonderfully engaging mystery from Flint. I can’t wait for the next installment to be published stateside.

Buy the Books Here:

http://felonyandmayhem.com/book/inspector-singh-investigates-a-most-peculiar-malaysian-murder/

http://www.amazon.com/Inspector-Singh-Investigates-Peculiar-Malaysian/dp/B006TR0JAE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331583829&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.com/Inspector-Singh-Investigates-Bali-Conspiracy/dp/0749929766

A Review of Bette Bao Lord’s In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (Harper Trophy, first published in 1984, reissued by Harper in 1986 and then again in 2003).




I recall reading this book as a child and being generally uninterested in it. From my vague recollections, I didn’t really identify with the Chinese elements that began the novel and it speaks to me now of the interesting ways that, as children, we can more easily identify with ethnic contexts over racial ones. The author, Bette Bao Lord, is the author of a number of works, including the novels Spring Moon and Middle Heart. Now, looking back at this narrative, I can obviously see its applicability to the wider Asian American and Asian immigrant experience. The main character, Shirley Temple Wong, comes to the United States (Brooklyn in particular) as a child and like so many other characters we’ve seen before, encounters racial oppression and difficulties in the acculturation process. The year is 1947, which is apparently the year of the boar and also a big year for baseball fans in New York. Most of the novel focuses on Shirley’s various adventures at school and how she is often the subject of exclusion from daily sporting activities. Lord includes an important foreshadowing device in the form of the character Mabel, an African American girl who more aggressively pushes for Shirley’s inclusion on sports team. This interracial connection is later paralleled by Shirley’s interest in Jackie Robinson; she identifies cross-racially insofar as she understands the challenges that racial minorities can face. One of the obvious challenges in these types of young adult oriented and children’s historical fictions is their conceptions of racial discrimination. Though it is clear that there are racial tensions at play throughout the novel, the systematic nature of social inequality is rarely, if ever engaged. I believe that this element tends to be a problem related to the form and genre of youth-oriented works. Nevertheless, Lord’s work reveals the importance of cross-racial identification in the construction of the American minority subject.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Year-Boar-Jackie-Robinson/dp/0064401758/ref=pd_sim_b_1

A Review of E.C. Myers’s Fair Coin (Pyr, 2012)



I’m a total fan of anything related to speculative fiction and E.C. Myers’s debut novel, Fair Coin, will absolutely draw you in based upon its intriguing plotline. The story centers on Ephraim, a teenage boy, your average high schooler you might say, except for one day he discovers a strange note in his locker related to the titular coin, which apparently can grant him wishes. Being a high schooler and apparently only concerned with his own circumstances, Ephraim’s wishes start off relatively small, ones related to mother’s rather desultory parenting skills. Then, Ephraim begins to get a little bit more ambitious by wishing for a fellow classmate, Jena Kim, to develop feelings for him. Later, Ephraim even includes his best friend, Nathan, in on the secret of the coin. Yet, all is not exactly right with this magical coin. Indeed, any time Ephraim uses the coin, something in his reality is distorted. In fact, as he continues to use the coin, the distortions become larger and more concerning. It is unclear and unpredictable how a particular wish may affect some other part of his life or the life of someone he knows. It might be as innocuous as his backpack changing in color, or it could be related to the health of a loved one. In this way, Ephraim considers stopping the use of the coin entirely for fear that he may end up causing more harm than good. To be sure, the trope of a wish backfiring against the wisher is not new, but Myers has a keen eye for the common science fictional trope related to alternate realities and uses it to great effect in this novel. Further still, Myers handles the plotline and pacing perfectly. Indeed, I started this novel late on a Saturday night and it was only after 2 a.m. that I realized I should probably stop reading so that I could get a reasonable amount of sleep. Of course, I finished the novel the next morning. An entertaining and mind-bending new read that plumbs the depths of the speculative fiction landscape. With writers like Ted Chiang, Vandana Singh, Marie Lu, Laurence Yep, Samantha Sotto, Alma Katsu and others delving into non-realist and superrealist genres, there’s certainly a fun course to be created, exploring both the political and aesthetic concerns of the Asian American writer and the speculative fictional world.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Fair-Coin-E-C-Myers/dp/1616146095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332690737&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
01 April 2012 @ 01:40 pm
Wakako Yamauchi's Rosebud and Other Stories  
Wakako Yamauchi's Rosebud and Other Stories (University of Hawai'i Press, 2011) is a collection of recently-written stories by Yamauchi, a Nisei writer who also has a story in the important Aiiieeeee! anthology from 1974.


(cover painting by Yamauchi)

In addition to the short story "And the Soul Shall Dance," which appeared in that anthology, Yamauchi has published Songs My Mother Taught Me (Feminist Press, 1994), introduced by Garrett Hongo, and a number of plays that have also been produced on stage by important Asian American theater groups such as the East West Players.

The stories in this collection read very much like autobiographical essays or stories, and the editor Lillian Howan notes that Yamauchi, in these later years of her life, is interested in a more straightforward storytelling about her experiences and those of other Nisei over the span of the last seventy years. At a certain point, I was unsure if there was even an attempt at fictionalization, with many of the stories, told from a Nisei woman's perspective, describing the same life experiences and family members (and these details mirror what Howan offers as a sketch of Yamauchi's life). Although the collection is labeled as fiction, perhaps the stories are really more simply stories about the author's life...

The stories stand as a chronicle to the memories of the Nisei generation, a cohort who grew up with immigrant parents, lived through WWII internment, found a way back into the everyday world in post-war resettlement, and then fought to tell their stories against a need to forget the pain. The first stories in the collection seem more deliberately plotted, sometimes telling the story of others in the Nisei community (as with the opening title story "Rosebud," referencing the enigmatic movie line from Citizen Kane) and at other times weaving the narrator's perspective through popular culture narratives and characters, as in "Annie Hall, Annie Hall," which features the narrator's half-attentive viewing of Woody Allen's iconic movie of that name. There is also a disturbing story, "Dogs I Owe To," about the dogs in the narrator's family, which ultimately is about the harsh conditions of Japanese American itinerant farming life in the 1930s.

Most of the stories tread and retread Japanese American history, noting important histories like the effects of the Alien Land Laws, picture brides, and internment. The stories are mainly in the form of memories of the older narrator, and it is especially interesting that one of the last stories is about a group of Nisei senior citizens who gather at a McDonalds in Gardena, California (a Japanese American enclave before and after WWII) to swap stories, often repeating them over and over. The telling of these stories is an important act of remembering, and representing the lives of this generation. And it is in this act of repetition, too, that sometimes the surfaces people put up in front of others slips, and a little more of the hidden pains of life slip through.

[info]stephenhongsohn mentioned the University of Hawai'i Press in an earlier post, and I wanted to mention that Yamauchi's collection is also published by that press in a series edited by Russel Leong called "Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies." Other titles in the series that I'm thinking about picking up include Frank Chin's Bulletproof: Buddhists and Other Essays, Gary Pak's A Ricepaper Airplane, Alan Chong Lau's Blues and Greens: A Produce Worker's Journal, Bree Lafreniere's Music through the Dark: A Tale of Survival in Cambodia, and Sheldon Lou's Sparrows, Bedbugs, and Body Shadows: A Memoir.


It's my dog Giles's birthday! I think he would prefer something besides a book as a present...
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
28 March 2012 @ 09:16 am
Kyo Maclear and Isabelle Arsenault's Spork and Virginia Wolf  
I found out about hapa Canadian writer Kyo Maclear on the BookDragon blog's post about Virginia Wolf (Kids Can Press, 2012), a children's book Maclear wrote with amazing illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault. Maclear and Arsenault also collaborated earlier on Spork (Kids Can Press, 2010).



Both of these books are just incredibly delightful. Spork is the story of Spork, who finds that he is not quite a fork and not quite a spoon, and he is always passed over as a utensil of choice for the table. He embarks on a quest to transform himself and then to find others like him so that he won't feel so lonely.



The illustrations by Arsenault, as you can see, are just perfectly whimsical. I love them so much!

Maclear writes about the story of Spork: I was born a spork at a time "'when forks were forks and spoons were spoons. Cut­lery cus­toms were fol­lowed closely. Mix­ing was uncommon.'" There is an obvious parallel between sporkness and mixed-raceness, and it's quite a clever way to explore the feeling of being not quite like others. Here's a delightful trailer for the book in which Maclear discusses her own mixed-race background as the impetus for writing Spork:



I really wanted to look up Maclear and Arsenault's Virginia Wolf when I saw the BookDragon review because I am a (closet?) fan of the British writer Virginia Woolf. I read her when I was in college, lost in my own confusions and anxieties about who I was, and I found her writing to be just the most exquisite examination of interiority and art. Maclear and Arsenault's book takes its inspiration from the real-life sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell (who became a painter), and it deals with Virginia's depression (some of you may know that Woolf battled lifelong depression and killed herself by filling her pockets with stones and walking into the river).



Playing on Woolf's name, Maclear's story has Virginia in a wolfish mood, and the story takes on her sister Vanessa's perspective as she tries to bring Virginia out of her wolfishness. Vanessa tries all sorts of things to cheer Virginia up, but Virginia just growls at her and yells at her to stop.



This story of sisterhood is touching, with Vanessa showing Virginia such care despite Virginia's surly wolfishness. I love the enshadowed version of Virginia as a wolf!

Kyo Maclear is also a writer of books for adults, including a nonfiction book about photography and war called Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and the Art of Witness (SUNY Press, 1999) and two novels The Letter Opener (HarperCollins, 2007) and Stray Love (HarperCollins, 2012; as A Thousand Tiny Truths in Australia). Unfortunately, I think the novels may be in one of those situations where they are not widely distributed in the United States, but I am interested in tracking them down.
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
27 March 2012 @ 01:31 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 27, 2012  
In this post, reviews for: Judy Fong Bates’s Midnight at the Dragon Café (Emblem Editions Reprint, 2004); Judy Fong Bates’s China Dog and Other Stories (Emblem Editions Reprint, 2005); Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish (Little Brown and Company, 2012); Duncan Jepson’s All the Flowers in Shanghai (William Morrow, 2012); Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower (Knopf, 2011); From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant (Viking 2012).

A Review of Judy Fong Bates’s Midnight at the Dragon Café (Emblem Editions Reprint, 2004) and Judy Fong Bates’s China Dog and Other Stories (Emblem Editions Reprint, 2005)



The protagonist at the center of Judy Fong Bates’s Midnight at the Dragon Café is a young Chinese girl, Su-Jen Chou, otherwise known as Annie, who has immigrated to a small town called Irvine, located in Canada. She has a complicated family background. She has an older brother who dies at a young age; her half-brother Lee-Kung possesses a different mother. Though Bates has written what might be considered the quintessential immigrant tale, her ability to create such an engaging narrator lifts this above some of the more prototypical examples in the genre. There is an episodic quality to the novel, as we see the struggles of the family as they acculturate to their Canadian setting. The family runs a restaurant; much of the tension revolves around successive generations. That is, how will the family continue to succeed in Canada? This question is borne largely on the shoulders of Lee-Kung, who must find an appropriate wife and continue the family line. Su-Jen maintains a rather observer-like status as the youngest. When the narrative strays away from the family dramas, we move to Su-Jen’s various adventures at school, where she finds another set of challenges to confront. She eventually forges a strong bond with a Caucasian girl named Charlotte. It is this access to this other world that clarifies how different Su-Jen is from her parents and her half-brother; as a younger immigrant, she gains linguistic facility in English on a level unattained by her parents. The novel is immensely readable and can certainly be adopted in any course focusing on traditional Asian American or Asian Canadian literary themes. Fong Bates is also the author of a short story collection, China Dog and Other Stories, as well as a memoir, The Year of Finding Memory. I plan to review China Dog and Other Stories eventually. The Year of Finding Memory is currently only published in Canada and used copies are pretty pricey, so it’s going to be awhile before I am able to get a hold of that one.


(unfortunately the best quality pic I could find)

China Dog and Other Stories is a very loosely interlinked story collection. All of the stories focus on Chinese Canadian immigrants and almost all take place in service contexts: restaurants, laundries, and other such laboring sites. The first couple of stories take place in the first person mode, but from there, Bates shifts all the stories into the third person. What’s interesting about this collection is how well Bates is able to take similar contexts and reorient our perspectives around it. For instance, in the opening story, “My Sister’s Love,” a Chinese immigrant family arrives in Canada and sets up a laundry business, but one daughter, Lily, must be left behind. When they have saved enough money, she comes to the states, but has difficulty acculturating; when a wealthy benefactor sponsors her as a god-daughter and is obviously romantically interested in her, Lily’s parents put a stop to his presence around the household. Interestingly enough, this moment creates a wide rupture between Lily and her family from which they never seem to recover. The narrator from the second story, “The Gold Mountain Coat,” is also a young girl who lives in a laundry, though this time the story focuses on neighbors, John and Ken, who work in a restaurant owned by their father and due to the thrifty nature of their father, must share an old winter coat. A quandary arises when they realize they need more coats, as one of the brothers intends to get married. Both opening stories show a keen eye toward the complications and the struggles of Chinese immigrants and set the stage for the following stories. The last story, China Dog, is one of my favorites, as it possesses one of the more surrealistic entries in the collection; the main character, Ming, marries into a family that is known to have a curse surrounding it. Intending to protect her future progeny from the curse, Ming visits a local mystic who tells her to buy a porcelain dog and then later smashes it to symbolize that the curse has been lifted. The ending shows us though the strange ways that the occult and the real can intermingle in a tragic sequence that provides a fitting ending to this social realist work. For those looking to add shorter selections to their courses, China Dog and Other Stories is certainly excerptable and provides an invaluable look at Asian Canadian literary contexts.

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Dragon-Cafe-Novel-Awards/dp/1582431892/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328906379&sr=8-1

A Review of Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish (Little Brown and Company, 2012).



I remember seeing the cover to Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish online practically a year ago and was really excited to read it. Akhtar’s debut novel follows a young boy named Hayat as he comes to understand both the possibilities and limitations of his Muslim faith. The novel is ultimately a form of the bildungsroman, as he comes of age through the understanding that faith can both offer one hope but that it can also potentially destroy. The novel contains an important frame narrative. In the opening, we discover that Hayat is college aged and that he harbors incredible guilt over the death of her mother’s family friend named Mina (who comes to live with Hayat’s family after her divorce to a domineering husband and her later immigration to the United States with her young son, Imran), who has succumbed to cancer. The novel then flashes back to the events that caused Hayat to act out and to sabotage Mina’s relationship to a kind and brilliant young physician, Nathan Wolfson, who also works for Hayat’s father (Naveed). Nathan happens to be of the Jewish faith and though this religious affiliation presents an initial obstacle to his relationship to Mina, he seriously considers converting in order to marry Mina. Hayat, as an adolescent boy, develops serious erotic attachments to Mina that encourage him to develop a fundamentalist attitude and he attempts to do whatever he can to deter any potential match-up with Nathan. But, Hayat does not realize the dangers of his meddling and the concluding arc sets up a far more tragic path for Mina as a character, a path that Hayat believes he initiated. Akhtar is particularly talented at inhabiting the mindset of a young adolescent, unsure of his own desires, his beliefs, and his place in a larger familial and religious context. The novel presents an important addition to the Asian American literary canon in that it is a domestically situated work concerning Muslim Americans of Pakistani descent, certainly a novel that opens up important discussions concerning faith, fundamentalism, and religious strife.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/American-Dervish-Novel-Ayad-Akhtar/dp/0316183318/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332792213&sr=8-1

A Review of Duncan Jepson’s All the Flowers in Shanghai (William Morrow, 2012).



Duncan Jepson’s debut novel All the Flowers in Shanghai is an assured work of great imagination and plotting. Set in the 1930s, the story is a first person account of Feng, who comes from a middle class family that looks to improve its class standing. Feng’s older sister (just named Sister in the novel) is to be married off to a son (Xiong Fa) from the very prominent Sang family, but Sister ends up dying from cancer before the marriage takes place. Since the Sang family would very much like to see their son married off, they decide to marry him off to Feng, much to her consternation. Indeed, Feng initiates a fledgling romance to a young fisherman named Bi and she further realizes that she rarely if ever will her beloved grandfather again, the one who took her on tours of the local gardens and helped nourish her love of botany. At first, Feng is horrified and traumatized by her experiences as Sang’s wife, undergoing brutal rapes from her husband and having to deal with extended family members who intimidate her. Over time, Feng begins to realize that she does hold power in subtle ways and begins to exert what control she might have. One of the most obvious sources of her agency comes from her reproductive potential. To that end, when she first bears a female child, a ruse is devised so that the child will be raised by someone outside of the Sang household and she pretends that the child has died. The second child, though being of the favored gender as a boy, ends up with a foot deformity, which makes his status more questionable as the heir apparent for the Sang family. As Feng gradually acclimates to life as a housewife, she begins to take advantage of the monetary advantages that her new family provides her and she begins a life of conspicuous consumption. The novel takes a considerably darker turn once communism begins to change the social landscape of China and Feng realizes the family she has created is not at all the life she would have chosen for herself had she any power over her romantic investments.
Jepson’s novel is an engrossing read, but those more familiar with Asian Amiercanist thematic tropes might find the narrative familiar. Certainly, Jepson does draw from mother-daughter and intergenerational thematics that have been the hallmark of other novels such as Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Lan Samantha Chang’s Inheritance, among many others. I also was a little bit confused by the ending, which contains a metafictional impulse that gives us a sense of why the novel is being narrated in its peculiar way. Indeed, Feng seems to be telling her story to her daughter, the one she had given away.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/All-Flowers-Shanghai-Duncan-Jepson/dp/0062081608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329770266&sr=8-1

A Review of Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower (Knopf, 2011).



I admit that I was sort of intimidated by the length of Aravind Adiga’s latest publication, Last Man in Tower. For some reason, it looks much longer than its 400 page length. Given the fact that most contemporary novels do not clock in at much longer than 300 pages, Adiga’s is certainly the longest I’ve read since Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone (which was over 500 pages). I shouldn’t have worried; as with Between the Assassinations and White Tiger, Adiga provides us with an illuminating look at contemporary India. Like White Tiger, there is a satirical tone to this work, as it focuses on construction companies who are looking to tear town two towers known as Vishram Society (A & B). The novel’s cover includes a man who looks to be falling and its association with two towers seem to suggest there might be a subtle nod to a 9/11 context (especially given the American audience sure to be reading this narrative), but Adiga is focusing on another kind of event going on all over India in its rush to modernize. The novel sets up the central tension when a man named Shah attempts to buy out all the members of Vishram Society Tower A, but there are originally four holdouts: Mrs. Rego, Mr. and Mrs. Pinto, and then Masterji (Yogesh Murthy), a teacher who does not agree with the changes that contemporary India is undergoing. Shah also hires an enforcer and an informant to help make sure that the holdouts will cave, but Masterji eventually becomes the extremely persistent and titular “last man in tower,” unwilling to take higher payouts or forced eviction, doing whatever it is possible to stay in his unit. As the novel moves toward its inexorable conclusion, you get the sense of a naturalist aesthetic at work. Masterji comes to represent an old guard in India, a different generation that is quickly disappearing. In its place, we see global capitalism, secularization, and profit as the new religions that bind and fragment contemporary communities. One of the most chilling aspects of the novel is the ways in which local communities can turn against one another, so much so that the structural frameworks of power, those at the very top, do not have to worry about actually moving a muscle. In other words, those at the bottom and middle tiers of economic levels are conditioned to fight against each other, while those at the top continue to profit. The other element that I found particularly fascinating is the way in which Adiga includes sign posts and legal documents scattered throughout the narrative. These physical documents seem to be one of the last traces of the ways that people communicate outside of the internet culture—perhaps a statement of the increasing alienation of local communities.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Tower-Aravind-Adiga/dp/0307594092/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332523836&sr=1-1


A review of Alex Gilvarry’s From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant (Viking 2012).



Alex Gilvarry’s debut novel, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, juxtaposes two contexts which I never thought I would ever see in a fictional work: New York’s fashion industry and the post-9/11 context that saw the detainment of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay. To a certain extent, I couldn’t help but think of the movie Zoolander while reading this book, as the main character, Boyet (shortened to Boy as his nickname) Hernandez (of Filipino descent) is arrested for his connections to Al-Queda operates and insurgents. In Zoolander, we are reminded that Derek is a sleeper agent tasked with destroying the Prime Minister of Malaysia. In From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, the story begins innocently enough: Boyet is hired to create a couple of suits for Ahmed Qureishi, a Pakisani immigrant, who is purportedly a fabric importer. As Boyet attempts to scale the heights of New York’s fashion industry, he begins to see Ahmed as a possible investor for his newest collections. Despite some misgivings about Qureishi’s more shadowy background, Boyet nevertheless assents to Qureishi’s support. As his fashion designs gain more and more attention, Qureishi’s funding begins to dry up, leading to increased tension and the revelation that Qureishi’s dealings may not be entirely aboveboard as Boyet had always suspected. The title’s importance comes to light in the concluding arc as Boyet is interviewed by a journalist concerning his detainment at a super secret U.S. facility for suspected terrorists. Boyet tasks the journalist with bringing to light his “memoir.” Gilvarry’s novel is an interesting satirical take on American paranoia in the post-9/11 period. Boyet is a spirited and flawed character, with an incredible knowledge of pop and high cultures (regularly hobnobbing with the biggest designers and the stars) but obviously NOT an enemy combatant. Gilvarry’s ingeniously mocks American surveillance systems when Boyet’s Irish buddy, Ben Laden, is mistakenly detained for his homophonic name. While the plot seems ludicrous, Gilvarry’s novel is obviously more suggestive of the increasing infringement on civil liberties that occurred in the post-9/11 moment. At the same time, the novel does seem to be simultaneously poking fun at the insular culture of the high fashion industry. Indeed, the politicism is itself a potentially commodifiable product for designers and other fashionistas. One of the most original novels I’ve read in a long time and certainly, one of the few distinctly comic Asian American literary works (though I’m not sure if Boyet would know and would certainly not approve that we were occasionally laughing at him and the other characters).

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Non-Enemy-Combatant-Novel/dp/0670023191/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330105740&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
27 March 2012 @ 09:34 am
Ellen Oh on young adult book covers  
Here's a brief blog post by Ellen Oh on the need to move away from the "pretty white girl" covers commonly used for young adult books. It's a slightly different argument than in the article I posted in this community earlier--Mitali Perkins's call to remove faces/people from the covers of books for youth in order to encourage young readers to create their own image of the characters.
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
26 March 2012 @ 07:22 pm
Naomi Hirahara's 1001 Cranes  
I came across Naomi Hirahara's novel for children, 1001 Cranes (Delacorte Press, 2008), at my local public library. I think I had seen Hirahara's name around before as the author of a series of mystery novels for an adult audience but never got around to reading those other books because I am always hesitant to dive into book series.



1001 Cranes was a delightful, short reading experience. The first-person point of view narrative offers a glimpse of 12-year-old Angela Kato's thoughts about spending a summer with her maternal grandparents in Gardena (Southern California) while her parents undergo a separation at home in Mill Valley (just north of San Francisco). The child's narrative perspective is common in children's fiction, of course, and Hirahara balances well the need to describe things around Angela in detail without overlaying too much interpretation or analysis. That is, Angela notices things happening with her parents and others, but she doesn't always necessarily understand what it all means.

In addition the anxiety about her parents' possible divorce, Angela also worries about having a boring summer with her strange grandparents (and Aunt Janet who lives with them). Some of this strangeness is about their Japaneseness, which is an interesting commentary on Japanese American identity for a generation who grew up in camps (the grandparents), who were the children of campers (the parents), and who hear increasingly dim echoes of that past (the grandchild, Angela). The narrator Angela explains quite a bit about Japanese customs and the stray Japanese words that her U.S.-born parents and grandparents still like to use. These explanations are clearly about reaching a non-Japanese American audience and explaining both cultural differences as well as the history of racialization for Japanese Americans in the twentieth century.

One of the things I learned in this novel is that the folding of 1001 paper cranes by the bride for her wedding is more specifically a Japanese American custom, by way of Hawaii. While Japanese folk tradition does tell of the healing powers and good fortune that come from folding 1000 paper cranes, the 1001 cranes for a wedding seem to have arisen from a Hawaiian context.

One of the other major subplots in the novel is Angela's flirtation with Tony, a Latino boy her age who works in his uncle's store and skateboards. There is an interesting exploration of first-love as it emerges in the context of larger questions about true love in the face of Angela's parents' separation.
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
25 March 2012 @ 06:40 pm
Imad Rahman's I Dream of Microwaves  
I found Imad Rahman's collection of stories I Dream of Microwaves (FSG, 2004) at the Minneapolis Central Public Library while browsing the fiction shelves.



The cover is certainly arresting, though I find it interesting to consider how the man's arm seems to indicate that he is Caucasian rather than South Asian, as is the central character in the stories. All of the stories in this book are in the first-person point of view of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (yes, like the basketball player), a Pakistani American actor who fumbles about in a kind of underworld for actors. The high point of his career was playing the part of most wanted criminals in television reenactments, trading on his ambiguous ethnic looks to portray the criminals (he eventually loses out on these roles because he imbues the characters with too much depth and moral complexity).

Each story focuses on a "job" that Kareem takes on where he is paid for acting but is not necessarily acting on stage or for the camera. He does travel in Pakistan with a Shakespearean theater troupe, though, and acts in a dinner theater production of Apocalypse Now. Otherwise, he does things, as in the opening title story, like play the part of a man from war-torn Bosnia trying to convince an elderly woman to donate money to save his people. In another story, he works as a "repo man" for a video store, tracking down patrons with long overdue video cassettes with his partner. He goes on a job looking for an Indian man named Patel who has a copy of Forrest Gump and discovers that this man aspires to be a filmmaker. He also takes a job as a dog walker, and in the final story of the collection, he plays the part of a patient with particular symptoms for medical students to learn how to interact with and diagnose patients.

There is a very consistent voice throughout these stories, and one thing that I thought about was how the collection does not read like a novel despite its central character. There is little build up or development of a larger narrative arc, and in many ways, this absence is part of an exploration of a kind of existentialist perspective on life as a series of performances. Indeed, Kareem often comes around to the conclusion that he cannot live in a world where he is not acting a part, where he has no lines, where he is not given motivation for his character.

The stories are very absurdist, and one of the strengths of the writing is the concatenation of crazy scenarios and dialogue. The stories are also shot through with references to movies, television shows, actors, and other trappings of movie culture. I really enjoyed the first few stories but found myself losing interest in the later stories. It wasn't that the quality of the stories declined but that the stories eventually came to seem like the same story about the same character, and while this effect seems very deliberate, it also was more than could keep my interest.

I'm definitely interested in looking up more work by Rahman, though, and I'm intrigued to see what else he has up his sleeve.


Giles watched me read I Dream of Microwaves at the park and coveted my cookies.
 
 
Current Mood: disappointedsneezy
 
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skim666
skim666
25 March 2012 @ 11:16 am
A Review of Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance (Houghton Mifflin, 2011)  

While I’m a huge fan of Anita Desai’s lyrical prose, I don’t generally think of her as an experimental or a very “meta” writer. But the three tales in her new collection The Artist of Disappearance – “The Museum of Final Journeys,” “Translator Translated,” and “The Artist of Disappearance” – prove me wrong. She even quotes Borges in the epigraph. Each story is about art and the place of art within political and social institutions, and the human beings who create and negotiate those places. I really was moved by these reflections, given Desai’s own complex history (she is half German – and German was her first language) and her comments that she’s focused on just the human (rather than the social). But as we know, things that are “trivial,” “mundane,” and certainly domestic/private are as charged with political and historical import as wars, elections, and junk like that. (For both formal and thematic reasons, when I was an undergraduate, I was underwhelmed by Clear Light of Day and wowed by Midnight’s Children, but now I think I actually prefer the former novel.)

Anyway, back to the book: “The Museum of Final Journeys” is narrated by a low-level government official sent to what he considers a godforsaken backwater. He is being groomed for professional and social promotion, but for now he has to pay his dues in a job and place he considers “oppressive” in its poverty, smallness, and boredom. But then one day an elderly servant wanders into his office and tells the narrator an amazing story about the Mukherjee family whom he has served for decades. His mistress, a widow, had gathered an amazing museum on their estate, consisting of art, rugs, scrolls, and other artifacts from places ranging from Turkey to China to Thailand to Indonesia to Japan. These objects were sent to her by her peripatetic son, who was unable to settle and take charge of the estate as he was supposed to and instead spent his life travelling all over Asia. Now both mistress and son have disappeared (presumed dead), and the servant – out of money – begs the narrator, as a representative of the government, to take over and save the museum. The narrator, despite himself, is intrigued and visits the estate, where he sees so many “wonders” and “miracles” that he becomes overwhelmed by a sense of futility.

The dynamic between the narrator and his guide is fascinatingly complex. For instance, take this passage: “Whole worlds were encrypted here and I looked to my guide for elucidation but he only gave a slight shrug as if to say: what does it matter? The young master collected them and that was what made them precious” (33). Is the narrator reliable here? I think he likely is but it’s uncertain. The narrator’s decision about what to do is also about this archive is intriguing – I won’t give it away here, but I will say that our attitude about archives and their relationships to institutions are the very questions this story raises.

The second story, “Translator Translated,” is definitely my favorite in the collection. Prema Joshi is an English lit instructor in a “minor women’s college” teaching Jane Austen and George Eliot to indifferent students. She herself is indifferent, “put[ting] in the necessary hours of work” but returning home each day “even more depressed than when she had set out” (55). But at a high school reunion, she runs into Tara, who was/is as successful, dynamic, and charismatic as Prema was/is mediocre, mundane, and invisible. After a successful start in journalism, Tara had started and made successful a feminist press. Surprised that Tara remembers her, Prema tells Tara about her favorite author, Suvarna Devi, a recluse who writes in Oriya. Tara commissions Prema to translate Devi’s novel into English, and Prema discovers “her true vocation,” the first time she’s experienced “ease, and speed, and delight” (64). The success of that first translation, Devi’s second novel, and Prema’s “translation” of it set the stage for an examination of the nature of creativity, the relationship between author and translator, the demands of authors and authorship, and the politics of language, publishing, and audience. For instance, a journalist interrogates Prema and Tara about the politics of the novel’s translation into English, and Tara responds angrily, “If there are publishers in those languages willing to commission translations, as I have done into English, where are they and why are they not coming forward? They are needed, certaintly” (78). Also, although most of the story is told in omniscient third-person, the point of view shifts to first-person when Prema is doing her translating work. I love it!

In the final and most complex story, “The Artist of Disappearance,” we meet Ravi, the neglected son of worldly, Anglicized, globe-trotting parents, who lives on an estate located in the Himalayan mountains in Mussoorie. As a child, Ravi’s only companions are Hari Singh, the family’s head servant, and Hari’s son Bhola. After a brief stint in Bombay (he flees at the first opportunity), Ravi becomes a hermit in his inherited home. His only company is Miss Wilkinson, an abandoned cast-off from a “home for indigent British ladies” (117) who had formerly nursed Ravi’s mother. Ravi and Miss Wilkinson become the only inhabitants except for dozens of cats, until the house burns down, Miss Wilkinson dies, and Ravi begins building something in a clearing in the hills. Ravi’s art – what Bhola terms his “garden” – consists of pebbles, leaves, sand, branches; he thinks, “the berries he picked along the way could be worked into the creases of the rock so it might seem inlaid with strands of gleaming gems or as if it sprung veins of precious ore” (127). Ravi remains in the burned-out rubble of his home, surviving only through the care of Bhola and his wife.

In the second part of the story, a documentary film crew from Delhi arrives to get material on “[s]oil erosion, cattle grazing, deforestation,” and other environmental degradation (129). While searching for phosphate mines, the two younger members of the crew stumble upon Ravi’s clearing in the mountains. Amazed by its beauty and complexity, they want to film it to end their documentary on a note of triumph, so they set out to find Ravi to interview him. Nothing, however, works out as expected, and I’m still mulling over the implications of how the story unravels. The subtlety and complexity here, formally and thematically, are what I love about this collection.

Of course, British lit – Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Christina Rosetti, Elizabeth Barret Browning – pervades these stories, as backdrop, reference, and intertexts. I also love Desai’s writing because there are always cats (Mao was even a main character in “The Rooftop Dwellers”).

One final note: PARATEXTUAL FAIL – the blurb on the back cover describes Desai as an “impeccable craftsman” (my emph). While I wholeheartedly agree about Desai’s craft, when will we get past using the masculine as the universal? As I tell my students, I am the gender police! >:O

 
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stephenhongsohn
23 March 2012 @ 09:09 am
Review Redux: Penguin Titles Thread  
Hi All,

There are a number of academics and graduate students in this community and I wanted to let you know about the academic services department over at Penguin:

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/services-academic/cfis.html

I'll occasionally update the newest penguin titles if you want to take advance of the academic services, which are numerous. Thanks!

A Review of Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country (Riverheard Books, 2012).



There is much to commend about Catherine Chung’s lyrically lush and elegiac debut novel, Forgotten Country. We’re gifted with a first person narrator who gives us so much to sink our teeth into as readers—her nuanced observations and sure storytelling voice always anchors us. The protagonist, Janie (Jeehyun), is a doctoral student in mathematics who must deal with two big family crises, one involving the sudden disappearance of her sister, Hannah (Haejin), and another involving the terminal stomach cancer diagnosis that her father has received. Her parents decide that it is best to move back to Korea for treatment, while Janie attempts to track down Hannah to see if some sort of familial rapprochement can be made. It is unclear for most of the novel why Hannah wanted so radically to break ties with her family, but Janie does read Hannah’s distance as a kind of betrayal. When it becomes apparent that Hannah will not easily be persuaded to return to the family despite their father’s condition, Janie travels to Korea to be with her family. Much of the novel patiently reveals the tragic circumstances of her family’s immigration to the United States. Janie’s father, once a brilliant student himself, had written a controversial and politically engaged pamphlet denouncing the Korean government in the wake of the Kwangju uprising; they travel to the U.S. under asylum, but must leave behind their extended family and struggle to make new lives. Once in the U.S., Hannah and Janie must contend with the arrival of their Aunt (their father’s sister), a particularly dour woman and mother of two sons; this connection will have major ramifications (especially for Hannah) over time. Further still, Janie’s mother harbors considerable trauma over the ill-fated disappearance of her own sister, presumably kidnapped by North Korean authorities. Rather than make any claims to her disappearance and incite possible political scrutiny, Janie’s mother’s family simply covers up the circumstances and pretends as if she has died. With all such family secrets and histories coming to the surface, Chung writes a novel that elegantly dispels the model minority ethos. Indeed, Janie’s own doctoral dissertation becomes secondary to being with her father has he slowly succumbs to metastatic stomach cancer. And though the novel does not end with a felicitous family reunion and hope for a united future, it does show us the tremendous costs related to immigration—how young children will come to leverage their futures on what the literary critic erin khue ninh denotes as a kind of unbearable sacrifice that can finally never be repaid. And of course, Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country adds to the growing body of work that has focused more largely on contemporary Korean and Korean American social contexts (alongside other books reviewed on this site, including Sonya Chung’s Long for this World, Samuel Park’s This Burns My Heart, Sandra Park’s If You live in a Small House) a welcome shift in the publication realm that has expanded the kinds of fictional worlds we read.



Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Country-Catherine-Chung/dp/1594488088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332176159&sr=8-1


A Review of Krys Lee’s Drifting House (Viking, 2012).



It’s too bad that short story collections are not as popular as they once were; it seems that every year fewer and fewer collections are being published. Interestingly enough, I believe it to be one of the most innovative and dynamic forms for Asian American writers, many of whom have published brilliant collections. Krys Lee’s debut, Drifting House, is most often reminiscent of a minimalist style that has been used to great effect by others such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Paul Yoon, Mary Yukari Waters, and Yiyun Li, though Lee occasionally strays from this aesthetic comfort zone in the occasional first person or second person narration. Like most short story collections I’ve read lately by Asian American writers (most recently for instance Xu Xi’s recently reviewed Access), Lee’s narratives take flight in the domestic terrain of Korean and Korean American family relationships made unstable through transnational movements. For instance, the opening story, “A Temporary Marriage,” focuses on Mrs. Shin, a woman who gets a green card marriage in order to search for her daughter, Yuri, who has been taken by her husband to the United States. Though Mrs. Shin at first is leery of her green card husband, Mr. Rhee, she eventually grows to depend on him and even develop some feelings of affection for him. Using the help of a private detective, Mrs. Shin eventually tracks down her daughter, but her reunion is far from the felicitous moment she had hoped. “At the Edge of the World” focuses on a precocious young boy, of mixed Chinese Korean parentage must negotiate the tense relationship between his biological mother and stepfather, who end up together as a result of their collective refugee status. My favorite story, “The Goose Father,” explores the idiosyncratic relationship that develops between an aged Korean man and a renter. Lee’s stories are more largely notable because they often move between Korea and the United States, providing us with a transnational aesthetic more largely seen in other Asian American short story collections, including Angie Chau’s Quiet as They Come and Aimee Phan’s We Should Never Meet. Further still, Lee is part of a new generation of Korean American writers to really focus on representing (post)modern Seoul (see the excellent second person narration from “The Salaryman” for instance) with all of its density and vertical stratification. Another definite must-read for Asian American literature fans.



Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Drifting-House-Krys-Lee/dp/0670023256
 
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stephenhongsohn
19 March 2012 @ 10:14 am
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for Monday March 19, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for Monday March 19, 2012

In this post, reviews for: Sabina Murray’s Tales of the New World (Grove Press, 2011); Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country (Riverheard Books, 2012); Molly Gaudry’s We Take Me Apart: A Novel(la) (Mud Luscious Press, third printing, 2011); Swati Avasthi’s Split (Borzoi Books, 2010); Krys Lee’s Drifting House (Viking, 2012); Paul Yee’s Money Boy (Groundwood Books, 2011).

A Review of Sabina Murray’s Tales of the New World (Grove Press, 2011)



Sabina Murray is the author of three novels (Slow Burn, Forgery, and A Carnivore’s Inquiry) as well as one previous short story collection (The Caprices). I reviewed her earlier work on Asian American literature fans here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/67762.html

With Tales of the New World, Murray makes a triumphant return to the short story form, as this particular collection dramatically showcases her ability to plumb history and reconfigure it for the fictional world. Tales of the New World might be more accurately called a story cycle, a loosely linked set of tales that achieve richer texture because they have a thematic focus. In this case, all of the major characters in each short story collection are explorers in some form. Tales of the New World opens with “Fish,” which focuses on the life and adventuring of Mary Kingsley, a pioneering figure in that she obviously went against gender norms to follow a path of globe trotting. What makes Murray’s ability to weave history back into fiction so unique is that she always approaches each social context from an inventive angle. For instance, in “Fish,” Murray will breathe more life into Kingsley’s romantic background or lack thereof, the challenges that arise for the simple fact that she is so devoted to her exploration. One of the most formally experimental pieces in Tales is “Paradise,” which includes a idiosyncratically inquisitive narrator, one who ruminates on the historical context of Jim Jones, an apparent cult leader who perpetrated what is called the Jonestown massacre in British Guyana in 1978. What is obviously clear is that Murray stages this collection as a way to complicate how civilization and savagery is defined. We are always and consistently having to reconsider the purpose and the intent of exploration, what it accomplishes and what it cannot. The brilliance of this work can be seen in a story like “Balboa.” Early on, the titular Vasco Nunez de Balboa is described as the “divining line between the modern and the primitive. As he moves, the shadow of Spain moves with him” (212). But, the story seems to suggest that this “line” between the modern and the primitive is not so easily defined: “Balboa is loved by no one and feared by all. He has invented an unequaled terror. The Indians think of him as a god. They have seen his soldiers tear babies from their mothers, toss them still screaming to feed the dogs. They have seen the great dogs pursue the escaping Indians, who must hear nothing but a great panting, the jangle of the dogs’ armor, and then, who knows?” (271). These stories make us wonder about what it means to be a god that inspires such terror and that if this “god” is apparently the embodiment of the modern, exactly what trouble has the establishment of civilization gotten everyone into? A collection of deep texture, one that encourages you to delve further into engaging nonfictional accounts that ground the stories as well as the philosophical questions that come with process of discovery.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Tales-New-World-Sabina-Murray/dp/0802170838/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332175748&sr=8-1

A Review of Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country (Riverheard Books, 2012).



There is much to commend about Catherine Chung’s lyrically lush and elegiac debut novel, Forgotten Country. We’re gifted with a first person narrator who gives us so much to sink our teeth into as readers—her nuanced observations and sure storytelling voice always anchors us. The protagonist, Janie (Jeehyun), is a doctoral student in mathematics who must deal with two big family crises, one involving the sudden disappearance of her sister, Hannah (Haejin), and another involving the terminal stomach cancer diagnosis that her father has received. Her parents decide that it is best to move back to Korea for treatment, while Janie attempts to track down Hannah to see if some sort of familial rapprochement can be made. It is unclear for most of the novel why Hannah wanted so radically to break ties with her family, but Janie does read Hannah’s distance as a kind of betrayal. When it becomes apparent that Hannah will not easily be persuaded to return to the family despite their father’s condition, Janie travels to Korea to be with her family. Much of the novel patiently reveals the tragic circumstances of her family’s immigration to the United States. Janie’s father, once a brilliant student himself, had written a controversial and politically engaged pamphlet denouncing the Korean government in the wake of the Kwangju uprising; they travel to the U.S. under asylum, but must leave behind their extended family and struggle to make new lives. Once in the U.S., Hannah and Janie must contend with the arrival of their Aunt (their father’s sister), a particularly dour woman and mother of two sons; this connection will have major ramifications (especially for Hannah) over time. Further still, Janie’s mother harbors considerable trauma over the ill-fated disappearance of her own sister, presumably kidnapped by North Korean authorities. Rather than make any claims to her disappearance and incite possible political scrutiny, Janie’s mother’s family simply covers up the circumstances and pretends as if she has died. With all such family secrets and histories coming to the surface, Chung writes a novel that elegantly dispels the model minority ethos. Indeed, Janie’s own doctoral dissertation becomes secondary to being with her father has he slowly succumbs to metastatic stomach cancer. And though the novel does not end with a felicitous family reunion and hope for a united future, it does show us the tremendous costs related to immigration—how young children will come to leverage their futures on what the literary critic erin khue ninh denotes as a kind of unbearable sacrifice that can finally never be repaid. And of course, Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country adds to the growing body of work that has focused more largely on contemporary Korean and Korean American social contexts (alongside other books reviewed on this site, including Sonya Chung’s Long for this World, Samuel Park’s This Burns My Heart, Sandra Park’s If You live in a Small House) a welcome shift in the publication realm that has expanded the kinds of fictional worlds we read.



Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Country-Catherine-Chung/dp/1594488088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332176159&sr=8-1

A Review of Molly Gaudry’s We Take Me Apart: A Novel(la) (Mud Luscious Press, third printing, 2011).



I didn’t have any expectations when I opened We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop award in poetry. Certainly poetic, this work, described as a novel(la), is as much prose as it is lyric. There is an obvious attention to sound quality and fragment, which makes We Take Me Apart akin to something like Kazim Ali’s Bright Felon. The work opens with an epigraph from Gertrude Stein, so we can expect a lyric narrative filled with word play and linguistic innovation. We Make Me Apart does not disappoint on this level; there is a circularity and allegorical quality to the lyrics that give it a sublime cohesion. The novel(la) primarily focuses on two competing strains: the revision of fairy tales and then the relationship between a mother and daughter. The opening of We Take Me Apart reads thus: “Long Ago/ in a different version/ it was not a glass slipper but a glass dress/ it was not beautiful/ it was not flowing like a stream/ it did not have a train wider than an acre/ in this version everyone could see everything/ nothing was left to the imagination” (1). This opening accomplishes a couple of different things for the impending lyric narrative. On the one hand, we obviously know this will be a story involving reworkings of Cinderella, but on the other, there will certainly be a “de-Disneyfication” where another narrative will be bared, one which will not turn away from perhaps the more dark and ominous tones of folktales, myths, and fairytales. We are not surprised that on page 3 when cannibalism occurs, as this is a tale filled with mournfulness and violence. After reading through the work a number of times over the past couple of months (I kept this work next to my bedstand because I knew it would require re-reading), the element that I find most compelling is the class politic explored in the work. The relationship between the mother and daughter is one infiltrated by labor, as the daughter must see her life unfold amid poverty and the constant service that her mother must provide for other families, such as cooking and cleaning. The cannibalism sequence on page three re-reads then as a kind of metaphorical consumption of the laborer’s service work, one that always goes unnoticed. The daughter will grow up to sew dresses for other people. The work of creativity in the construction of the dresses is important for the daughter to be able to carve out a sense of her own identity and freedom, despite the fact that she is so strongly burdened by the expectations of labor and servitude. At some point, there is a clear rupture between mother and daughter and the loss of this relationship structures a melancholic tone to the work as we move into the final half. Though the relationship between mother and daughter is not what we would call endearing, the daughter still retains considerable respect and even love for this figure, who brings to bear the complications of a world filled with toil and work. Amid this stark environment, Gaudry’s gorgeous lyric voice guides us through.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/We-Take-Me-Apart-Novel/dp/0983026327/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332089137&sr=8-1

A Review of Swati Avasthi’s Split (Borzoi Books, 2010).



Like a number of other titles reviewed here, I only found out about this work through pylduck, who writes about Swati Avasthi’s debut novel here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/72697.html

Though one of unexpected elements of that review was the subtle jab I received at the issue of LJ etiquette and commenting (thanks thebowlwerhat), pylduck again does a bang-up job providing a run down of the work and an analyses of the large themes and motifs that track throughout the narrative. The novel focuses on Jace Witherspoon, a teenager who leaves an abusive family behind and lives with his brother, Christian, who has since renamed himself (last name Marshall) and who is sort of living in hiding from their domineering and violent father. The only Asian American character as pylduck points out in his review is Mirriam, Christian’s girlfriend; otherwise, every other major character is racially unmarked. Though the focus of the narrative is not on racial tension and other more common ethnic themes we might be used to like immigration, assimilation, citizenship, and prejudice, Avasthi imbues her work with a very political texture concerning domestic abuse and reproduction of trauma. Jace, in particular, seems to be developing some personality traits that suggest he is becoming a physically abusive person just like his father. When Jace leaves home, it is clearly Avasthi’s way of exploring how someone like Jace attempts to map a new identity and life trajectory for himself and to account for and to take responsibility of past actions. The novel reads very quickly and shows us how a strong brotherly bond might be forged even in the context of incredible family traumas. One of the most disturbing elements of the text is the way in which Jace and Christian’s mother remains trapped in her abusive relationship. Given the rather rounded characterization that Jace receives as our flawed, first person narratorial protagonist, we wonder about Jace’s abusive father, a villain of such high degree, you may not even pause to wonder about what may have contributed to the formation of such a brutal personality. And yet, if Jace is someone who has been constructed inasmuch as traumatized, we will pause for a moment and think about that father figure who extends such a large and dark shadow over the entire fictional world. A weighty novel, one that again always makes me wonder about the true parameters of what constitutes the “young adult fiction.”

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Split-Swati-Avasthi/dp/0375863400

A Review of Krys Lee’s Drifting House (Viking, 2012).



It’s too bad that short story collections are not as popular as they once were; it seems that every year fewer and fewer collections are being published. Interestingly enough, I believe it to be one of the most innovative and dynamic forms for Asian American writers, many of whom have published brilliant collections. Krys Lee’s debut, Drifting House, is most often reminiscent of a minimalist style that has been used to great effect by others such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Paul Yoon, Mary Yukari Waters, and Yiyun Li, though Lee occasionally strays from this aesthetic comfort zone in the occasional first person or second person narration. Like most short story collections I’ve read lately by Asian American writers (most recently for instance Xu Xi’s recently reviewed Access), Lee’s narratives take flight in the domestic terrain of Korean and Korean American family relationships made unstable through transnational movements. For instance, the opening story, “A Temporary Marriage,” focuses on Mrs. Shin, a woman who gets a green card marriage in order to search for her daughter, Yuri, who has been taken by her husband to the United States. Though Mrs. Shin at first is leery of her green card husband, Mr. Rhee, she eventually grows to depend on him and even develop some feelings of affection for him. Using the help of a private detective, Mrs. Shin eventually tracks down her daughter, but her reunion is far from the felicitous moment she had hoped. “At the Edge of the World” focuses on a precocious young boy, of mixed Chinese Korean parentage must negotiate the tense relationship between his biological mother and stepfather, who end up together as a result of their collective refugee status. My favorite story, “The Goose Father,” explores the idiosyncratic relationship that develops between an aged Korean man and a renter. Lee’s stories are more largely notable because they often move between Korea and the United States, providing us with a transnational aesthetic more largely seen in other Asian American short story collections, including Angie Chau’s Quiet as They Come and Aimee Phan’s We Should Never Meet. Further still, Lee is part of a new generation of Korean American writers to really focus on representing (post)modern Seoul (see the excellent second person narration from “The Salaryman” for instance) with all of its density and vertical stratification. Another definite must-read for Asian American literature fans.



Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Drifting-House-Krys-Lee/dp/0670023256

A Review of Paul Yee’s Money Boy (Groundwood Books, 2011).



Paul Yee’s Money Boy focuses on 15 year old Ray Liu, a teenager and Chinese immigrant living in Canada, who is expelled from his home after his father discovers that he is queer. The title refers to the Chinese term for men who prostitute themselves. After living for a couple of days on the streets and suffering from hunger and theft of personal property, Ray turns to hustling on Church Street (in Vancouver). He eventually loses his virginity to an older man named Han, who later turns out to be a pimp. Toward the end of the novel, Ray must make a choice between his new life as a money boy or returning home with his father, who in some sense, has dealt with the fact that his son may be queer.

Pylduck reviewed the novel here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/113279.html

Pylduck writes: “As with other YA writing, this novel offers a very deliberate and guiding narrative voice. We follow along (in the present tense) with Ray's story as it unfolds. The story begins with Ray watching a movie based on Shakespeare with his Chinese immigrant classmates. There is a lot in the novel about the particular experiences of being a new immigrant as a teenager—issues of language and cultural divides that overlay the usual high school drama of cliques. He tells us about his obsession with a Chinese MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role playing game) Rebel State. And then his father finds that he has been visiting gay websites and kicks him out of the house. The bulk of the novel concerns Ray's journey into Toronto's gay subculture and the underworld of prostitution.” My plot summary didn’t refer to the importance of the MMORPG, but it is absolutely central to Ray’s life. Indeed, so important is the MMORPG that part of the reason why he turns to selling his body is so that he can get the funds to replace the laptop that was stolen from him. And certainly, Yee is intent on exploring the “underworld of prostitution,” though Ray’s characterization is fascinating in that he seems to be relatively unfazed by having to sell his body. Indeed, if there is a critique to be made of the novel, it is that the first person narrative voice can seem unrealistic (at least to me). And there were certainly other points where Yee absolutely focused on the flaws of the narrator, so much so that it was hard often to retain sympathy for Ray. Much of course can be attributed to the narrator’s relative immaturity. As for Toronto’s gay subculture, one area where Ray begins to develop a sense of family outside of his nuclear one appears in the form of the restaurant and establishment known as Rainbow Sushi. Here, some of the employees help him to see other ways to form bonds among other queer men. Like Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, Ash, and other such works, queer thematics do find some resonance in these young adult-oriented fictions, suggesting of course that a change in the attitudes of what is deemed to be appropriate for teen readers. In this respect, Yee’s Money Boy has done some important political work that imagines the possibilities of survival for the young queer Asian North American subject.

After diving into the YA genre so far, the other element that reoccurs across the arc of Asian North American works is the focus on closure with respect to kinship and to family. In almost every single work, there is some sort of reconciliation or reunion of the family that occurs by the conclusion. Thus, the main narrative and aesthetic feature that seems to separate the “adult” oriented genres is this focus on tying up the loose ends. Must young adults, teens, and younger children read “happy endings” in the Asian North American literary work? Discuss! =)

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Money-Boy-Paul-Yee/dp/1554980941/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332032172&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
18 March 2012 @ 02:29 pm
Pati Navalta Poblete's The Oracles  
Pati Navalta Poblete's The Oracles: My Filipino Grandparents in America (Heyday Books, 2006) recounts the author's childhood growing up in the care of her four grandparents in California.



Poblete casts this intergenerational story as one of cultural conflict, with her child and teenage selves, immersed in the MTV generation's aesthetics and desires, butting heads with her four very different grandparents who had come to the United States to help raise her and her younger brother.

The cultural clash of immigrant families here is fascinatingly extended between grandparent and grandchild, with the parents just barely figuring into the equation though they were present. In many ways, this widened generational/cultural gap is simply because Poblete's project is to document her grandparents' lives because though they were in her California world for only about a decade, they made a huge impact on her sense of self and cultural identity.

Poblete tells us about her Ilocano grandparents and a bit about how her parents were the first in their families to graduate from college in Manila and fly out to the United States to make a living. Though this American Dream narrative is clearly part of the story, there is also a pulling back from that romanticized narrative, with the grandparents' lack of interest in staying in the States (they all leave once Poblete starts a family of her own) and a reclamation of the idea of home and a community on Mindanao.

What I like most about the book is Poblete's careful depiction of the four grandparents, offering them both a collective identity--the Oracles, she calls them--but also detailed, individual portraits. In italicized passages, Poblete even gives each grandparent his or her own voice (recounting the past in the first-person point of view).

As a side note, given my current studies in library science, I find it interesting that the Library of Congress classification number for this book is F869, which is part of the range of numbers for books about personal narratives of local California history, rather than a number in the PS range, which would be appropriate for a memoir by an American author. This book clearly falls in the memoir category, as it is very specifically about the memories and past of the author (and a focused segment of that past as well), but instead, the Library of Congress has put the book in the category of California history books. I'm sure this classification is due to the fact that the publisher of the book is Heyday Books, which specializes in books that "foster an understanding of California history, literature, art, environment, social issues, and culture." It's one of the interesting things about LC classification--creative writing numbering (including nonfiction memoirs) gets assigned by author rather than subject, which makes it easier on the cataloger but less useful for someone interested in browsing creative writing by topic.
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
15 March 2012 @ 03:19 pm
Arlene Kim's What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?  
I've had Arlene Kim's debut poetry collection What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? (Milkweed Editions, 2011) sitting in my to-read pile for a few months and am glad I finally got around to reading it.



There are so many lines in this poem that I just fall over in love with, and I particularly like Kim's linguistic sensibility. I love the way she shapes phrases that are provocative and beautiful in terms of meaning, sound, and rhythm.
Why did you leave us, Mother? Why did you not try harder
    to sew
    the song of you
    firmly to our tongues? ("Season of Frogs")
The image of sowing mother's song to children's tongues--ah! As the title's question suggests, there is quite a bit of interest in the sounds of words and the way they echo or make an impact on people and the world. These sounds are what connect people and family members in particular but also what divides them.

The book as a whole is steeped in folk tales from Western Europe as well as Korea. Epigraphs from an opera about Hansel and Gretel divide the collection into six sections. Many of the poems take up folk tale stories or the genre more generally. There are many poems with animal characters. Other poems feature familial relationships, predominantly parent-child ones, which are structured by loss and a predatory quality.
For nine
cloistered months,
Mother
was the world
I ate. ("Spool, Book, Coin")


The poems are also very literary, alluding to other texts and stories. In addition to an weaving intertextual relationships with folk tales, Kim references the story of Anastasia Romanov, the lost Russian princess; borrows lines from Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, John Keats, William Shakespeare, and other poets; and writes about figures of speech and poetic terms like iambs and enjambment.

I wanted to note two more poems that resonate with my other interests in literature. First, the poem "Verna" features a speaker who reminisces on an early memory of science fiction, folding it other childhood details:
The textbook didn't give the date (1955) or call it
    science fiction. No matter.
        Mother worked in a bank; Father courted escape; they
            both settled
                down for life. And missing persons--
And in "Exhibit A; Archive," the speaker begins with comments about cultural valences of girls' hairstyles, suggesting the possibility of cross-racial misidentifications between Koreans and Native Americans:
In Korea, a girl with a single long braid mean something (unwed).
Here it means something else (native).
To mother, Korean and now here, it means foreign (unwanted).
I also just love the line drawing on the cover. Ominous! Rabbits with blunt objects!
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
09 March 2012 @ 06:34 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – Hawaii Calling (Part 1) Megareview for March 9, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Hawaii Calling (Part 1) Megareview for March 9, 2012

In this post, reviews for Juliet S. Kono’s Anshu: Dark Sorrow (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2010); Jon Shirota’s Lucky Come Hawaii (originally published in 1965, republished in 1985, revised edition and reissue in 2009 by University of Hawaii Press); Lee Cataluna’s Three Years on Doreen’s Sofa (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2011); Sandra Park’s If You Live in a Small House: A Story of 1950’s Hawaii (Mutual Publishing, 2010); Chris McKinney’s Bolohead Row (Mutual Publishing, 2005); Chris McKinney’s Mililani Mauka (Mutual Publishing, 2009).

I focus on three presses in this review post: Bamboo Ridge Press, Mutual Publishing, and University of Hawaii Press. For more information on these presses and other titles, please go to these websites:

Bamboo Ridge Press:

http://www.bambooridge.com/

Mutual Publishing:

http://www.mutualpublishing.com/default.aspx


University of Hawaii Press:

http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/

A Review of Juliet S. Kono’s Anshu: Dark Sorrow (Bamboo Ridge Press, 2010).




With a subtitle like Dark Sorrow, those looking for an uplifting novel should look elsewhere. Juliet Kono’s first novel (she is also a poet and short story writer) takes a particularly grueling look at the life of one Hawaiian born young woman of Japanese descent, Himiko Aoki, after she is basically shipped off to Japan after becoming pregnant out of wedlock and as a teenager. The novel begins in the 1920s, so her leaveataking occurs just before the onset of World War II. Himiko has one sister, Miyo, and her father died under strange circumstances involving a fireball (this moment seemed almost magical realist in character); their mother is the sole breadwinner and when Himiko becomes pregnant, her mother feels that the best option is for Himiko to go live with her brother in Japan so that her and her family’s reputation can remain intact. Living in Japan is, to put it mildly, a distressing experience. Himiko’s aunt-in-law Harue absolutely despises her and her children (Sa Chan, Norio, Iwao, and Yuki-Chan) are not necessarily more welcoming. They all see Himiko as an extra burden, so Himiko must find ways to endure, especially as the family suffers hard times under the increased rationing of wartime. When most of the family survives the fire bombing of Tokyo, they must relocate and live for a time in Kyoto. Norio, the oldest son, enters the air force and is killed. Himiko inadvertently but nevertheless precipitates the death of the oldest daughter of her aunt during the fleeing of Tokyo. The final arc of the novel is set in Hiroshima and we can expect yet more tragedy. This novel is reminiscent of the fictional project that Rahna Reiko Rizzuto was researching for while she was in Japan (as elucidated in her memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning); these projects link Japanese Americans to their Japanese counterparts, thus complicating the boundaries between Asian and Asian American Studies. Because Kono is a poet, there are certain moments that are absolutely breathtaking, but also very difficult to read. The chapters set in the post-atomic bombing period are obviously some of the most difficult and it is a testament to Kono’s talents that she is able to thread the narrative through that point with such grace and poignant restraint.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Anshu-Dark-Sorrow-Juliet-Kono/dp/0910043833/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324697948&sr=8-1

A Review of Jon Shirota’s Lucky Come Hawaii (originally published in 1965, republished in 1985, revised edition and reissue in 2009 by University of Hawaii Press).



I’m reviewing the 2009 reissue, though I'm sure there are some changes from the original edition given the fact that there is mention of editing of the manuscript. Apparently, Shirota’s novel was a bestseller when it was originally published. He also published another novel called Pineapple White. I just bought a used copy of Pineapple White as part of my attempt to pick up as many semi-affordable copies of old and out of print Asian American titles. The story takes its inspiration from the bombing of Pearl Harbor and its aftermath, especially for one Japanese American family. Kama Gusuda is the Japanese American father at the center of the novel; his oldest son is fighting for the Japanese army. His second son, Niro, attends the University of Hawaii, and his third son, Saburo, is a teenager, dealing with raging hormones and the high expectations of his father. Kama’s daughter, Kimiko, is dating a non-Japanese man, much to the consternation of her traditional family who would like to marry her off to a much older, but apparently respectable Japanese man. Shirota’s novel is notable for many things. First off, he’s very careful to paint a cultural shift between issei and Nisei Japanese Americans. Kama believes in the possibility that Japan may end up ruling all of the Hawaiian islands. With the exception of Ichiro, his children seem firmly American, a trait most recognizable in their independent attitudes. In particular, Kimiko chastizes her boss for unfairly dismissing a fellow Japanese American co-worker and is able to get her re-hired. Second: Shirota has a particularly gifted ear for dialogue; many consecutive pages are anchored by the lively repartee between characters. I wasn’t surprised to hear that there is a recent publication of three of his dramas. This novel would also be really interesting to teach alongside something like Okada’s No-No Boy. Shirota’s novel has a more satirical and playful style than Okada’s more philosophically-inflected writing, but their themes and considerations are similar and explore the problematic nature of racial tension in the World War II period, especially for those Americans of Japanese descent.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Come-Hawaii-Novel-December/dp/0824834488/ref=tmm_pap_title_0


A Review of Lee Cataluna’s Three Years on Doreen’s Sofa (Bamboo Ridge, 2011).



Three Years on Doreen’s Sofa is Lee Cataluna’s debut novel; she has also published a short story collection of character sketches called Folks You Meet at Long’s and Other Stories. Drawing on pidgin dialect and local Hawaiian culture, Cataluna’s novel is told from the first person perspective of a recent parolee named Bobby, who crashes on the titular sofa. Doreen is Bobby’s half sister and cousin; as Bobby explains the relationship: “Me and Doreen is brother/sister and we cousins at the same time. Same father, different mothers, but our mothers is sisters” (2). The novel is written in an episodic fashion, focused mostly on Bobby’s attempt to reorient his life in the wake of his prison sentence for drug trafficking. Cataluna is particularly focused on creating a tragicomic narrative. On the one hand, there is a humorous, picaresque quality to the narrative as Bobby bounces around from one place to another, Doreen’s sofa somehow always managing to follow him. On the other, there is an obvious class politic that Cataluna is bringing to light and showing us the tremendous challenges that someone like Bobby faces in finding gainful employment and situating a stable future. Bobby goes from Doreen’s house to a halfway house; he holes up with religious folks, then later befriends someone who is purportedly his father. Along the way, he continually encounters considerable obstacles. He is fired from one job after another; run over in a car at one point and must undergo a serious surgery; he wheels and deals his way out of one tricky situation only to land in another. At a certain point, you realize that Bobby’s itinerant lifestyle is simply the status quo, a fact of life that he himself has learned to roll with, but nevertheless, you can’t help but wonder how long he can keep up his rather jovial attitude, given everything that has happened. I read this novel right after Alex Gilvarry’s From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant and like that work, Cataluna successfully channels and very unique and unforgettable character.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Years-Doreens-Sofa-Cataluna/dp/091004385X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330314002&sr=8-1

A Review of Sandra Park’s If You Live in a Small House: A Story of 1950’s Hawaii (Mutual Publishing, 2010).



If you live in a small House is a novella set in the 1950s featuring one extended family, a mother and father, the children, the mother’s sister and brothers. They are Korean American and live in Hawaii. The father returns from military duty to a home and a wife that seems to anchor him to a life he is ambivalent about; the mother is dutiful and clearly the chosen one in her family. The character I was most interested in was actually the mother’s sister, Gloria, a spinster-like figure who engages in a desultory romance with a man named Dante and hopes for a more stable future. Of the children, Ezra, the one boy, is clearly the most valued, though he seeks to escape the quietly oppressive domestic life that leaves little room in an all-too crowded house. This novel actually begins with a series of blurbs from a number of prominent Asian American authors including Min Jin Lee and Shawna Yang Ryan. It also happens to have one by our very own pylduck, which states: “Park’s narrative enfolds the complexity of a multi-ethnic island community, the histories of Asian immigration and settlement, and the presence of the United States military without subsuming the central exploration of the family’s private dreams and experiences. She has achieved a wonderful balance between these larger historical narratives and the interiority of her characters, and her writing offers a stunning example of how political and cultural questions can exist harmoniously with aesthetic and narrative mastery.” I would have to say it’s really difficult to top this kind of praise; I will add though that Park’s narrative approach is quite interesting in that she takes on what seems to be some amalgamation of stream-of-consciousness and omniscient narration. There were points where I had to think that Park had been informed by Virginia Woolf, not simply because there had to be scenes of the ocean considering the narrative is set in Hawaii, but that the psychic interiorities of the characters direct so many of these coastal interludes. At other moments, there is such an impressionistic and lyrical narration that we’re left a little breathless: “Like trees above a valley, the things in a room transpire. Surfaces of things we see and touch every day grow blank faces when we are not around, shedding [end of 143] the sticky warmth of our fingers, the sentimental attachment of our eyes. If we go, these things remain, like the permanence of large-scale things outside, the steep green hills and the sandy curve of the bay. These things are the befallen, the given” (144). Though the narrator does not refer to a particular set of individuals, we are directed to the family saga that anchors this novella. The narrator seems to gesture to the inexorable nature of the working class life, one in which characters rarely, if ever, move beyond the circumstances in which they are born. Consequently, Ezra’s leavetaking at the novel’s conclusion, though suggesting his upwardly mobile status, nevertheless reveals the costs of that movement, the tragedy of the everyday that grounds the lives of so many other characters: Uncle Shorty whose girlfriend Eunice does not assent to his marriage proposal, or the desire of the father to use fishing as a means to relive, in his mind, an old wartime romance with an Italian woman.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Live-Small-House/dp/1566479274

A Review of Chris McKinney’s Bolohead Row (Mutual Publishing, 2005); Mililani Mauka (Mutual Publishing, 2009).



Chris McKinney’s work has been on my to-read list for a very long time; McKinney wish his “non-Asiany” last name is of Scottish, Japanese, and Korean descent. He has published three other novels and I plan to review as many as I can here. Bolohead Row’s title comes from the nickname given to a set of establishments that the narrator, Charlie Heaweaimoku, frequents while as a young man. It also happens to the site of many hostess bars, strip clubs, and dive bars and immediately gives geographical shape to this gritty novel of Honolulu’s back regions. Charlie is of Hawaiian descent and is raised by a stepmother who also owns a bar called Lynn’s place. Charlie has one stepsister, Winnie, who is the central antagonist to the novel, and Mark, a younger stepbrother, who also happens to make his living through playing EverQuest. Once Winnie appears on the scene, the novel starts to move through its dark trajectory. Charlie picks up Winnie from prison; she had been serving a term based upon drug possession for “ice,” otherwise known as crystal meth. She also happens to be friends with a mysterious man known as “B” (Billy Ching) who also is an ex-convict. Winnie is also in possession of a large stash of cash, which is certainly cause for concern. Once Winnie disappears, it’s apparent that she may be involved with some drug kingpins, so Charlie and “B” go looking for her. We might call Charlie the quintessential anti-hero; he’s a working class guy who is trying to live his life to the best of his ability, despite what I found to be a rather depressing existence. He realizes he is getting older and that there aren’t many options for him anymore, so the drama with Winnie comes at a very inopportune time in his life, especially as he is still reeling from his impending divorce to a woman named Sheila. McKinney is dialed quite well into pop culture, but it’s surprising how dated this novel already seems because of those references (e.g. things like Pete Townsend going on a rampage). The other element to note is of course McKinney’s choice to represent the storytelling voice through a native Hawaiian subject, a potential cause for concern especially given the issues of sovereignty and representation that have bubbled over occasionally within the last couple of decades. Fortunately, McKinney does not create some caricature, but even in the multifaceted rendering of Charlie, we can’t help but want a little bit more for him by the novel’s conclusion.

Buy the book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Bolohead-Row-Chris-McKinney/dp/1566477220/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328943794&sr=8-2



In Mililani Mauka, McKinney turns slightly away from the nourish themes of Bolohead Row and focuses on a tale of domestic drama set in Hawaii. The novel begins with a tragedy: a man named John Krill attempts to bulldoze some buildings without regard for the people inside and is thus killed by policemen. At the time, we do not know what pushes Krill into this violent act and the novel moves to the story Banyan Mott, his wife Caley, and their newborn daughter, Raimi. They happen to have moved into the home formerly owned by the Krill family. Not all is perfectly wonderful in the Mott household; there is a wall that must be torn down because it is too high and there are certainly some marital tensions occurring. Further still, Banyan begins to think that he is seeing the ghost of John Krill. Coincidentally, Krill’s widow, Kai, happens to be taking a class at the Honolulu Community College, one taught by Banyan, who is an English instructor. Kai, with one teenage son named Josh, is actually homeless; they live in a precarious housing situation with others on a local Hawaiian beach. Kai and Banyan soon strike up a friendship and secret pact to meet at a local bar and bet on sports games. We are not entirely surprised when Banyan and Kai begin an affair. In the meantime, Josh develops his own friendship with a local policeman named Dan, who happened to be the one who had shot and killed his father (though at the time Josh isn’t aware of this information). The dysfunctional family relationships at the heart of this novel seem to be McKinney’s own critique of Hawaiian suburbanization. The Krill family acts as a precursor to the Mott family; as we begin to discover, the Krills become undone when one of their sons (not Josh obviously) dies during his youth. This event, along with Kai’s repeated extramarital affairs, leads John to become unhinged, setting up the shooting that begins the novel. The Motts thus seem to become a family who may or may not begin another cycle of familial disintegration. The novel did remind me of the many cultural productions that focus on the complexities of suburban life, such as American Beauty. McKinney’s talent in this book is to bring flawed characters to life and still allow us to make a sympathetic attachment with them.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Mililani-Mauka-Chris-McKinney/dp/1566478693
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
03 March 2012 @ 03:48 pm
Mitali Perkins on book covers  
This article came up during discussion in my library youth services class: "Teens Do Judge a Book by the Cover" by Mitali Perkins. What do you all think?
 
 
Current Mood: annoyedannoyed
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
01 March 2012 @ 05:13 pm
Tommy Chong's The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint  
Ok, so I saw this book at my local library, and it had me at the punny title. Tommy Chong's The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2006) is the celebrity stoner's memoir about his 9-month stint in federal prison for selling bongs across state lines.



Part of the purpose of his book is to draw attention to the absurd drug laws in the country, something that Chong has done for awhile through his comedic act and other work. You may know him as half of Cheech and Chong, the stoner comedy duo with a number of films to their name. Apparently, Chong also had a more straightforward musical act earlier in his life, too.

I love the title of the book because it plays with a few things. First, the title proper, The I Chong, is a riff on the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes (a kind of fortune-telling). The chapters of the book take as titles and headings the hexagrams from the I Ching as well as some of the oracular statements. Chong mentions the book a few times in his narrative, and he certainly has a fatalistic worldview (of the benevolent variety). He is apparently actually Christian, and he often states that he believes everything happens for a reason as part of God's plan.

The phrase "I Chong" of course plays off Chong's surname, but it also is suggestive of a kind of playful broken English, with the man named Chong introducing himself: I, Chong. The subtitle is funny because Chong is known as a pot-smoker (even as he notes in the book that he has mostly given up smoking pot these days), and "joint" functions polysemously here to indicate both a joint of pot as well as the joint, meaning jail. The choice of "meditations" as what the book consists of is also cheeky since it conjures Eastern meditative practices as a foil to both meanings of the joint. (Sidenote: I've taught a wonderful documentary film, The Dhamma Brothers, which considers a program that teaches meditative practice to prison inmates as a rehabilitation program like prison literacy and education programs.)

There are three main components to Chong's book: an overview of his life, from childhood to his incarceration; a more polemical argument about draconian drug laws and the Republican war on dissent (remember that this book was published during the nadir of the Bush II administration); and reflections on his prison experiences along with a critique of the prison system. In his brief discussion of his early life, Chong reveals that he was actually born and raised in Canada (primarily Alberta) by a scrappy Chinese Canadian man and a Scottish Canadian woman. The family faced a number of hardships, including times when the kids lived in an orphanage because their mother was institutionalized for tuberculosis treatment and their father was in and out of the veterans' hospital for treatment related injuries sustained during service.

I would say the big picture of this book is quite interesting, and there is plenty of potential for a really thoughtful account of the U.S. War on Drugs (particularly regarding marijuana) and the prison system. Unfortunately, the actual writing was not too compelling, and the argumentation was rather weak. The book could've used a bit of fact checking and proofreading, too. One comment Chong made in passing really stood out to me as false: he described actor Pat Morita as a Korean man! And he writes a few times, "via con dios," instead of "vaya con Dios." Chong resorts frequently to bland proclamations about the need to let go of anger, to accept what happens to you in life, and to focus on the positive things. It's very new agey.
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
01 March 2012 @ 09:16 am
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 1st, 2012.  
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 1st, 2012.

In this post, reviews of Janice Lee’s Kerotakis (Dog Horn Publishing, 2010); Daughter (Jaded Ibis Press, 2011) with photographs by Rochelle Ritchie Spencer; Janice Lee’s Red Trees (self-published, 2011); Oliver Chin’s 9 of 1: A Window to the World (Frog, Ltd., 2003); MariNaomi’s Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22 (Harper Perennial, 2011).

Reviews of Janice Lee’s Kerotakis (Dog Horn Publishing, 2010); Daughter (Jaded Ibis Press, 2011) with photographs by Rochelle Ritchie Spencer; Janice Lee’s Red Trees (self-published, 2011)




Of the three works currently available by Janice Lee, I read Kerotakis last. It is perhaps equally as challenging and experimental in its form and content as Daughter. Here, Lee takes an interesting generic approach that seems to evoke a drama, as there is a kind of dramatis personae included at the beginning, letting us know that there will be four characters: a cyborg (G.I.L.L.), a brain, the person whose body houses that brain (Dr. Eynan), an artist/painter figure (Zosimosa). Of the four, Zosimosa seems to be the least prominent, though her presence might be detailed in the various sketches and drawings that track throughout the collection. Zosimosa is also the figure who helps us understand the importance of the kerotakis, which is apparently a heated palette that allowed painters to keep their paints in liquid form. The kerotakis was later also used in alchemical processes, thus providing Lee a way to consider the ways in which objects transform in their function as our relationships to them transform. But, the primary relationship explored in Kerotakis exists among the cyborg, G.I.L.L., a brain that is traveling through time, and Dr. Eynan. These three do form a kind of alternative holy trinity, as the cyborg figure is continually making observations and posing philosophical questions that make this work quite existential in its tonality: “Thou Shall Notice Everything. This is my function, quoted from the Holy Texts, passed down by Deity Eynan.” There is a strange moment at the conclusion of Kerotakis, where it seems as though the brain, traveling through time, makes contact with the cyborg. This communion allows Dr. Eynan’s brain to stop traveling through time, but also leaves the cyborg a “used, empty vessel.” I was not quite clear about what occurred in the final pages of Kerotakis, a new chapter in the cyborg’s existence or not? But, if I’ve learned anything from reading Janice Lee’s work, it is that the work is as much more about producing questions and uncertainty than posing categorical interpretations and readings. My one gripe about this book is that there is no pagination. Hehe.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.doghornpublishing.com/kerotakis.html




Toward the end of Janice Lee’s experimental, post/modernish, psychoanalytically-inflected, atmospheric, philosophical, multi-genre, avant-garde novel, Daughter, there is a reference page with sources cited in the narrative, which includes some prominent writers and figures including Carl Jung, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. Given the incredible use wordplay, I also expected there might be some Gertrude Stein factored in there as an influence despite the name not appearing on the reference page. There’s a point at which you start reading this work and you have to let go of the desire to find narrative cohesion; instead, what you receive are impressions and from those impressions, you begin to hazard some interpretations. At its core, I read Daughter as a meditation on identity, one induced by the philosophical underpinnings of dissection. What does it mean to take apart another body and how does that body reflect anything about who I am, where I come from, the nature of my relationships and my life? The sublimity of the dissection is made apparent early on when we can’t quite see what it is that is inside a glass jar; I actually thought it might be some marbles, but the narratorial “I” becomes fixated on certain binaries, one of which is the relationship between “I” and an octopus. We see repeated images throughout this lusciously produced work (there are stunning photographs that appear throughout) of an octopus from many angles inside a jar. There are prose poetic blocks concerning the relationship between this “I” and the octopus: “Are we talking about the octopus or me? Once in awhile, a dead octopus washes ashore, tossed onto the beach by waves. But as I’ve mentioned before, there are no waves here, where are we again? Am I becoming a blur or are you? Keep me on the edge over the edge under the edge at the edge—“ (79) and then later: “I am not myself these days. My interest wanes with the withdrawal of texture. There is not enough interior space in the body, and yet the distance allows a different kind of spectatorship. Is this the end of my exploring? Will I arrive where I started? Am I knowing this place for the first time? There is a fear of personal extinction and synchronicity. I am touching the octopus’s heart, or is it touching mine?” (93) and then again: “It was insistent, the corpse, in the daughter’s careful execution of the process, as if the octopus was asserting its physical presence all the more she cut into it” (103). Why does the dissection of the octopus create such a crisis in the titular daughter? At various points, this figure is trying to reconcile whether there is really any difference between subject and object; are things mirrors or actually different? These questions are always made all the more fascinating because Lee will drop in scientific statements and terms like “convergent evolution,” which relates how two evolutionarily dissimilar entities might still evolve in such a way to possess similar organs. Octopi and humans apparently have very similar complexities in their visual organs. In identifying with the Other, does not become unmade and undone, what Lee calls “personal extinction”? Other binaries include in the novel: doctor/daughter, mother/daughter, Juan/ Jorge (some sort of meta-spiritual brother-set that appear in the novel as playscript). These terms also of course invade the other major terms, creating a patchwork that is dream-like and metaphysical in quality. The constant references to the sea immediately bring to my mind the work of Virginia Woolf, Kazim Ali (in Quinn’s Passage), and Jennifer Chang (from the beginning of History of Anonymity). It’s difficult to hazard answers to the philosophical questions offered in Lee’s work, but the deluge of beautiful images, (which also include various angles of a woman wearing a white mask), dense poetic prose, ethereal in its syntax makes for a sumptuous reading experience, sure to grow richer in conversations with others. As a quick note, I’d like to briefly state that the production quality on the print bound volumes are just amazing (reminiscent of the work out of Chin Music Press) and while there is much to laud in the growing demand for digital services, there is something quite singular in being able to peruse this novel and turn the occasional page to come upon an exquisite vista of seascapes.

Buy the book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Daughter-novel-Janice-Lee/dp/0982077599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320725268&sr=8-1



In Lee’s self-published chapbook, Red Trees, she explores some more autobiographical themes and includes a detailed note preceding the text explaining some of the challenges she faced in its publication trajectory. It’s particularly interesting to see how the course of “real life” events might alter the vision and the production of a creative project. In Red Trees, Lee employs a prose poetic form to explore some of the more common themes of Asian American literature, including interracial tension, class mobility, citizenship and assimilation. Of course, she also complicates these themes by presenting them in metaphorical and densely lyrical ways. The titular “red trees” are a riffing device that Lee uses recursively throughout the chapbook, an image that seems to denote the failure of certain fantasies to materialize. Red trees are what emerge from behind the ruins of the American dream; red trees are what the bodies of immigrants become as they struggle to make ends meet. Because Red Trees is a limited edition chapbook, I am hoping that Lee strongly considers a revision and extension of this work. Highly teachable, hypnotic in the best possible way, it’s the kind of work that reminds of the best in le thi diem thuy, Julie Otsuka, and Kazim Ali.

Buy the Book Here:

http://janicel.com/red-trees-limited-chapbook


A Review of Oliver Chin’s 9 of 1: A Window to the World (Frog, Ltd., 2003).




Thanks to pylduck, I was alerted to this title. Pylduck reviews Oliver Chin’s 9 of 1: A Window to the World:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/122494.html

As I’ve intimated before, I rarely disagree with pylduck’s reviews. I especially found this observation to be true: “In contrast to some of the graphic novels reviewed on this community that have been amazing for their lack of text (and use of illustrations to convey narrative and subtle characterizations), Chin's book is heavily text-based, with the text often outweighing the black-and-white illustrations on the page. Some paragraphs are even in smaller font, as if a standard font size were not adequate to squeeze the words into the limited spaces between illustrations. However, this text-heaviness is by no means a liability for the novel. In fact, the stories being told in this graphic novel are perhaps best done in textual narrative form.” Pylduck’s review is fairly comprehensive in the way that it speaks to the class assignment that is the premise for the graphic novel, so I will speak to some general reflections. First, I have to say: if students always did such a great job on assignments, teachers should be so lucky. The history teacher’s assignment forces students to interview a complete stranger and discuss the impact of 9/11 on their lives. These interviews are packed with personal histories and explore quite complex viewpoints. Given the fact that the graphic novel was published less than two years after 9/11, it is quite an extraordinary work, filled with nuance and deep insights. The other point to make is that Chin clearly worked hard to pair up students and their interviewees with an eye toward diversity. The students all come from different backgrounds and pairs are alike; thus Chin is able to plumb different historical, national and social contexts, including Japanese American internment and Middle Eastern political complications. Certainly, another graphic novel that one can add to a course curriculum.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/9-Window-World-Oliver-Chin/dp/1583940723

A Review of Meera Syal’s Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee (New Press, 2000)



Set in London, Meera Syal’s novel gets the prize for the most inventive title that I’ve come across in a long time. The title seriously makes me giggle every time I say it out loud and Syal clearly was drawing upon some of the immigrant aphorisms that emerge and get “lost in translation.” In any case, the novel follows the lives of three women of South Asian descent; these are the beautiful and calculating Tania, the harried mother Sunita, and the innocent newlywed Chila. They are three friends, though they are at very different stages in their life. When Tania encourages both Sunita and Chila to take part in a documentary she is producing about the everyday married lives of South Asian women, they do not realize that she might actually edit them in less than flattering ways. When the documentary is finally screened, it ends up being a big success, but both Sunita’s and Chila’s relationships end up being lampooned more than celebrated. This moment obviously places tremendous strain on their friendships. Complicating matters is the fact that Tania will end up kissing Chila’s husband Deepak in a moment of weakness following the screening of the documentary. Prior to marrying Chila (and unbeknownst), Deepak had been in a relationship with Tania. Somehow, Chila, Sunita, and Martin (Tania’s then boyfriend) all witness the event through a window at a party. These two major events set up the second half of the book, which sees the three women attempting to sort out their friendships and relationships. Chila is pregnant and struggling to rebuild her marriage; Sunita is engaging in a flirtatious (though non sexual) dalliance with a doctor ten years younger than her named Krishan, much to the ignorance of her husband and psychotherapist, Akash. And Tania is engaging in an affair with Deepak. Sunita and Chila are, not surprisingly, not in contact with Tania.
This novel was an absolutely engaging and humorous read. You’re not necessarily going to come out of this book with a larger social context for the South Asian diaspora, though Syal’s obviously got a very keen eye on the complications of ethnic communities and romantic relationships in an immigrant milieu. Further still, Syal has a really engaging and quite mathematical narrative technique. Third person omniscient narration is interspersed with first person narrative accounts from all three of the major female characters. It seems as though each major female character gets three different turns to narrate her story, the most hilarious of which is the chapter narrated in the first person from the perspective of Chila as she is giving birth. As a random sidenote, I looked up some biographical information on Meera Syal and had no idea she was an actress and recently starred in a couple of Doctor Who episodes I saw. Syal had a great role in those episodes!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Isnt-All-Ha-Hee/dp/1565846141/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1329418920&sr=8-1


A Review of MariNaomi’s Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22 (Harper Perennial, 2011).




MariNaomi’s Kiss & Tell is a brave and courageous graphic (in both senses of the word) memoir that rather unsentimentally depicts pretty much every sexual encounter that the protagonist has experienced, which include everything from simple make-out experiences to threesomes. The memoir begins with the protagonist giving her family background, detailing the relationship between her Caucasian father and Japanese mother. Aspects of race and ethnicity and specifically issues of mixed-race only appear occasionally in the graphic memoir; the central concerns are related to the protagonist’s exploration of her many relationships and how formative they were in the constitution of her identity and her maturity. In this way, I agree with the point that pylduck made in his review, which can be found here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/121844.html

Pylduck writes: “Aside from the early mention of her parents' mixed race relationship, there isn't too much more discussion of race in the memoir. There are the brief moments where an ex-boyfriend ends up dating other Asian and mixed-race Asian girls as well as other moments when people comment on her black boyfriend and she responds, what does his race have to do with anything?” I do have to admit, I often wondered a little bit about her parents and about issues of race, which seem to disappear into the background for the majority of the memoir. It is clear that the protagonist is precocious in many respects and sexually liberated, though her non-traditional approach to her life does grate against her parents. At one point, she runs away from home and lives on the streets and engages in numerous ill-fated love affairs, but our narrator is plucky, if not, resilient. One of the most poignant sequences involves the narrator’s involvement with a man by the name of Jason Towns, who becomes one of her most significant romances, but by the conclusion of the memoir, the narrator does not know what actually happened to him. Given the rather blunt representations and rather encyclopediac account of her sexual experiences, it is not a surprise that the writer explains in her dedication: “This is dedicated to my parents, who I pray will speak to me after they read the contents of this book.” Of course, we are all the more enriched for the frankness of this work and it would certainly make for an interesting discussion.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Kiss-Tell-MariNaomi/dp/0062009230/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330621750&sr=8-1
 
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stephenhongsohn
20 February 2012 @ 11:32 am
Asian American Literature Fans – Monday Holiday MegaReview for February 20, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Monday Holiday MegaReview for February 20, 2012

In this post, reviews of: Lenore Look’s Ruby Lu Brave and True (Atheneum, 2004; illustrated by Anne Wildorf); Lenore Look’s Ruby Lu Empress of Everything (Atheneum, 2006; illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf); Lenore Look’s Ruby Lu Star of the Show (Atheneum, 2011; illustrated by Stef Choi); Jaspreet Singh’s Chef (Bloomsbury, 2010); Han Suyin’s And the Rain My Drink (Monsoon Books, 2010, first published in 1956); Henry (Yoshitaka) Kiyama’s The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924 (Stone Bridge Press, reprint edition, 1999), originally published in 1931.



A Review of Lenore Look’s Ruby Lu Brave and True (Atheneum, 2004; illustrated by Anne Wildorf); Ruby Lu Empress of Everything (Atheneum, 2006; illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf); and Ruby Lu Star of the Show (Atheneum, 2011; illustrated by Stef Choi)



Lenore Look’s Ruby Lu series is apparently aimed at children ages 6 to 10. Of course, I didn’t let that stop me from reading the series, though I did burn them in a short amount of time. In Ruby Lu Brave and True, we meet our titular protagonist, who is a little bit of a rambunctious young girl, getting in random misadventures. The first book sets up her interests, which prominently include magic tracks. Look does include particular ethnic themes, as Ruby begins to attend Chinese school; she also has one little brother named Oscar. Her cousin, Flying Duck, ends up immigrating to the United States and living with the family at the ending of the first book. Perhaps, the most perilous moment occurs when Ruby takes a joyride with her brother Oscar and arrives at Chinese school unattended.



The second book continues Ruby’s misadventures. The book starts off where the first ended, as Ruby deals with what it means to live with her cousin, Flying Duck. We discover in the second book that Flying Duck is deaf, so Ruby does whatever she can to help Flying Duck acculturate to the United States and to elementary school. Problems begin to arise, though, because Ruby is not able to concentrate on her studies as well as she would like and Flying Duck’s learning is certainly impeded by her lack of cultural fluency. Thus, both Ruby and Flying Duck are strongly encouraged to take summer school. At the same time, that summer, Ruby overcomes her fear of swimming and makes a friend with a former enemy named Emma. What is particularly interesting about this book in the series is that way that Look does include minor characters of varying Asian backgrounds. For instance, both of Ruby’s schoolteachers during the regular school year and summer school are of Asian descent (the former being of South Asian background and the latter being of Japanese background). The ending arc includes the adoption of a stray dog named Elvis into the family and Ruby’s acquisition of glasses to improve her eyesight.




In the most current book in the series (let’s hope that Look goes on to produce more winning adventures for our indefatigable protagonist), Ruby must deal with an altered family life when her father loses his job and they must find ways to deal with the insecurity in finances. Ruby’s mother takes up a job as a shoe salesperson, working on commission, while Ruby’s father stays at home. Over time though it looks less and less likely that Ruby’s father will find a new job. In some ways, this book elliptically seems to be narrating the economic challenges of the post-meltdown era; indeed, it becomes clear that many in the neighborhood have been suffering from the instability in the job market. The element that I ultimately found most poignant about this work was Ruby’s relationship with her dog Elvis, which takes a major turn here that was heartbreaking. I won’t reveal what happens, but those who are dog lovers will definitely love this latest chapter in the Ruby Lu chronicles.

As I’ve stated in the past, there were very few books I was aware of when I was growing up that contained ethnic themes or were written by Asian American writers. It seems to me that today there are many more options for parents who, for instance, would like to introduce their children to Asian American cultures through literature.

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Brave-True-Lenore-Look/dp/1416913890/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1329683298&sr=8-6

http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Lu-Empress-Everything-Quality/dp/1416950036/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1329683318&sr=8-5

http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Star-Show-Lenore-Look/dp/1416917764/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1329683334&sr=8-8


A Review of Jaspreet Singh’s Chef (Bloomsbury, 2010).



Jaspreet Singh’s Chef was originally published in 2008 in India, but was brought out stateside in 2010. Singh is also the author of an earlier short story collection, which I have tried to purchase in vain (in hard copy) called 17 Tomatoes: Tales from Kashmir—impossible to buy at a reasonable price. Singh’s Chef is a meditative novel, told really from a backwards glance, as the main character, Kirpal Singh, an older Sikh man suffering from brain cancer, travels to a former workplace at the base of the Himalayas in Kashmir, in order to prepare a wedding banquet for the beloved daughter of a former employer. The novel is told from first person perspective, which makes for an interesting choice because Kirpal, otherwise known as Kip, is beginning to exhibit obvious signs of physical distress from his sickness. In some sense, his narration is unreliable and the way that the story is narrated with rather abrupt shifts in time seem to suggest that time is flowing in either direction for our narrator. As we discover, as a young man Kip is originally sent to Kashmir for military service, though his duties are at first primarily consisting of his apprenticeship to the titular Chef, a burly older man who is a tense, if not colorful, superior. Singh’s novel is particularly notable for the narrator’s philosophical musings, especially as he looks outward from the train onto the landscape and employs those moments as a way to think about national identity, postcolonial politics, and international tension. This passage is exemplary: “Outside, the land is impoverished, not planted. No river, only a polluted stream. The land is parched and yellow and flat with an occasional rise, then flat again. Flatness is terrifying. An occasional animal flashes by. A defecating man or woman flash by. Troops and tanks go by. Now the foothills are visible. Distant mountains, the Pir Panjals, are visible. Far away from the maximum cities, far away from a million people and their miseries, and a hazaar million melancholies” (169). As the plot moves forward, Kip is enlisted to gather intelligence against a young woman, Irem, who is accused of being n Pakistani spy. Thus, we see that much of this novel deals with the tensions between Pakistan and India that have arisen over Kashmir. This novel reminds me of Siddhartha Deb’s An Outline of the Republic as a narrative that explores how border conflict and far-flung regional locations enable a reconsideration of national identity. The narrator also certainly reminds us of the lovable Binh from Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt.

Buy the Book:

http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Novel-Jaspreet-Singh/dp/B004KABJNS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329765844&sr=8-1

(currently a bargain buy on amazon for all of $5.60).

A Review of Han Suyin’s And the Rain My Drink (Monsoon Books, 2010, first published in 1956).




Monsoon Books is a small press based out of Singapore; it has an eclectic catalog and one of the titles I saw immediately that stands out is its reprinting Han Suyin’s And the Rain My Drink. For more about Monsoon books and to browse its catalog, go here:

http://www.monsoonbooks.com.sg/

Han Suyin is a particularly prolific author, having published numerous novels and creative nonfictional works, but her place within the Asian Americanist canon has been more vexed. She’s never claimed a major residency within the United States from what I understand, though her work often references America through its characters and contexts. Further still, I would have guessed that the reception of her work by first generation critics and scholars might have been mixed given the rather popular nature of some of her works. One of her novels, A Many Splendoured Thing, was adapted into a Hollywood film that went on to win several academy awards. That movie also included a character played by a white actress, Jennifer Jones, who performed the role in yellowface. In any case, I digress a little bit. What I was most astonished by in terms of Han Suyin’s And the Rain my Drink was its rather experimental narrative format: there are many changes in narrative perspective. At one point, there is something more akin to a timeline and journal than anything remotely similar to a novelistic storytelling. There’s also a strong autobiographical impulse in the occasional “I” narrator that appears, who happens to be a doctor. The novel is set in post-WW II Malaysia and Singapore during the Malayan emergency. The novel chronicles the communist insurgency’s battle (the “People Inside”) against the commonwealth and governmental forces. Suyin includes so many characters that at some point I lost track of them. The most compelling sequences involve the unnamed protagonist and doctor, who hire an SEP (surrendered emergency personnel) named Ah Mei as her housekeeper. Though many SEPs are handed severe prison sentences or in some cases executed, Ah Mei receives special treatment for being a particularly useful informant, helping to spy upon the communist insurgents and extract reports from new prisoners. The novel is particularly illuminating because it focuses on a historical moment that, I believe, has received little attention in the U.S. Suyin is very careful to note the intricate relationship between Malaysia and Singapore, especially as those countries end up developing a complicated connection in the wake of the rise of the communist insurgents. It is clear that Suyin was influenced by the modernists; her work often has a stream-of-consciousness style, with a reflective narrator who seeks to find some way to navigate the chaos of the world around her. I list one compelling passage here: “Pacing the corridors, night dark, of the hospital, I heard the poor talk, Malays, Indians, Chinese, and asked myself whether out of this babble reassembled, a pattern would emerge” (32). In one short sentence, Suyin really gives us one of the central issues that modern Malaysia would have to face, given its heterogeneous ethnic population and racial divisions. How could the “pattern” of a modern nation emerge from such disparate people, the narrator asks us? The question is of course what drives the insurgency forward and gives us this unique and intriguing novel.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Rain-My-Drink-Han-Suyin/dp/9810844859/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

A Review of Henry (Yoshitaka) Kiyama’s The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924 (Stone Bridge Press, reprint edition, 1999), originally published in 1931.



I was alerted to this graphic text first by pylduck who reviewed it earlier on Asian American literature fans here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/120985.html

As I’ve come to discover, I’m always wrong when it comes to setting a limit as to what the earliest of anything might be. I always figured that if I taught a historical range of graphic texts by Asian American writers I would begin with Mine Okubo, but with the Four Immigrants Manga, we see the tradition of the graphic narrative to extend even further back into history. Kiyama’s graphic narrative is interesting insofar as Asian American literary definitions because it’s a bilingual text. The edition that Stone Bridge has republished is a fully English edition with translations, an introduction and notes by Frederik L. Schodt. Schodt is very careful to delineate the differences between Japanese and English language dialogue bubbles through the effective use of capitalization and font changes. I particularly agree with Pylduck’s sentiment expressed here: “The stories are truly remarkable in their range, covering the experiences of the eponymous, hapless friends who are unable to make it rich (or hold down a job) because they can't communicate clearly with English-speaking white Americans. Kiyama manages to touch on topics such as anti-Japanese and anti-Asian labor sentiment, Angel Island detention, the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, Japanese American farming, picture brides, the Alien Land Act, and Asian Exclusion.” The historical contexts of the graphic narrative make it exceedingly teachable, one that could easily be adopted in any Asian American literature course. Given its early publication date, it is particularly an important edition to pre-1965 Asian American literary canon, which is relatively sparse in terms of offerings, especially given how many of those books remain out of print. The tone of the graphic narrative is darkly comic; by this, I mean to say that the four immigrants of the title struggle often with retaining their jobs or making ends meet; they are often fired for tragicomic misunderstandings and other accidents that are not surprising given their background as Japanese migrants. Behind the humor is, of course, the political impulse behind these occupational “hazards.” That is, inasmuch as the “manga” is about immigration issues and acculturation, it is also about economic mobility and class standing, reminding us that much of the pre-1965 Asian Americans were coming to the US based upon their hope to gain a financial foothold, one that would eventually return them to their countries of origin. The graphic narrative is also interesting in relation to interethnic Asian contexts, as it explores some of the rifts and tensions among Japanese and Chinese immigrants. At one point, South Asian Hindu migrants also appear in a panel. Given the fact that panethnic constructs are often assailed, Kiyama’s consideration of these other groups despite their apparent gulfs, suggests an awareness that migrants faced collective struggles. A compelling and unique work, an exceedingly teachable text, and also one that reminds us that Asian American literature’s English language basis can sometimes be upended.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Immigrants-Manga-Experience-Francisco/dp/1880656337
 
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stephenhongsohn
13 February 2012 @ 06:34 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – Monday Megareview for February 13, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Monday Megareview for February 13, 2012

In this post, reviews for Melissa De La Cruz’s Au Pairs (Simon Pulse, 2004); Melissa De La Cruz’s Skinny Dipping (Simon Pulse, 2005); Melissa De La Cruz’s Sun-Kissed (Simon Pulse, 2006); Melissa De La Cruz’s Crazy Hot (Simon Pulse, 2007); Tishani Doshi’s The Pleasure Seekers (Bloomsbury USA, 2011); and Michelle Wan’s A Twist of Orchids: A Death in the Dordogne Mystery (Minotaur Books, 2010).

A Review of Melissa De La Cruz’s Au Pairs (Simon Pulse, 2004), Skinny Dipping (Simon Pulse, 2005); Sun-Kissed (Simon Pulse, 2006); Crazy Hot (Simon Pulse, 2007).



Just a note: Since I’m reviewing the entire Au Pairs series, there are going to be a lot of spoilers! Another note: someone could do a paper just on the covers for this series.

I was interested in reading Melissa de la Cruz’s Au Pairs series given the fact that I wondered if there would be any mention of the global diaspora that has encouraged many Filipinos to engage in domestic service work and other “caretaking” industries like nursing. This ethnic diaspora is of course energized by the demands of a globalized economy and has spawned numerous studies, including the work of Catherine Ceniza Choy, Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, among others. In de la Cruz’s Au Pairs, three teenage women get hired as au pairs to work in the Hamptons. de La Cruz explores the problematics of power through three different women, all sort of achetypes for the collision of class and/or race that might occur in the Hamptons. Eliza Thompson is a formerly uber-rich teenager who takes one of the au pairs jobs not because she needs the money (though she definitely does), but because she primarily misses the Hamptons scene. In other words, she wants to pretend she’s rich again, back with the former friends she used to have before she had to move away due to the fact that her super-rich father got into some super-big legal trouble, leaving them more middle-class that Eliza would ever want to acknowledge. Thus, going to the Hamptons is her way of escaping her now middle-class life and she does not plan to tell anyone she meets from her former life that she’s actually working as an au pair. Mara Waters is the kind of person Eliza Thompson might have been had Eliza not been born and raised in affluence. Mara takes the au pairs job strictly for the money; of the three au pairs that get hired together, Mara is the most responsible, who actually wants to complete her caretaking duties with some competency. Given the fact that the three au pairs have a number of kids to oversee, we’re exceptionally glad that de la Cruz made sure one of the au pairs had her head screwed on straight. The final au pair is Jacarei Velasco, a beautiful Brazillian who takes the au pair job not for the money (indeed she seems to come from a upper middle class background) but because she believes she will be more likely to bump into a former flame in the Hamptons. Luca, a man she had met while he was traveling through South America, leaves an indelible imprint upon her, though he only stayed in the area for two weeks. Given the fact that so many men routinely throw themselves at Jacarei, also known as Jacqui, she realizes that there must be something absolutely special about Luca and vows to find him. We can already see that there’s going to be some problems. Jacqui and Eliza could care less about their actual jobs and all, of course, are going to enter into some kind of boy trouble. Like de La Cruz’s other work, it’s sometimes difficult to understand how to historically situate the actual narrative. References to “real life” contexts remain rooted primarily in popular culture, consumer culture, Hollywood icons, designer labels and the like. Certainly, the novel is more politically textured given its exploration of class, but it’s best, like de La Cruz’s other works, to approach this series more as a form of romantic fantasy than anything else.

In Skinny-Dipping, our favorite Au Pairs are back in the Hamptons, but the circumstances have changed slightly. Eliza Thompson returns, but secures a different job, as a hostess at the trendiest nightclub in town. Both Jacqui and Mara decide to work for the Perry’s again; the third au pair is none other than a handsome Frenchman named Philippe. While Jacqui pines for Philippe, Mara mourns the loss of her relationship to Ryan Perry and engages a romantic dalliance with Garrett Reynolds, another of the Hampton’s elite. Eliza, for her part, is also negotiating the ruins of her relationship with Jeremy by hooking up with Ryan Perry. Uh oh! By this second book, readers should simply expect the narrative to revolve around fashion and romance. There is of course an interesting reversal in terms of class and capital when Mara becomes the Hamptons new “it girl,” creating considerable friction between her and Eliza. At the same time, de la Cruz looks to actually expand Jacqui beyond the Latin American bombshell stereotype as Jacqui looks to secure her educational future in the United States. de La Cruz further tests the consumer-feminism of the three in this novel and shows us what friendships must move beyond the latest Gucci handbag.

In Sun-Kissed, de la Cruz grants Eliza and Mara some relationship stability and in some ways offers herself a new narrative to explore for Eliza and Mara. What does it mean to maintain a committed long term relationship? It would seem that for both characters, their respective relationships (Eliza with Jeremy and Mara with Ryan) hold far more questions about impending adulthood than answers. This novel also sees the main Au Pairs branching out in their careers. Eliza is developing a career in fashion and design, while Mara is looking to get started in journalism. Jacqui, on the other hand, finds out that she hasn’t fulfilled the prerequisites to gain entry into NYU, putting her entire future in question. She decides to work again for the Perrys as an Au Pair. This time around, there is a new 15 year old au pair by the name of Shannon Shin, a Korean American character. de la Cruz is savvy enough to immediately corrupt the model minority stereotype. Though Shannon seems at first to be the consummate Au Pair, with amazing references, we soon discover that she faked her credentials and that she’s made it so that she and Jacqui will only have to do a minimum of caretaking. When it is discovered that the Perrys are getting divorced, Jacqui’s summer plans are put into disarray, as it entirely possible she may not be able to get paid. Eliza also finds herself in hot waters at her job and is fired. de La Cruz thus sequences this novel as the most coming-of-age narrative in the series, as the characters begin to consider what it means to have adult responsibilities.

In what is likely the final book of the Au Pairs series (I say likely only because one never knows about a serial), Eliza, Jacqui, and Mara all find themselves pursuing serious career paths and wondering about whether or not their choices are really in keeping with their particular dreams. Eliza has become a standout fashion designer, has opened a boutique store in the Hamptons, but faces some serious trouble when her parents divorce and she must help find childcare for her stepmother. When Jacqui’s hope to work again for the Perrys falls through and Mara is unable to get her passport renewed in time for a writing job that would take her throughout Europe, all three are again reunited in the Hamptons. For Jacqui, this will be the summer that will test how important her dream of attending NYU actually is, especially once she is offered a very lucrative opportunity to model for some serious moves and shakers in the fashion industry. For Mara, she reels from the fallout of her passport debacle and wonders whether or not she will ever be able to devote herself to her writerly passions. de La Cruz is the most “meta” of all her other books in this final series bow, especially as Mara considers what kind of writer she is: is she “just” a chicklit writer or can she rise above? This question is particularly interesting given the very frothy quality of the Au Paris series in general. Again, a similar question I levied on the Jenny Han “summer” series can be directed here: what is the political and social heft of these novels and should such issues matter to our engagement with fictional representation?

And I know all of your are going to go out and buy Melissa de la Cruz’s next Witches of East End novel, Serpent’s Kiss, which has its amazon.com listing.

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Au-Pairs-Melissa-Cruz/dp/0689873190/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329158291&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Sun-kissed-Au-Pairs-Melissa-Cruz/dp/1416917470/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1329158309&sr=8-5

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Hot-Pairs-Melissa-Cruz/dp/1416948082/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1329158338&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Skinny-dipping-Au-Pairs-Melissa-Cruz/dp/B000IFS0RW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1329158357&sr=8-4


A Review of Tishani Doshi’s The Pleasure Seekers (Bloomsbury USA, 2011).


Given the strong Indian contexts of the novel, I thought the cover was yet another interesting choice. Is this the Welsh character, Sian? Who knows?

Tishani Doshi’s debut novel, The Pleasure Seekers, is at its core a family saga, exploring issues of mixed race/mixed ethnicity families and diasporic movements. The first half of the novel centrally focuses on Babo Patel (a Gujarati Indian of Jain religious background) and his romance with Sian Jones, a woman of Welsh descent, living in London. Indeed, it is Babo’s work in London that leads him to renounce an earlier marriage proposal to another Indian and to follow his heart into a love marriage with Sian. Of course, there is considerable resistance from Babo’s parents, who want him to be paired up with someone more appropriate, that is, someone more Indian. Sian is eventually able to win over Babo’s parents precisely because she’s willing to relocate to India in order to raise their growing family, which will eventually include two daughters: Bean and Mayuri. The second half of the novel increasingly shifts and moves readerly attention to Bean, the more rambunctious daughter, a character filled with wanderlust. Like Babo, Bean travels to London, seeking some adventure and some sense of herself. Though Doshi tends to articulate the contours of Bean’s Indian roots with more clarity (in part obviously due to the fact that the family spends the majority of their lives in India), the author is very careful to draw out the importance of Sian’s connections to her Welsh kin. Interestingly enough, neither Mayuri nor Bean ever show a particularly tortured relationship to their “hybrid” backgrounds, an effect likely of the fact that Sian joins up with an organization of “Western” women who have been married to Indian men of various backgrounds. In other words, Mayuri and Bean appear to have other models for understanding and conceptualizing their “hyphenated” lives. Doshi is also quite talented at weaving together the many disparate strands of family life, occasionally shifting our perspective to look upon the lives of uncles, aunts, and grandmothers. This novel has much in common with many other reviewed on this site within the past year, as writers of south Asian descent pair up a domestic narrative with political and social contexts (see Tahmima Anam for instance). In Doshi’s case, we are occasionally given snippets of major political upheaval (the assassination of Indira Gandhi for instance occurs at the same time as Babo’s mother experiencing chest pains that will be revealed to be breast cancer). Finally, Doshi has got an effortless writing style; you sort of fall into this novel without realizing it and then it’s over. It does not have an obvious progressive arc, so be prepared for something more episodic in character.

Buy the Book Over:

http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Seekers-Novel-Tishani-Doshi/dp/B005B1KL8O/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 (as of January 1, 2012, it is only $6).

A Review of Michelle Wan’s A Twist of Orchids: A Death in the Dordogne Mystery (Minotaur Books, 2010).



A Twist of Orchids is apparently the third book in the Dordogne Mystery series. Dordogne is an area in France in which the detective novels are set. The protagonists at the center of this novel are Mara Dunn and Julian Wood. I haven’t had a chance to read the first two in the series yet, so I’m not sure what I’ve missed from before, but this book sets up the premise quite quickly with three tensions. The first revolves around drug trafficking and Turkish immigrants. Julian is eventually hired by acquaintances, who also happen to be Turkish immigrants living in France, to find their son, Kazim, who has runaway from the police and from drug kingpins. Julian also happens to be some sort of botanist with an obsession for orchids; the second issue occurs when a woman with considerable funds named Adelheid attempts to hire him to find a mythical orchid. Julian declines realizing that Adelheid might be after the orchid for profit rather than for protecting such a unique specimen. The last issue occurs over the death of an elderly woman named Amelie, who falls down a flight of stairs. There is considerable suspicion that her death was indeed a murder and that her husband Joseph, suffering from Parkinson’s, is also a target. If there yet another issue to sort out, it is the romance plot. You see, Mara and Julian have just begun to live together, so they are testing the waters of their relationship. Though heavy on plot, Wan also creates some pretty memorable characters. I especially found it interesting the way in which issues of difference were routed into the fictional world. For instance, Wan clearly explores some of the thornier contexts around Arab and Middle Eastern immigrants in France. Further still, Mara Dunn is a French Canadian and though fluent in French, she often finds France a little bit discombobulating. A Twist of Orchids is an entertaining read and with so many different plot strands, Wan is particularly successful at weaving them back together by the conclusion. I definitely will have to back to read the previous works in the series =).

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Twist-Orchids-Death-Dordogne-Mystery/dp/B005X4GFOS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327642539&sr=8-1
 
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stephenhongsohn
05 February 2012 @ 12:06 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – Sunday Mega Review Round-up for February 5, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Sunday Mega Review Round-up for February 5, 2012

In this post, reviews of Justin Chin’s Bite Hard (1997, Manic D Press); Justin Chin’s Harmless Medicine (2001, Manic D Press); Justin Chin’s Gutted (2006, Manic D Press); Justin Chin’s 98 Wounds (2011, Manic D Press); City of Spies (written by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan, artwork by Pascal Dizin, Color by Hilary Sycamore; First Second, 2010); Brain Camp (written by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan, artwork by Faith Erin Hicks, Color by Hilary Sycamore; First Second, 2010).



Justin Chin’s Bite Hard and Harmless Medicine are primarily poetry collections (I say primarily because they include some prose pieces) that, I think, are best reviewed together. They both include many common themes, including issues related to bodily health, transnational movement, queer sexuality, citizenship and home, and ethnic/racial issues. These collections remind me a little bit of the work of Timothy Liu, R. Zamora Linmark, and Thom Gunn and have a ferocious, often caustically playful quality that never lets up. A representative passage might be found in “flesh/wound,” in which the narrator explains: “Porn and politics aren’t all that different when you finally draw the lines. All it comes down to is the clothes and the bodies” (40). Chin is always putting what might more normatively be considered the sacred and profane and equating them together. Thus, porn and politics are the order of the day. Speaking of orders, in “Chinese restaurant,” the narrator brazenly divulges: “In the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, I am queer for queer & I refuse to pass my ugliness for roses. I refuse to trade my queer for your queer” (74). But our plucky lyric speaker isn’t finished: “At this point, you’re probably thinking, wait a minute, all of this wasn’t in The Joy Luck Club; all this wasn’t in the PBS special presentation, A Thousand Pieces of Gold, & all of this probably isn’t in that stage production of The Woman Warrior, either” (74). I always appreciate the self-conscious nature of so many Asian American writers today. It tells you that Chin is aware of a kind of Asian American tradition, but also how his work might fall completely outside of it. In “Lick My Butt,” the lyric speaker commands:

Lick my butt & tell me about
Michel Foucault’s theories of deconstruction
& how it applies to popular culture,
a depressed economy & this overwhelming
tide of alienation (82).

PhD students and others in the humanities versed in continental philosophy can appreciate again the yoking together of the sacred and the profane. Foucault, deconstruction, pop culture, and rimming all combine together in an “overwhelming/ tide of alienation.” What possibilities are there for human connection in such a chaotic world, Chin’s lyrics always seem to ask? The answer seems to call for a little bit of human and a potpourri of references that twine high and low culture. Bite Hard concludes with a rather depressing, but wonderful poem called “Refuging.” One of the most poignant excerpts appears in part VIII:

When a voice finally speaks
across the void of stillness,
how many of us will be gone,
how many will I have left,
committed to picture memories
and the mind feel of touch
against my body? (128).

What I always appreciate about Chin’s work is that the accessibility of the lyrics that speak to a depth of emotion. Here, Chin refers to the lasting vestiges of the HIV epidemic, the many who have gone that are now fading from memory, that are also fading from speaker’s somatic consciousness.



Harmless Medicine is more direct in its evocation of issues related to bodily health and disease. In “Undetectable,” the lyric speaker clearly references the ongoing battle between the body and dealing with HIV infection: “There is a battle in my body. Every day/ a small chunk of me is given up in this/ microscopic war. Small flecks of cells,/ shreds of tissue, muscle, skin, bone/ disintegrate, turn to junk, float/ through my body and are pissed out” (11). Later on, the title poem reveals the various treatments that a diseased subject might endure, including alternative treatments and herbal medications: “The Gingko’s not working./ The St. John’s Wort I’m advised to avoid./ The Milk Thistle is for something else./ The Selenium makes me bloat./ The Ma Huang gives me palpitations. The Multivitamins are good, but watch the Iron content./ The Echinachea does something weird” (43). While poems such as “Undetectable” and “Harmless Medicine” might seem more autobiographical in tone, the politics of the HIV epidemic are explored in other pieces and poems, including “Imagining America” and “Eros,” which are especially dark in tone. Sex tourism becomes one venue that the lyric speaker explores in relation to the inequitable regimes of power that can fuel HIV transmission, whether from the flight attendant who chooses not to share his status with his many sex partners or the aging septuagenarian tourist, repackaged through plastic surgery, but whose semen still can infect. In so many of the poems that appear here, though, Chin is always juggling numerous issues, packing each poem as densely as possible, as we travel from one country to the next, from one challenging circumstance to another, from one social context to another. The delightfully sarcastic tone from Bite Hard occasionally returns in poems sprinkled throughout harmless medicine. One of my favorites is “Beefy Fag”; an excerpt appears here: “We are so beefy and we are so gay,/ we work on our pecs at least 8 times a day./ We’re Tigre & Bunny & Butchie & Gee/ cruising in our Geo Tracker, we all go ‘whee’/ to the tunes on the Savage Garden CD” (61). Chin so rarely uses full rhymes, especially in such direct connection from one line to another; the sing-song quality of this poem is especially effective at exposing the lyric subject’s tonality to the “beefy fag,” who attempts to embody the height of masculinity, but whose lifestyle betrays other seemingly less butch characteristics.



I read Justin Chin’s Gutted and 98 Wounds in quick succession. I was a little bit surprised at how different these two works are, especially in terms of form, content, and tone. Gutted is Chin’s an extended prose-poetic elegy with a highly autobiographical focus that deals with the author’s experiences in the lead-up and the aftermath of his father’s death. This work reminds me so much of Jon Pineda’s Sleep in Me in that a time of incredible pain, grief, and mourning still produces such beautiful writing. As Chin writes: “It cannot be this difficult. Really, it cannot. Scores of people lose their loved ones every day, and in far worse, far more horrifying circumstances: there are all sorts of warfare and race riots, murders and natural disasters, there are far more horrible diseases and unfortunate accidents….” (73). And yet, Chin makes clear that standing by the side of someone who is dying, his father who is slowly succumbing to cancer, is indeed so difficult. Chin will later divulge that “I have no wish to forget/ my grief no be healed of it./ There is room in my heart/ and head and gut. There is enough room/ too for silence. They may even be/ room some day/ for stillness” (106). These lines are indicative of the meditative aspect of the poetry included in this work, as the poems take on a recursive and hypnotic quality that plumbs the depths of Chin’s melancholy. Because Chin must travel to Singapore in order to visit his parents, this work also explores conceptions of home, transnationalism, diaspora, and citizenship. The final poem is interestingly a sort of homecoming—Chin has received his U.S. citizenship. Though this conclusion might seem to be indicative of a progressive arc, a closure as it were, it seems instead a moment that calls attention to the desire to find a sense of stability amid the chaos and the tumult of grief.



98 Wounds is a prose work filled with short stories that relish in what we might call the abject. In Julia Kristeva’s classic work, The Powers of Horror, she reminds us of the strange and paradoxical ways in which our bodies confound us—those things that are a part of us that we simultaneously possesses but often wish to expel. Chin’s 98 Wounds is all about embracing and confronting the abject as evidenced by the numerous stories in which bodily fluids, bodily waste, disease and disintegration, are placed at the front and center. In this way, the collection is relentless, graphic, and often irreverent in its tone; sentimentality cannot be found here. Instead, there are drug addicts, prostitutes, fetishists, anonymous sex acts, among other such figures and occurrences. A representative passage might be seen here: “He is surprised by how unaffected he is by all the smells in the room and the viscosity pooled under him. This is what life smells like, he thinks. Even before birth, you spend all those months in the womb shoved up beside the bowels, and then you’re born mere inches away from the poophole. And when you die, your bowl is the last thing that releases its hold on your life” (40). In this respect, this character, from the story “Sugar” revels in the pungency of his fecal matter, even as it takes a central part in queer sex acts, all undertaken by him in order to gain access to more drugs. The other aspect of this collection that was riveting was its exploration of queer identity in the aftermath of the AIDS crises; there is a sense that queer men are collectively moving toward some new lifestyle and sense of community, but it is one that is as yet not entirely mapped: “This was neither nor the distance between them, but an exhausted netherland where no one quite knew whether to go forward or backward or to stay put, to lay down and die or to lay down a stake, to remember or forget, to recreate awash in nostalgia or to create anew, the past packaged in matching luggage sets and stashed in storage, to create anew without the annoying tentacles of the past, as if that were ever possible” (111). The ambivalence of this “netherland” is precisely where the collection “stakes” its own claim precisely because the characters who populate 98 Wounds are not moving toward a particular goal; they rather seem to live day-by-day, unsure of where there futures are taking them, if they are being taken anywhere at all.

A detailed interview with Justin Chin can be found below:

http://www.frigatezine.com/essay/lives/eli03chi.html

I found the interview useful insofar as it helped me to think about “authorial intentionality” in terms of how Chin views his own work.

And, here you can find a link to Manic D Press, which has also published the work of Adrienne Su (to be the subject of a future review).

http://www.manicdpress.com/

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Bite-Hard-Justin-Chin/dp/0916397475/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324161029&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Harmless-Medicine-Justin-Chin/dp/0916397726/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1324161042&sr=8-15

http://www.amazon.com/Gutted-Justin-Chin/dp/1933149078/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1324161092&sr=8-3

http://www.amazon.com/98-Wounds-Justin-Chin/dp/1933149574/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324161111&sr=8-1

A Review of Brain Camp (written by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan, artwork by Faith Erin Hicks, Color by Hilary Sycamore; First Second, 2010).



I had actually seen this graphic novel once while surfing on amazon and then was reminded of it when pylduck reviewed it.

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/121524.html

I recall wondering about how to categorize this graphic novel at the time, since it is ultimately a collaborative work. In any case, I absolutely loved this graphic novel for the simple fact that it combines science fiction tropes with a lively tale of young, adolescent love that blooms within a sinister camp ground, in which average kids are seemingly transformed into geniuses. The graphic novel opens with what seems to be two campers choking to death on feathers that spew from their mouths, so we know that something strange is going on and worry about the fates of both protagonists, Lucas Meyer and Jenna Chun. Pylduck, as always, provides a great overview, so I’m going to focus on some elements that I find fascinating about this graphic novel. The first element is the question of reading race. In something I would call implicit racialization, it’s fairly clear we’re meant to read Jenna Chun as Asian American. Part of this reading can be made simply because Kim and Klavan employ the model minority narrative to cue us into the fact that Jenna is likely Asian America. Further still, Hicks and Sycamore together create a visual that can match up with this implicit racial designation, as Jenna has black, straight hair. Lucas, on the other hand, is not explicitly racially marked in terms of textual language, but again, Hicks and Sycamore provide us with a visual that suggests he could be Caucasian, with light sandy brown hair. Why bother with reading race into this graphic novel at all? With questions of talent and genius at play, there is already the issue what is socially constructed and what is innate. At many points, both Lucas’s and Jenna’s parents seem resigned to the fact that their child will not be a genius, but the novel suggests early on that their rebellion has its own advantages. Indeed, it is precisely their rebellious streak that allows them to avoid falling prey to some of the evil machinations of shadowy head honcho of the camp. In other words, conceptions of genius and talent often tend to be coded biologically, so we can’t help but think also of race at the same time. Brain Camp is a super fun read.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Camp-Susan-Kim/dp/B0057DC6L6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325483112&sr=8-1

A Review of City of Spies (written by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan, artwork by Pascal Dizin, Color by Hilary Sycamore; First Second, 2010).




City of Spies is what we might call a historical graphic novel set during the World War 2 period in the “Germantown” section of New York City. It centers on a young Jewish American girl named Evelyn who lives with her Aunt Lia Spiegelman, an abstract artist and painter, who is apparently independently wealthy. Evelyn’s father is away traveling with his latest wife, one of a string of stepmoms that Eveyln has had, as her mother has died. Evelyn possesses a rich interior life, which is reproduced on sketches that focus on two superhero figures: Zirconium Man and Scooter. She later discovers that artistic talent runs in the family more largely, linking Evelyn to Aunt Lia and to her own mother, who was obviously a talented artist, but had given up her creative pursuits after she had gotten married. Evelyn soon makes friends with the son of one of the apartment managers and handymen, a boy named Tony; they go off on various adventures, which apparently involve espionage and Nazi secret agents. Though we’re never too worried about Evelyn and Tony’s safety, the graphic novel does engage some serious political themes. It seems as though the Nazis are using a microimaging technology that reduces any document to the size of crumbs; they are thus able to transport sensitive plans to create a new and incredibly damaging bomb. Kim and Klavan obviously make a great writing team. Like Brain Camp, they use the chemistry between two young characters of opposing genders to help fuel our interest in the plot. They are both plucky and likable figures. Like Brain Camp, these characters come from different class backgrounds, but still find a way to bridge their differences. Race is obviously an interesting point in this work, as Evelyn’s Jewish background marks her in clear contrast to the Nazi secret agents who populate the later sections of the text. Again, it is interesting to note that we must be able to “read” race through a combination of racial and visual registers. Dizen is particularly attentive to a different style of graphic sketches, one perhaps inspired by the comic book artists of the 40s and 50s. Another winning work this talented group of writers and artists.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/City-Spies-Susan-Kim/dp/B0058M5PV4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325573354&sr=8-1
 
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stephenhongsohn
29 January 2012 @ 08:31 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – Sunday Mega Review Post for January 29, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Sunday Mega Review Post for January 29, 2012

In this post, reviews for:

Romesh Gunesekera’s The Match (The New Press, 2008); Hanif Kureishi’s The Body (Scribner, 2002); Hanif Kureishi’s My Ear at His Heart: Reading My Father (Scribner, 2010); Lan Samantha Chang’s Everything is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (W.W. Norton, 2010); Keshni Kashyap’s Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary (Houghton Mifflin, 2011); illustrated by Mari Araki; Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem (Pantheon, 2011).

A Review of Romesh Gunesekera’s The Match (The New Press, 2008).



Romesh Gunesekera’s The Match is an interesting novel in that it explores the contours of the Sri Lankan diaspora. Our ostensible protagonist, Sunny Fernando, is the son of a journalist from Sri Lanka who decides to move to the Philippines, attracted by the possibilities of the country’s interest in a free press. The novel starts in 2002, takes us back to 1970 and then more or less proceeds chronologically. Each section takes place in a different year. Sunny is motherless (Sunny’s mother committed suicide) and he seems relatively attached to his father. The novel’s opening sees Sunny in the profusion of adolescence, seeking out the affections of the only other Sri Lankan individual (named Tina Navratanam) around his age in their foreigners’ compound, Urdaneta. He takes it upon himself to try to arrange a cricket match, which will bring together all the local families of the area, including Tina and her parents, as well as a couple of other expatriates and foreigners living in Urdaneta. Though “team Urdaneta” wins against a visiting Hong Kong group, Sunny never establishes himself as Tina’s hero; instead, by the ending of the novel’s first section, Tina has moved to America and Sunny finds himself disillusioned after he discovers that his mother’s suicide may have been, in part, induced by his father’s failure to adhere to particular career aspirations. The second part moves us to London where Sunny is in engineering school. He meets makes some friends, including another Sri Lankan immigrant named Ranil and Ranil’s girlfriend, Clara. He also becomes reacquainted with a friend from his Manila days, a young man by the name of Robby. Given Sunny’s intense attraction to Clara, it is not surprising that they embark on their own relationship when Clara’s relationship with Ranil stumbles. They will have one child together named Mikey and Sunny will pursue a career in photography. Much of the novel from here explores the complications that arises attempts to deal with the way his inability to retain stable friendships and family structures. Gunesekera remains attached to the thematic of cricket and returns to another match at the novel’s conclusion giving this work an interesting circularity.
Gunesekera is particularly gifted at intertwining a personal, family narrative within a larger structure of historical and political events. Throughout the novel, we’ll get snippets of what is going on with the Marcos-regime, the increase in violence in Sri Lanka, or the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Further still, Gunesekera employs an omniscient narrator who grants us an ability to see into Sunny’s quite vivid mindscapes. There are particularly beautiful passages of philosophical and poetic insight. The novel becomes uneven though in terms of its linear plot development; the novel reads episodically without much upward movement and the opening section is certainly the novel’s most compelling section. That being said, I’ll leave you with one of many gems from Sunny’s mindscape: “Sunny wanted to photograph hope embedded in love. Or love embedded in hope. Something promising despite the true nature of the world. Against the odds. Something more all-encompassing than that Parisian kiss imprinted in a million heads. Something that could be found, just as it was lost, like life itself. Unexpectedly. Undeservedly” (293).

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Match-Romesh-Gunesekera/dp/1595581987/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321144779&sr=1-4

A Review of Hanif Kureishi’s The Body (Scribner, 2002) and My Ear at His Heart: Reading My Father (Scribner, 2010).



I was immediately intrigued by the premise of the Body. The main character is an aging, but well respected and rather well-known writer, married to a woman named Margot, when he meets a young man, Ralph, at a party. Ralph comes to him with a rather outlandish claim that he could have the chance to plant his brain into the body of someone younger. Indeed, Ralph has already undergone the process, in part because he had always courted a deep desire to play Hamlet; by the time Ralph had realized how important this part and an acting career could be to him, he was already quite old and could not land the parts he desired. In any case, our narrator and protagonist decides to undergo the procedure, picking out a body of a man who is in his mid-twenties, apparently quite handsome and apparently in his previous life was a homosexual and suffered from acute mental illness which resulted in his suicide. Kureishi does not belabor the science behind this process; he uses this novel’s premise as a way to meditate on the dilemmas and quandaries related to aging. The philosophical mindset of our narrator, though, seems rather focused on one goal: to employ the body to experience particular excesses: the excesses of sex, drugs, but not so much rock ‘n roll. To a certain extent, the novel, despite its rather short length, is rather episodic. Though the idea behind Kureishi’s novel is quite intriguing, the narrator is unfortunately rather unsympathetic and at best, narcissistic in a way that we find it difficult to follow his exploits, much that seem ultimately repetitive or hollow. The final arc of the novel seems to move the novel in a new direction. Our narrator begins to tire of his NewBody and even decides to visit his wife, who has no idea that he’s visiting her in this other form; he realizes how much he misses his wife and their son. A minor character, Matte, who had been pursuing him in order to steal his body for his brother who is dying of cancer, reveals the curse that comes with this apparently flawless, youthful body. Kureishi, in this sense, finally upturns the expectation youth is the preferred mode of being, but this message is conveyed in a very elliptical way. Indeed, the extreme consumerism and hedonism on display throughout this novel is largely more symbolic of the desire for and the danger inherent in being young—one is not only in the preferred subject position, but one is envied to the extent that one becomes a target for violence and brutality.




Kureishi’s My Ear at His Heart: Reading My Father was first published in the United Kingdom in 2004; I think it had its first publication in the U.S. in 2010. Again, I would love to read an article as to why certain books get a delayed release in the U.S. or are not even released at all. This book is a creative nonfiction, mixed-genre work; some parts autobiography, some parts biography; pictures are included throughout and we get a deep and in-depth look at Kureishi’s highly complicated relationship with his father, who Kureishi reads a man who deeply detested rivalry and if anything never sought an equal in his son, but rather someone who he could depend upon without having to worry about some sort of strained competitiveness. Much of this work ruminates upon an unpublished novel of Kureishi’s father, one that Kureishi reads with some fear, realizing that this manuscript might offer some keen insight into his father’s beliefs and motivations. Since it does not seem as if his father was ever that directly communicative, the unpublished novel becomes one of the ways that Kureishi still has to “read his father,” however speculative this process may be. He is quick to admit the many aporias of this practice, especially in relation to the fact that eighty manuscript pages remain missing (from the middle of the novel), but this project arcs out into other interviews and other memories. For instance, this book is in some ways as much about Kureishi’s father’s brother, Omar, as it is about Kureishi’s father. Omar comes to considerable prominence as a cricket reporter and there are characters within the novel that seem to be analogs to the relationship between Omar and Kureishi’s father. Interestingly enough, Kureishi also reads Omar’s two memoirs alongside his father’s unpublished novel; thus these this work begins to read more and more like a form of reflective literary critique. Regarding Kureishi’s project of “reading his father,” he writes: “And me? What sort of remark have I just made? What have I been doing, opening up father like this, examining, diagnosing, operating on him, so that his work feels like a cross between love-making and an autopsy? I have to say I don't know what sort of book I am making here, as I spin my words out of his words, stories out of other stories” (94). A couple of things to note from this passage. First, one of Kureishi’s uncles makes a big impression upon him concerning Freud (not that Kureishi necessarily believed or supported Freudian psychoanalytic theory), but there’s something to be said about this passage in relation to this background. Second, this passage gets at the core of biography as a kind of creative process and reminds me somewhat of Li-Young Lee’s The Winged Seed. Regarding being an artist, Kureishi writes: “Most artists work continuously their production rarely ceases, and, if it does, this causes much anxiety and loss of meaning. The freedom to be an artist, rewarding thought it is, is another form of bondage or slavery, as dad seemed to understand. If father’s life and moods were determined by the train timetable, the life of any artist is controlled by as strict a timetable, internalised” (176). In relation to this process, I wondered if it has analogs to people who have to write criticism. As I’ve been on the verge of completing a book manuscript on Asian American fiction, I am wondering what I’m supposed to do, where the next project will come, and the “anxiety” is certainly appearing. I don’t know about it being comparable to “bondage or slavery,” but I can appreciate hyperbolic metaphors as much as the next reader, I’m sure. A fascinating work, one that could be taught I think in any workshop format concerning life-writing and biography.

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/My-Ear-His-Heart-Reading/dp/1416572120/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1327894804&sr=8-11

http://www.amazon.com/Body-Novel-Hanif-Kureishi/dp/0743249054/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_12

A Review of Lan Samantha Chang’s Everything is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (W.W. Norton, 2010).



I’ve been meaning to review this work for some time. Chang is a favorite of mine and I’ve loved her previous two novels; I’ve taught Hunger more times than I can remember. Chang deviates from the Chinese American themes that dominated her first two works to focus on a romance triangle that unfolds in the space of a premiere creative writing institution located in the Midwest (perhaps a fictional nod to her own occupation as the director of Iowa’s famed Writers’ Workshop). There is Roman, our ostensible protagonist and heady hero; Roman’s close friend, Bernard; and their brilliant, talented, but cold teacher named Miranda Sturges. Roman immediately embarks on an ill-conceived affair with Miranda, which will ultimately color his entire creative writing career. Bernard, while harboring significant feelings for Miranda (when I first wrote this review, I wrote Romanda, which is in some ways accurate given that the actual romantic pairing that occurs is between Roman and Miranda and our Branjelina of this novel if you will), will take an entirely different path toward creative enlightenment. While Roman gains accolade after accolade seeking the perfect judge to his work, Bernard is always after the perfect reader. Chang thus seems to stage a polemic about the way that creative writers (and their ostensible reading audiences) always have different reasons and motivations concerning the nature and true intent of art. Chang is always exceptionally talented at managing the narrative space; she knows that every single sentence counts. This slim novel manages to pack quite an articulated life trajectory not only for Roman, but also for Bernard and Miranda who are ultimately always interconnected with Roman’s life. If there is one critique of the novel to be levied, for all this talk of poetry, there is very little actual poetry that appears in the novel. It would have been interesting to see exactly what kinds of poems these characters are writing. In that space of ellipticality, these characters’ creative lives appear a little bit diffuse and almost ghostly.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/All-Forgotten-Nothing-Lost-Novel/dp/0393063062

A Review of Keshni Kashyap’s Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary (Houghton Mifflin, 2011); illustrated by Mari Araki



First off: this graphic novel is a little bit different than many that I’ve previously read in that there are longer portions of actual text that are not necessarily appearing alongside panels. Indeed, standard panels are often dispensed with entirely. The other element to consider is one of collaboration and authorship. Like other graphic works that have been reviewed on this site, the writer and illustrator are not one and the same, making this genre a little bit different to define and to read than others. In this case, Kashyap’s spirited script imagines the life of Tina, a 10th grader and South Asian American living in Southern California. The graphic novel goes on to depict Tina’s angsty high school life. The novel’s premise begins with Tina writing an existential diary as part of a class project. Peppered with references to Sartre and Spivak, the graphic novel engages the meandering meditations of Tina as she attempts to navigate a romance with a fellow high schooler named Neil, to rehearse for the lead of the high school production of Rashomon, and to maintain a non-solitary existence by forging strong friendships. With so few Asian American works engaging a strongly comedic tonality, Kashyap’s narrative is already quite unique and one I plan to include in future curricular offerings. Mari Araki’s drawing style is a welcome pairing; there are certain panel sequences that absolutely spark off the page. For instance, when Tina must engage a stage kiss as part of her dress rehearsal, Araki makes sure to convey the trauma of that moment with a particularly horrific view of the lead actor’s longer than normal tongue. This panel sequence is worth the price of the buying the book alone! In the spirit of Tina’s class assignment, I give her diary an A+.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Tinas-Mouth-Existential-Comic-Diary/dp/0618945199

A Review of Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem (Pantheon, 2011).



I had a very odd reaction to Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem. The political motivation behind this narrative is quite clear. Jin cites numerous sources in his author’s note as inspirations for this novel, one that delves into the infamous Nanjing massacre. Not surprisingly, one of Jin’s sources is Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking, probably the most well-known contemporary source on that event and certainly credited with renewing interest in what had occurred approximately half a century before its publication. Though Jin takes great pains to be historically accurate, to the extent that he focuses the narrative so much on an actual figure, Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary and the dean of a women’s college that will be converted into a refugee center during the invasion period, the narrative is itself bogged down by a kind of reportage. The narrator, Anling, an employee at the women’s college and one of Vautrin’s assistants and friends, provides us with her first hand account of the many atrocities that occur, the struggle to save as many lives as possible, and finally Vautrin’s later mental decline and suicide. Perhaps, the most fascinating element of this novel is how Jin explores conceptions of wartime atrocities. Though the Japanese military and soldiers are the indispensable locus of evil during the invasion, the antagonistic center of the novel turns quite considerably the second to a far more congenial-seeming figure, that of Mrs. Dennison, the former college president who has returned. Mrs. Dennison is intent upon returning the college to its former glory. Mrs. Dennison sees certain developments in the curricular offerings to be a step down from what a secondary institution should offer, particularly the sections of the school devoted to vocational, rather than educational instruction. Mrs. Dennison, in contrast to both Minnie and Anling, fled during the invasion, thus her connection to the remaining refugees and students at the college is different and we might say even detached. Mrs. Dennison seems to symbolically convey how quickly the effects of the invasion were also so quickly being glossed over and effectively erased, a fact that Minnie could not stomach. Mrs. Dennison thus becomes one of the most fully fleshed out antagonists with an agenda to subvert Minnie’s power and influence. Later, when it is insinuated that Minnie had actually at some point offered some of the refugee women staying at the college to Japanese soldiers coming through as prostitutes, she suffers a serious mental illness from which she never recovers. Jin’s whole inspiration for this novel is admirable, but yet the novel never quite fully gains its form or its footing.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Nanjing-Requiem-Novel-Ha-Jin/dp/0307379760/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322608735&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
24 January 2012 @ 12:21 pm
Gotham and Deepak Chopra's Walking Wisdom  
I stumbled across Gotham Chopra's Walking Wisdom: Three Generations, Two Dogs, and the Search for a Happy Life (Hyperion, 2010) while searching for books about dogs in my library's ebook catalog.



I haven't read anything by Deepak Chopra, Gotham's famous father. I only know him as the guru to the stars and a bestselling author of numerous books about spirituality. Gotham himself has been a prolific journalist with a few other books under his belt and other work with media companies. I thought the book would be a fun introduction to the Chopra mystique (even if once removed), and it is indeed such a book.

This memoir is an interesting mix of a few types. In addition to being a dog memoir, it is also a memoir of father-son relationships, of a young man coming into a fuller sense of adulthood in his 30s, of Gotham's friendship with Michael Jackson, and of course about Deepak Chopra as the celebrity father. At the heart of the narrative is the story of how Deepak, after a lifetime of being mostly aloof about dogs, comes around to a love of dogs and an understanding of dogs as spiritual guides for humans in a crazy modern world. The coauthoring comes in the form of conversations between Gotham and Deepak (narrated as dialogue). These conversations are often philosophical in nature, where Deepak draws spiritual lessons from his observations of Gotham's dog Cleo (a small, fluffy white dog).

Interspersed throughout the book are also little details about Gotham's experiences growing up as an Indian American in an extended family community with close ties. Interestingly, religion and faith were never big in the family while he was growing up (and while Deepak worked his first career as a medical doctor), but Gotham does note that Hindu traditions helped the family and the Indian community around them to maintain a sense of cultural identity. One thing I would've liked to have read a little more about, too, is Gotham's marriage to a Chinese American woman. In some ways, she comes across as a typical high-achieving (she's an Ivy League-educated doctor) Asian American, and Gotham even notes that she is the tougher parent (tiger mom?). But clearly there is much to consider with respect to the panethnic Asian American household they have created, as with their wedding which included a multicourse Chinese banquet and a Hindu ceremony.

Ultimately, the insights about how dogs teach us to be more spiritual (to be forgiving, loving, etc.) are fairly standard for these kinds of dog-loving books, but the extra triangulation with New Age spirituality a la Deepak Chopra and the Asian American family life depicted make it a little more nuanced.

Here's a cute picture of Gotham with father Deepak, son Krishu, and dog Cleo:

 
 
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stephenhongsohn
22 January 2012 @ 11:07 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – Mega-review Post for January 22, 2012  
Asian American Literature Fans – Mega-review Post for January 22, 2012

In this post, reviews for: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (Scribner, 2003), Monica Ali’s Alentejo Blue (Scribner, 2006), Monica Ali’s Untold Story (Scribner, 2011), Ed Lin’s Snakes Can’t Run (Minotaur Books, 2010), Roxana Saberi’s Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran (Harper, 2010), Amitava Kumar’s Nobody Does the Right Thing (Duke University Press, 2010).

A Review of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (Scribner, 2003),

Alentejo Blue (Scribner, 2006), Untold Story (Scribner, 2011).


Monica Ali’s first novel, Brick Lane, was published to rave reviews and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It also made numerous “best of lists” and it’s easy to see why it garnered so much attention. Ali shows her meticulous eye as she paints a very complex portrait of Bangladeshi immigrants who come to the United Kingdom and, like many other immigrant sagas, struggle to earn a living. Our ostensible protagonist is a young woman named Nazneen, who comes to London through the auspices of an arranged marriage. Her husband, Chanu, is significantly older. Though he is well-educated, he finds it difficult to land a stable job and eventually becomes a taxicab driver. Nazneen’s closest familial contact occurs through letters to her sister, Hasina, who remains in Bangladesh subsisting in terrible living and working conditions as she finds herself an outcast after pursuing an ill-matched love marriage. Nazneen makes friends with a close friend, Razia, a woman who is both gossipy and loyal. Razia has her own set of troubles; she does not seem to be content in her marriage and later still, her husband will be killed in a tragic slaughterhouse factory accident. Though Razia seems to buoyed up by her children, one, Tariq, will fall into a dangerous drug habit that threatens familial cohesion. Chanu tends to look down on Razia and promotes instead a social connection with an an elderly woman named Mrs. Islam, who is known in the community for being something of a loan shark. Chanu’s closest friendship appears to be with a man named Dr. Azad, who though seemingly in a higher economic station, does not have the domestic community that appears in Chanu’s household. Nazneen eventually bears Chanu a son, Raqib, who tragically dies in infancy. Nazneen will later bear two more children, both girls, Shahana and Bibi. By the midpoint in the novel, marital strain has taken considerable hold. Nazneen attempts to take more control over her life by making small pockets of money through seamstressing and sending some of her hard-earned funds to Hasina. Problems arise because Chanu remains in debt to Mrs. Islam, as he obtained a loan from her in order to buy Nazneen a sewing machine as well as a computer for himself. Both Nazneen and Chanu dream of going back to Bangladesh, but those dreams seem distant because they can never seem to pay back to the loan to Mrs. Aslam. Nazneen eventually embarks on a torrid affair with an Islamic activist named Karim who makes her question whether or not she should remain married to Chanu. Karim also offers Ali the chance to politicize the narrative in relation to religious tension and violence, especially in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Thus, this novel can be added to the growing body of works by South Asian Anglophone and South Asian American writers who have, by and large, been interested in issues of racial formation and religious persecution for those of Muslim faith. I take time to mention all of these different relationships and characters because Ali is so careful to keep them intertwined and in the orbit of the protagonist. This task would have been exceedingly difficult for any writer, but it is all the more impressive given the fact that it was Ali’s debut. I also happened to have a copy of the reprint edition that came out because a film based upon the novel was released. This reprint comes with an essay about Ali’s experiences after having published the novel, much of which explores the issue of authenticity and readerly reactions to the narrative. This essay was actually one of the highlights of my reading experience, as it helps to show how the author envisions and engages with the politicization of something she has written.


(this is not the cover photo for the US paperback edition unfortunately!)

Monica Ali’s second novel, Alentejo Blue, was confusing for me in that I wasn’t quite sure what genre it was. After the novel ends, Ali includes an author’s note which states, “This neither history book nor a travel book, but only a work of fiction” (227); she then goes on to list some sources that were inspirational to the novel. The reason why Ali must include this statement is that the novel reads almost like an ethnography; each character seems to focus on a couple of characters and these chapters almost seem self-contained. At the same time, characters in one story do appear in others, so the work effects something closer to the story cycle, rather than a traditional novel. Nevertheless, I read the book first as a novel and my confusion, I think, resulted in my expectation that there would be a general and overall plot progression, which did not exist. This novel also happens to be the first, I believe, that I’ve read to be set primarily in Portugal. The “alentejo” of the title refers to a southern region in Portugal, not known apparently more for scenic vistas, its cork trees, and other bucolic elements, rather than for industry or cosmopolitanism. Thus, there’s a real regionalist feel to this text, as locals, tourists, immigrants, expatriates, writers, those from the big cities, all collide in a strange, mercurial local brew. Ali is particularly at her best in the tourist narrative sections; chapter 5, for instance, is told from the perspective of an Englishwoman named Eileen, who simultaneously narrates the quiet tragedies of her own life, alongside her seemingly pleasant vacation with her adventurous husband. Chapter 6 is another extremely fascinating piece that explores the life of a young local woman named Teresa whose primary goal in life is to get out of the provincial town of Mamarrosa and go to London, where she does not necessarily believes it will be better, but her “gift” for observing other people might not go to waste: “In London, she thought, it would finally be fruitful, this gift or this burden she had” (136). Teresa is largely more emblematic of quagmire that is Alentejo for many of the locals, who seek simply something else, while stagnating in what might, for others, be viewed upon as a beautiful landscape. While Ali shows an incredible gift for creating authentic characters and dialogue in this work, there is little plotwise to move us as readers forward, and I found myself unable at times to progress through this book easily.



My reaction to Monica Ali’s Untold Story was paradoxical. On the one hand, Ali really crafts a fine story; you can’t help but wonder what the life of Princess Diana had been like had she survived that car crash and instead later faked her own death in order to escape a life in the public eye, a life that she felt was consuming not only her but also the lives of her two children. At the same time, once it becomes clear that Diana’s life will no longer be the life of public spectacle and consummate luxury that she once had, I lost patience sometimes in her various neuroses. The novel reveals, for instance, what happens to the figure who suddenly does not have any status within the public eye, a completely and practically anonymous entity who receives no special treatment in any way. As Diana, now called Lydia Snaresbrook, bounces from one location to another, but finally finds a place in a small town, the novel tracks back and forth through time, giving us the perspective of a man named Lawrence who helped cover her tracks. One particular sequence told through a series of letters to Lawrence shows exactly how little Diana/Lydia understands of the working class; how much she will have to work at actually being independent, doing things like balance her checkbook and taking care of a home. The tension in the plot ramps up when a paparazzo named Grabowski stumbles upon Diana/Lydia. Despite the fact that Diana has undergone major cosmetic surgery to change her look and dons various kinds of costumes and disguises, Grabowski figures out that Lydia is actually Diana and goes about documenting the evidence without her knowledge. The problem is of course that Diana as Lydia has finally come to some sort of equanimity in that small town; she’s almost gotten over her paranoia to the extent that she’s made some friends and is even entertaining a romantic connection with a man named Carson. Grabowski turns out to be the perfect villain, at least for Ali as the writer, because as much as we want to hate Lydia’s rather secure and anonymous life, there’s nothing quite as dastardly in this novel as a man who simply wants to reveal that Diana is alive for the simple fact that exposure and exposing is what drives him. While I can’t rave about this novel, I did not have any trouble finishing it and Ali has definitely taken on an interesting “thought” experiment with the creation of this story.

Buy the Books Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Brick-Lane-Novel-Monica-Ali/dp/B000WMOEUS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1319940362&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Alentejo-Blue-Fiction-Monica-Ali/dp/B005Q7BCPE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319688458&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Untold-Story-Novel-Monica-Ali/dp/1451635486/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

A Review of Ed Lin’s Snakes Can’t Run (Minotaur Books, 2010).



Before I reveal anything about this book, I have to mention that Ed Lin has a new novel coming out called One Red Bastard, which continues the Robert Chow detective-in-training series (this would be novel #3). Lin is author of Waylaid, This is a Bust (the first of the Robert Chow series) and then the novel I’m reviewing here: Snakes Can’t Run. I actually picked This is a Bust for my department’s Spring Break Books program one year, where students read an assigned book over spring break and then just before classes start, we met to discuss the novel. The fantastic thing about participating in this program was that it also included an ethnically appropriate meal; in this case, we had Chinese food to go along with these Chinatown contexts. In Snakes Can’t Run, Robert Chow along help from his police officer partner, Vandyne, are on the hunt for the killers of two undocumented Chinese immigrants. The title refers to the slang term, “snakehead,” denoting a human smuggler. In this case, both Chow and Vandyne seek out a man mysteriously known as “Brother Five,” who seems to be the mastermind behind a Chinatown human smuggling ring. The two dead Chinese men were targeted because they did not seem to be able to pay the price required for entry into the United States via these snakeheads. They were possibly going to meet with a lawyer for potential legal representation when they were murdered. Lin’s novels are never strictly detective plots; there’s always so much more going on, especially on the level of the wisecracking dialogue that lifts the narrative up and beyond what might be considered traditional pulp fiction that focuses so much on plotting and mystery resolution. There are many, many comic scenes between Chow and other characters and you can’t help but think this is exactly the kind of novel that might get adapted into a mainstream film, even despite the fact that it would require an Asian American lead actor (Parry Shen perhaps?). The other element which I find absolutely spot on in terms of Lin’s use of the noir is that targeting one criminal never actually leads to a full fledged form of justice. Instead, the crime ring is always slightly larger and far more flexible in its form, making any arrest a kind of limiting solution to a larger social ill. While at times I was a little suspicious at how knowledgeable some characters were of Chinese and Chinese American history, Lin’s attention to social contexts is likewise impressive; we are never divorced from the historical era of the seventies and Chow’s experience as a Vietnam War veteran always presses upon his police-office consciousness. A darkly comic and lively work, a great book to bring with you on a plane flight or when you are on vacation.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Cant-Run-Mystery-Thomas/dp/B005X4EYCS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324946033&sr=8-1

(as of just after Christmas, the Hardcover is only $10!)

A Review of Roxana Saberi’s Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran (Harper, 2010).



Roxana Saberi’s memoir, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran, is a sobering look at the perils of being a journalist, especially in national locations with a vexed relationship with the United States. Saberi is of Iranian and Japanese descent and reveals early on that she holds dual citizenships for both Iran and the United States. She is residing in Iran because she is working on a book about the nation, its history, politics, and contexts. The memoir quickly moves to Saberi’s detainment and imprisonment at one of the most notorious Iranian incarceration facilities, Evin Prison. Saberi’s recounting of her numerous months spent in prison are chilling and harrowing. Fearing for her life and for the fact that she will never gain her freedom, she lies and confesses to being a spy for the United States in order to appease her captors. However, she soon begins to realize that her life as a prisoner seems to exist as an endless series of interrogations and movements from one holding cell to another, despite the fact that she implicitly agrees to many of the conditions set forth by her captors. At some point, though, she begins to resist, recanting the confession and in some cases, openly defying what various guards and officials expect her to do. With the help of her parents and the support of organizations around the world who begin to hear about her plight, Roxana mounts a campaign for her freedom. Eventually, she is able to get an eight year sentence overturned and is released on a minor charge. If anything, Saberi’s memoir clarifies the tenuousness of the free press in Iran. Though Saberi’s work could have easily dipped into a superficial and caustic gloss of Iran’s politics and history, she takes meticulous care in presenting a multifaceted view of Iranian society. Her commitment to this balanced vision is of course not surprising given her background as a journalist, but is still, to a certain extent, astonishing given the ordeal she endures. And at the end of the work, it seems Saberi is intent on completing some of the goals she set out before her imprisonment; furthermore, she dreams of returning to Iran, a nation that she considers, in part, to be an inextricable part of her identity.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Worlds-Life-Captivity/dp/B004E3XI76/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325144560&sr=8-1

A Review of Amitava Kumar’s Nobody Does the Right Thing (Duke University Press, 2010).



Amitava Kumar’s Nobody Does the Right Thing is a rather depressing novel that explores the relationships among representation, political efficacy, and Indian cinema. The novel’s title perhaps encapsulates the entire tonality of the novel. Our protagonist, Binod, is a journalist turned Bollywood scriptwriter. While it would seem that his intentions at the beginning of the novel appear to be in excavating the life of a minor female Indian poet, Mala Srivastava, who had died under suspicious circumstances; it is apparent that Mala’s life is really only the germ for a script that Binod is writing for a major producer, Vikas Dhar. Over the course of the novel, we begin to see how complicated it will be for Binod to actually get his script turned into a movie. His cousin, Rabinder, serving a prison term for the illegal ownership of pornography (downloaded apparently by patrons from the cybercafé that he owned), also has plans for his own script to be turned into a movie and it soon becomes obvious that Vikas Dhar is not so much interested in Mala’s life as the creation of the perfect Bollywood story. Thus, along the way, the narrative unfolds by explaining much of Binod’s life; there is one particularly difficult chapter in which it is clear that certain bodies are marked as imminently forgettable—the life of one young Indian girl who finds herself living on the streets and comes to a tragic end serves an continuing example of the narratives that are not really getting any attention by those who hold the reigns of representational power (like Bollywood movie producers). Toward the conclusion of the novel and after the screening of the film Dhar would go on to make (Mala’s life is nowhere to be seen), this passage appears: “Everyone would make attempts to offer praise, not necessarily to each person sitting around the table, but at least to a chosen few. Through some invisible agency, some would be marked to be patronized, and some to be praised; the others would be ignored. The claustrophobia bred by the awkward, mechanical production of praise—a faint brittleness obvious in the reception of each remark because no one was convinced of anyone’s sincerity—would be punctured by malice toward others who were not present in that company. Not that insincerity was unacceptable; it was flattering to you if someone was lying because it showed how badly he wanted to please you. Much of the conversation in the film industry was based on a clear understanding of this ordinary truth” (199). This devastating and chilling paragraph stands to remind us of the cultural economy that privileges some lives and “praises” so few.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Does-Right-Thing-Novel/dp/0822346826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323276464&sr=8-1
 
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skim666
skim666
15 January 2012 @ 02:38 pm
Yangsook Choi's New Cat  

Even though children’s and young adult literatures are among the fastest growing and most exciting fields (in both publishing and lit crit), I haven’t read much. But as a bona fide crazy cat lady, I had to check out New Cat, by Yangsook Choi (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999).

Simply put, I love this book! The illustrations are simple-but-big and beautiful, and the text is poetically economical. The story is about New Cat, who lives in Mr. Kim’s office at a tofu factory in New York City. When Mr. Kim came to the U.S., he saved New Cat from a shelter when she was “smaller than a tofu block” (the picture of the cats at the shelter is heartbreaking). Because everyone kept saying, “Oh, you got a new cat,” he named her New Cat. For seven years, she has been his “best friend,” protecting his tofu factory from mice. When she chases a mouse one night into the forbidden tofu production room, the evil mouse starts a fire and, despite a close call, New Cat saves the day!

Choi clearly knows cats (as well as their rightful place in the world). The very first illustration shows New Cat at Mr. Kim’s huge office desk, with a prominent “President” desk placard, disdainfully regarding the reader. Exactly. New Cat's job is “to hold down the paper while Mr. Kim was writing, clean the computer monitor with her tail, and taste the tofu for Mr. Kim when he put it in her bowl.” Again, exactly. And the cat’s ears, paws, and body are beautifully expressive. Also, we should all have cats (and dogs) at the office.

I want to get a new copy of this book to give to my niece, but it’s out of print. :( You can find cheap used copies online, though: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=%22new+cat%22+choi&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=12256863962422281988&sa=X&ei=0igTT8e-CeXb0QHbx7SPAw&ved=0CDQQ8wIwAA

Yangsook Choi also illustrated Nim and the War Effort (story by Milly Lee; Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1997), which was a 1997 New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year. The story is about a Chinese-American girl participating in a WWII fundraising drive in 1943. The Kirkus Review, NYT, and School Library Journal reviews quoted on Amazon.com are intriguing and make me want to check it out.

Independently, Choi has authored/illustrated several award-winning children’s books (all with Farrar, Straus & Giroux), many of which have to do with Asian and Asian American histories and cultures, primarily Korean and Chinese. The Sun Girl and the Moon Boy (1997) recounts a Korean folk tale; Earthquake (2001) recounts the 1906 San Francisco earthquake from a Chinese American family’s point of view; Landed (2006) is about a boy detained at Angel Island because of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act; and there are more. A complete list of her books and other info are at her website: http://www.yangsookchoi.com/.

 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
15 January 2012 @ 10:07 am
Queer PAPI Porn: Gay Asian Erotica  
I've long been curious about the collection Queer PAPI Porn: Gay Asian Erotica (Cleis Press, 1998), edited by Joël B. Tan.



Frankly, the cover always kind of turned me off (sorry, dude), but I finally decided to dive in and read the stories. For the most part, the stories are pretty standard gay erotica fare--lots of stories about cruising, affairs, first sexual encounters, etc. Many of the stories make explicit commentary on gay Asian identity, particularly on the issue of interracial sex (Asian-white, Asian-black, Asian-Latino...) and the "sticky rice" phenomenon (in which two Asian men get together). There are a few authors who are more well known with books of their own--R. Zamora Linmark, Justin Chin, and Lawrence Chua, for example, all have excerpts from their books in the collection.

My favorite story actually is by Philip Huang, who has been reviewed earlier in this community for his recently released collection of stories A Pornography of Grief, and I believe the story "The Widow Season" included in Queer PAPI Porn is in that later collection. This story focuses on a man's relationship with his lover's mother after the lover's death from AIDS, and its exploration of grief is really quite profound, offering neither the platitudes of survival nor the horrors of depthless sadness.

One of the things I find fascinating about the collection is the editor's use of the term PAPI. As he explains in the introduction, it is not to be confused with the Spanish term of endearment papi but rather stands for Pilipinos, Asians, and Pacific Islanders. I don't know how many other people use this term, but it's curious for its isolation of Pilipinos from both Asians and Pacific Islanders. (Tan also claims that Pilipinos is the preferred term over Filipinos and other versions.) Given the vast array of cultures, languages, histories, and ethnicities within the panethnic API formation, it is always interesting to see how people rephrase and regroup the terms.
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
11 January 2012 @ 10:47 pm
Swan Scythe Press Deal of the Day: Nhan Trinh's Pursue  
Dear Readers!

The editor of Swan Scythe Press, James DenBoer, is generously offering some of his titles at an incredible reduced cost. Of interest to us is Nhan Trinh's Pursue (reviewed earlier here) which will be priced at $2 for the book, $2 for postage, and for those living in California, an extra 18 cents for sales tax, coming to a grand total of $4.18, which is more than 50% off the retail price (of course, be sure to clarify your preferred shipping address). I believe that these may be the last of this chapbook's printing or the last stock for some time, so get them while they are still around:

Checks can be made to Swan Scythe Press and mailed to:

James DenBoer
515 P Street #804
Sacramento CA 95814

The chapbook may also be purchased online (through paypal) at:
http://www.swanscythe.com



I just bought 25 copies myself as gifts! Hehe!

Cheers!
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
11 January 2012 @ 05:45 pm
Kevin Chong's Beauty Plus Pity  
Kevin Chong's Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011) is a quietly devastating novel overlaid with dry humor.



I first heard about Chong's second novel when a friend posted his article, "Asian, but not an Asian author," on Facebook, followed shortly by the review in this community. I'd read Chong's first novel Baroque-a-Nova a few years back and was certainly fascinated by the fact that Chong seemed to eschew focusing on a Chinese Canadian protagonist. As he explains in the article, he was responding to how Asian Canadian writers' works were orientalized (either by the writers themselves or by the publishing world and marketing).

Beauty Plus Pity takes a different approach to what we might see as Chong's continuing interest in sidestepping what is expected of Asian Canadian writers. This novel does center on a Chinese Canadian protagonist, Malcolm Kwan, whose parents immigrated from Hong Kong. As Chong notes, Kwan's story might be thought of as portraying a more recent generation of Chinese Canadians--those who have grown up in a Vancouver that has a significant Chinese population (I believe Chinese are the dominant ethnic group in the city). That is, Kwan's story does not need to be about acculturation or the clash of East and West because the experiences of Chinese Canadians in Vancouver in the last couple of decades have shaped the city in profound ways. They are not in the minority.

The novel begins with the death of Malcolm's father, Oliver, who has worked as an industrial filmmaker (making commercials and training videos). The bulk of the novel concerns Malcolm's newfound half-sister Hadley, the child of an affair Oliver had with a woman in one of his commercials. Malcolm and Hadley meet for the first time at Oliver's funeral, and they learn about each other over the next few months as they build a brother-sister relationship they never knew they had. The novel also deals with Malcolm's romantic relationships and his emerging career as a model (in catalogs and commercials).

What makes the novel so beautiful is the way it deals with death and other losses. There is a complexity in the way the characters grieve--each in their individual ways--that is quite remarkably represented. There is also just so much detail about Malcolm and Oliver and the other characters. Chong has imbued these characters with idiosyncratic depth, and it really feels as if they are real people that you might hear about from your friends.
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
09 January 2012 @ 10:53 pm
Asian American Literature Fans - January 9, 2012 Mega Review Post  
Asian American Literature Fans – Mega Review for January 9, 2012

In this post, reviews for: Bharati Mukherjee’s Miss New India (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Mother Tiger (The Penguin Press, 2011), Madeleine Thien’s Dogs at the Perimeter (McClelland and Stewart, 2011), Nguyen Qui Duc’s Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (University of Nebraska press, 1994), Ruiyan Xu’s The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai: A Novel (St. Martin’s Press, 2011).

A Review of Bharati Mukherjee’s Miss New India (Houghton Mifflin, 2011).



If Bharati Mukherjee were to-rewrite her most controversial and most taught novel, Jasmine, with the intention of setting it in India during the post-technology boom and economic rise of the country in the 21st century, it likely would something along the lines of the narrative given to us in Miss New India. Anjali Bose, our ostensible protagonist of this picaresque novel, seems far more of an allegorical figure than any true-to-life composite of a “modern” young Indian woman. Growing up outside the major metropolitan areas, Anjali Bose is encouraged by one of her teachers to take up a job in the big city, especially after a particular suitor ends up sexually assaulting her and she feels as though her prospects in terms of the more traditional life that she might have lead seem far less tantalizing than ever. With his connections, Anjali is able to make some fast friends, gets hooked up by working for a call center, and generally is astounded by the many people and the cultures she observes. I call the novel a picaresque type work simply because Anjali has an ability to navigate the changing environment with a surprising amount of ease, given her background. Further still, in contrast to many other “India-setting” novels published in the last couple of years such as Kashmira Sheth’s Boys without Names, Anuradha Roy’s An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills, and Dipiki Rai’s Someone Else’s Garden, Anjali Bose’s move to the big city is portrayed rather with a strong and syncretic mix of humor and of danger. Indeed, there is a slightly satirical quality to the work, partially a reminder that Anjali is as much a symbol of an emerging global economic power as she is a composite of a realist character. In this vein, I think this novel has much more of a connection in terms of tonality to a work like Indra Sinha’s Animal People or Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Mukherjee is always aware of this complex approach to her fictional world and thus allows us an imaginative way to investigate India’s ongoing boom and modernization process.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Miss-New-India-Bharati-Mukherjee/dp/0618646531/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322581833&sr=8-1

A Review of Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Mother Tiger (The Penguin Press, 2011).



So, I’m late to the Amy Chua reviewing game, but I’ll stand up and be counted now. Pylduck earlier reviewed The Battle Hymn of the Mother Tiger, including some hilarious macros that can be found here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/92034.html

Pylduck also includes review links at the bottom; his review and the others are far more thoughtful than mine will be. After all the negative hoopla, I suppose I was bracing myself for a terrible experience. I’ll admit: the first few chapters were really tough to get through, but the memoir does improve as it moves onward and the “tiger mother” is at least partially tamed by the biracial daughter who refuses to bend to her mother’s will. The merry and obedient cast of characters include Amy, our heroine, her two daughters, the more congenial Sophia and the more rebellious Lulu, and the husband who seems more intent on staying in the background, Jed. Weight is added to the text in the form of considerable health issues confronted by Amy’s mother-in-law and her sister. Most of the narrative though is devoted to Amy’s fanatical drive to make sure her children are prodigies. She succeeds at least partially: one of her daughters, Sophia, plays at Carnegie Hall. In any case, Amy Chua is also a well known legal professor and scholar, author to a number of well-received books. I was a bit surprised by the tonality in this book; she often speaks in dogmatic platitudes that can incite as much damage as they might incite useful advice. By this, I mean to say that she sometimes generalizes an entire ethnic population; at other points, she retreats from these generalizations. This back and forth needs to be analyzed to a certain extent because it really reveals a kind of ambivalence, I think, to her own “tiger mother” approach. For all intents and purposes, as Chua herself and her family points out, the act of memoir writing would not be very Chinese-y (by her definitions) at all. Indeed, it is very much about airing about grievances, squabbles, family problems, as much as the triumphs, in a supremely public arena. In this regard, I tend to read this memoir ultimately as one long hyperbole—to create the mythos of this uber-driven, uber-harsh Chinese mother. On this level, Chua mostly succeeds, but what Asian Americanists and other scholars have wondered: to what cost? Doesn’t this memoir ultimately reinforce the problematic conception of the model minority myth? Why doesn’t Chua level more navel-gazing at the concept of upward mobility and class status? Are we to read this memoir as an actual parenting guide to help others? Without really answering any of these questions, Chua could have actually taken a stylistic and creative nonfiction cue from many other Asian American writers she does NOT cite, the kind of difficult, nuanced, and self-critical work that one sees in the work of Jane Jeong Trenka, David Mura, and others. At the end of the day, Chua’s written a kind of fantasy narrative, where she is reconstructed as redemptive hero, her children, her dogs, and her husband, all apparently loyal subjects, and with me fearing for the mental health of future grandchildren. I will admit: this book moves quickly and of course, this book will spark considerable discussion in a classroom venue.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Hymn-Tiger-Mother-Chua/dp/1594202842/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320636369&sr=8-1

A Review of Madeleine Thien’s Dogs at the Perimeter (McClelland and Stewart, 2011).




Madeliene’s ferocious second novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, is unfortunately only available in Canada currently. She is also author of Certainty, which was reviewed on Asian American literature fans awhile back. Like Certainty, Dogs at the Perimeter is essentially a war epic (and not unlike three of my other current favorites: Roma Tearne’s Mosquito; Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain; and Amit Majmudar’s Partitions). In this case, Thien explores the aftermath of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. Janie, our central protagonist, is a Cambodian refugee living in Canada. She realizes she must more forcefully confront the demons in her past when one of her friends and mentors, a medical doctor by the name of Hiroji, travels back to Southeast Asia to look for his brother who went missing in the late seventies. Because the story takes place first in the present day, Thien must weave together different temporalities; she’s particularly effective at conveying the ways in which the psyche fractures time in the event of the mental wounding. Janie’s story is especially harrowing: her father is taken away never to be seen again; her mother dies; her brother, Sopham, becomes an interrogator but later finds a way to cross the border. Once Janie and Sopham escape the country, Sopham tragically drowns while they attempt to find safe passage to a refugee camp by boat. Though Janie survives, her mental scars are reopened and perhaps never quite fully healed. Her marriage to Navin begins to fail amid the fact her parenting skills are suspect: she begins to physically abuse their child, Kiri, often times not fully aware of her actions. She realizes that to actualize any possibility of addressing her past, she must find Hiroji and honor the collective bond they both have to Cambodia. This novel is one I would certainly adopt for the course I teach on trauma theory and representation, so I hope it finds a U.S. publisher right away!

Buy the Book Here (what few copies are actually available).

http://www.amazon.com/Dogs-at-Perimeter-Madeleine-Thien/dp/0771084080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325145406&sr=8-1

A Review of Nguyen Qui Duc’s Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (University of Nebraska press, 1994).



I’ll start this review with an immediate caveat: there are particular linguistic notations, accents, and symbols that I won’t always be including in place names and ethnic names; I’ve already botched the name of the author, which should be written like so: Nguyễn Quí Đức. In any case, that being said, Nguyễn Quí Đức’s Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family expands the memoir’s focus in that it is both autobiographical and biographical; it spends time developing the strands of his mother’s, his father’s, and his life as they eventually diverge. Nguyen, less one of his siblings, an older sister who suffers from mental illness, leaves Viet Nam as a refugee in 1975, while his parents stay behind for different reasons. His father, in particular, as a high ranking South Vietnamese governmental official, subsists in prison for many years. Nguyen’s re-writing of his father’s experiences are interesting in that it obviously would have taken an immense amount of interviewing and temporal reconstruction. Nguyen also relies upon poems that his father had written during his time in prison to help nuance the incredible challenges of his life as a prisoner; his constant movement, the endless monotonous days, and the persistent interrogation remind me much of Xiaoda Xiao’s work on life in prisons during and after China’s Cultural Revolution. His mother tries to remake her life in the post-war regime and maintains a steadfast hope that she will be reunited with her husband. What is particularly fascinating is Nguyen’s construction of his diasporic subjectivity. Though his parents eventually do reunite and their family again rebuilds in the United States, Nguyen looks to Viet Nam as his home. Despite immense difficulty, he still manages to gain early entry into the country, hoping to reconnect with his roots. The epilogue reveals his critical and nostalgic stance toward conceptions of home, which I think is one of the emotional centers of this book: “In those moments when I shut out San Francisco and think of home, memories of war and a difficult past fade away. The pain is then replaced by the remembrance of family and friends, of rediscovered time and space, of a simpler way of life. . . . I know my notions of my homeland are romanticized. But I am also aware of the difficulties I would face if I were to return to life and live in Viet Nam” (262). The title poignantly refers to Nguyen’s journey to Viet Nam in order to recover the ashes of his older sister, who dies from a kidney infection, one developed while his mother was first visiting her husband after being apart for so many years. She had been suffering from an undiagnosed kidney issue for many years. In some sense, he travels to get the ashes that will symbolically reunite his entire family in the United States. This memoir adds to the growing body of Vietnamese American memoirs (that include, for instance, Jade Huynh’s South Wind Changing, Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and Mandala) that detail the complicated American acculturation that follows the refugee movement.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Ashes-Are-Odyssey-Vietnamese/dp/0803226985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322495963&sr=8-1

A Review of Ruiyan Xu’s The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai: A Novel (St. Martin’s Press, 2011).



It is unfortunate that Ruiyan Xu’s debut novel begins with a catastrophic explosion that rocks a large hotel in Shanghai. This rather dramatic beginning does not fit the tone of the rest of the novel, which unfolds rather languorously through Xu’s patient and psychically penetrating prose. Indeed, Xu’s work is all about character construction and character arc rather than cataclysmic moments. At the same time, the explosion is precisely the starting point for the novel’s central plot point, as one of the men injured in the explosion, a business tycoon named Li Jing, faces a rather curious, but devastating brain injury known as aphasia. Commonly associated with stroke victims, aphasia has many forms. In Li Jing’s case, he reverts back to speaking in English, a language he had been first fluent in when he moved to China as a ten year-old. He cannot speak coherently or easily in Chinese, though he can understand his wife, his son, and his father. A neurologist named Rosalyn Neal is flown in from the United States on a brief fellowship to help attend to Li Jing’s injury in the hopes that she can help improve the situation. His aphasia is a particularly acute problem because he maintains a rather large business company. In his absence, his wife, Meiling must cover for him.
The novel is centrally focused on the development of three characters: Li Jing, Meiling, and Rosalyn. For all three, Shanghai becomes a space unfamiliar for them in the wake of this injury. For Li Jing, he finds it incredibly discombobulating to grasp for words in a language he was once fluent in and to find that his fellow countrymen find his linguistic fumbling to be disconcerting. For Meiling, she must come to grips with the fact that she must attend to her husband in a way that she never has felt prepared for. Taking over his position at work becomes a way for her to escape the widening gap that emerges between them as she cannot communicate directly with her own husband. For Rosalyn, Shanghai presents a space of rebirth, especially in the wake of a divorce from her husband Ben. Xu is particularly talented at giving us a multitextured view of these three characters’ interior landscapes, but the pacing of the novel occasionally loses some momentum. Indeed, the novel’s form seems in some ways to mimic the disorientation experienced by all three characters, as a love triangle begins to slowly emerge that pushes each figure to redefine their identities and their priorities.

Buy the Book Here:

As of November 2011, this book is only $4.99 in hardcover:

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Forgotten-Languages-Shanghai-Novel/dp/B005CDV5VI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321931580&sr=1-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
08 January 2012 @ 09:54 am
Andrew Lam's East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres  
Andrew Lam's collection of personal essays, East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres (Heyday Books, 2010), offers reflections on a range of topics related to his experiences as a Vietnamese refugee turned cosmopolitan Vietnamese American writer.



As the collection title suggests, a central argument in Lam's writing is that as much as globalization has brought the West out to the East and other parts of the world (the McDonaldsization of the world), the East has similarly made incursions into the West and transformed the quotidian quality of life for all. Taking California as the exemplary setting for this kind of transformation (and where Lam grew up and currently resides), he explores how Vietnamese cuisine, Japanese manga and anime, and other cultural traditions and products from the East have become part of the fabric of the West.

The essays range in length, from longer personal essays that are much more meditative, drawing out meanings from recounted memories, to short, journalistic pieces of about two pages in length that offer a brief observation and a lesson to be learned.

What I find most interesting about Lam's essays is that they connect personal experience to larger historical forces, often centering on the Vietnam War and the resulting diaspora of Vietnamese in America and beyond. I also am trying to think about how the genre of the personal essay differs from that of memoir. There are clearly overlaps, and surely some people might want to use the two terms interchangeably. But after reading Lam's book, I am reminded that I haven't read many books of personal essays of this sort in awhile. In part, one thing that differs for me is that the personal essays themselves are much more discrete, and though there is an overarching theme to the essays as a whole, they do not necessarily make a larger narrative. Memoirs, by contrast, seem to carve out a more unified narrative of life and memories. Lam's essays are also much more journalistic in general, a quality I would describe as reporting on observations and the larger implications of those observations in a way that differs slightly from the more internally reflective memoir form (even if that memoir reflection is importantly connected to critique of larger social structures like Kenji Yoshino's excellent Covering).
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
03 January 2012 @ 06:32 pm
Asian American Literature Fans – My First Post of the New Year  
Asian American Literature Fans – My First Post of the New Year

You’ve celebrated the New Year. Your new year’s resolution is obviously to read as much Asian American literature you can (duh!). You might try one or more of these titles: Xu Xi’s Access (Signal 8 Press, 2011); Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines: A Memoir (Expanded Edition, Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003); Linda Watanabe McFerrin’s Dead Love (Stone Bridge Press, 2010); Laurence Yep’s Dragon of the Lost Sea (HarperTrophy 1982); Laurence Yep’s Lost Garden (Beech Tree, 1991); Laurence Yep’s The Dragon’s child: A Story of Angel Island (written with Dr. Kathleen S. Yep (HarperCollins Children’s, 2008); and Laurence Yep’s The Star Maker (HarperCollins Children’s, 2011).

A Review of Xu Xi’s Access (Signal 8 Press, 2011).



A short collection filled with quiet, everyday tragedies, Xu Xi’s fierce depictions in Access reveal the complications of individuals who seek to connect, however feebly, with others. Recall that we earlier reviewed two other titles from Signal 8 Press: Donna Miscolta’s When the de la Cruz Family Danced and Philip Huang’s A Pornography of Grief. The editor, Marshall Moore, is currently continuing to develop a select number of outstanding titles, descriptions of which can be found here:

http://www.signal8press.com/

Xi revels in contouring her characters with both flaws and strengths and in the process creates fictional worlds in which heroes and villains are never easily defined. Indeed, you’ll struggle mightily to find a character trajectory that ends triumphantly or with much closure and resolution. I’ll focus on discussing a handful of stories that are most illustrative of some of the points I’ve made. The opening story, intriguingly narrated in the second person, “Anon” is a testament to Xi’s nuanced characterization, as the unnamed storyteller, struggles to find a focus in her life after the tragic death of her son. A chance meeting with a former friend, Ginny, at a Silicon Valley conference, reveals how their paths have diverged so significantly, even to the extent to that Ginny barely remembers who the “anonymous” narrator is. “The Wang Candidate” depicts the tentative relationship that develops between Lei-li Chen, “ a circulation and subscriptions manager” who has moved to the U.S. from Asia and must deal with her womanizing and much older boss, Ted. Though it seems as if neither character possesses much passion for the other, they enter into a sexual dalliance that seems to satisfy nothing more than their momentary isolations. “To Body to Chicken” was one of my favorite stories, as it explores the life of a massage therapist, Teresa Teng, who is learning English and lives in Hong Kong. Her home life, especially her relationship with her father is strained, but she finds quiet comfort in some of her customers. In “Trashy Desires of Women Nearing Fifty,” the main character, Jane, contemplates on the stability of her marriage to her husband Frank. “Crying with Audrey Hepburn” explores the shattered dreams of a former dancer, one who ends up stripping in order to make ends meet and support her husband, Ron, as he pursues his own dancing career. “Lady Day” imagines the life of a eunuch who devises an intricate revenge plan. At one point, our fierce narrator explains her life as an escort: “Most don’t tell it like it really is. Some dress up the life, so that it’s glamorous, racy, and salacious. Others are sob stories of unwilling victims or children of poverty, and manipulate your sympathies as shamelessly as pimps can. Trust me, I know. In the end, it’s just a business like any other, and for me, as good a life as I was likely to get. One of highs and lows, of good days and bad, of profits and people, of liars and straight shooters, or sinners and martyrs and all those in between. There are no winners or losers in this awesome game, just buyers and sellers of whatever it is we humans must transact, as long as we’re still in play” (210). In the context of “Lady Day,” this statement makes sense; it’s rather an unadorned account of the narrator’s whole approach to life in general. She’s a tactician and realizes that she must do whatever it takes in order to survive and that she’ll engage calculated risks only in certain circumstances. And yet, her philosophy to work seems to resonate across all of the stories: binaries are exploded and characters negotiate their lives among a whole host of shifting commodities, consumer goods, and individuals who cross and recross the Pacific. While the “transaction” may shift in the story, characters selectively gain “access” to the lives of others, whether in the form of sexual relationships, business partnerships, kinship connections, among other such formations, and in the process, reveal the banal afflictions of our increasingly global lives.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Access-Xu-Xi/dp/9881516196/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1325545088&sr=8-3

A Review of Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines: A Memoir (Expanded Edition, Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003).



I’ve been interested in reading Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines for some time, as I’ve had a chance to read both her poetry and fiction and wondered how it might differ (or not differ) from her creative nonfiction. Reading the expanded edition, one of the things I immediately noticed is the difference between the sections written in the first edition and the expanded section added to the 2003 edition. One of the obvious reasons for including the expanded sections in the 2003 edition is that it gave Alexander a chance to ruminate on the nature of her postcolonial, American minority identity in the post 9/11 moment. It also gives her a chance to revisit and to analyze the memoir she wrote ten years earlier, giving this expanded section a kind of palimpsestic quality. Indeed, there are some pretty incredible revelations that make this edition quite stunning to read and remind us of the ways that creative nonfiction can occlude and obscure as much as it can communicate. The memoir also involves a considerable amount of philosophically-inflected observations, much of which revolve around the question of identity and representation for the artist who seems to be forced into one linguistic register. At one point, Alexander admits, “As much as anything else I am a poet writing in America. But American poet? What sort?” She goes on to note, “Everything that comes to me is hyphenated. A woman poet, a woman poet of color, a South Indian woman poet who makes up lines in English, a postcolonial language, as she waits for the red lights to change on Broadway. A Third World woman poet, who takes as her right the inner city of Manhattan making up poems about the hellhole of the subway line, the burnt-[end of 193]out blocks so close to home on the Upper West Side, finding there, news of the world” (193-194). This kind of statement is really the epitome of the different chapters that make up this lush and lyrical memoir, as she explores her upbringing in India, her adolescence in Sudan, her schooling in the United Kingdom, and her complicated acculturation to the United States.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Fault-Lines-Memoir-2nd-Cross-Cultural/dp/1558614540/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325568787&sr=8-1

A Review of Linda Watanabe McFerrin’s Dead Love (Stone Bridge Press, 2010).



Linda Watanabe McFerrin’s Dead Love surprised me as an exemplar of the zombie novel genre. I suppose I have been much more used to the zombie figure as a signifier of a post-apocalyptic world, the kinds that have been depicted in films and television shows like 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, and The Walking Dead. As a general aside, McFerrin’s novel is particularly attentive to space and in this respect, there are some incredibly descriptive scenes of various locations that demonstrate her talent for painting a landscape. There is one moment in particular where McFerrin details the ways in which fireflies produce luminescence that although seemingly secondary to plotting or character construction is entirely a stunning passage. McFerrin further takes a more culturally specific root to the zombie mythos, reminding us of the regional contexts of its developments in the Caribbean. In this case, the main character, Erin Orison, the daughter of an American ambassador (Christian) travels to Japan and becomes embroiled in various schemes, perpetrated by shadowy network. A nefarious character by the name of Clement, seeks to transform Erin into a zombie, but his plans go awry when Erin does not exactly conform to his expectations that a zombie should be completely obedient. As it stands, Clement is a ghoul himself, a figure that feeds on the bodies of corpses and takes on their form, but in order to sustain himself, Clement must continually jump from body to body himself. At the same time, Clement is something of a puck figure; he wants to create trouble for Erin’s father, Christian, and foment discord between various high-powered organizations and the Japanese gangster organization, the yakuza. Erin is in fact being shadowed by the yakuza; she engages in a romantic dalliance with a yakuza named Ryu, but it’s obvious that Ryu, Clement, and Christian are not what they completely appear to be and that is what McFerrin seems to be suggesting in this novel, which doubles as a sort of manifesto on human subjectivity and experience. Pylduck makes a similar remark in his review here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/118440.html

Pylduck states: “As with other great monster fiction, this novel often plays with the metaphorical importance of zombies in addition to the literal qualities of the living dead.” Indeed, the conception of the zombie is one that pushes readers to consider and to reconsider what is human and what is not, who possesses humanity and who does not. Often, of course, we see how frightful biologically anointed humans can be even in a fictional world where zombies run rampant. Because Erin herself is never quite the kind of zombie you might imagine (in terms of being this kind of non-thinking figure who only desires to eat your brain), McFerrin is really able to push these human and non-human boundaries throughout the plotting. You’re always sort of forgetting that Erin is a zombie at all. By the novel’s conclusion, Clement reveals more of his intentions behind changing Erin into a zombie and his motivation push us to consider the rather extreme ends that one might take to follow one’s desires. Thus, Dead Love is in some ways a ghoulish re-envisionment of the romance genre, one that will be certain to entertain you.

Buy The Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Love-Linda-Watanabe-McFerrin/dp/1933330910

A Review of the Laurence Yep’s Dragon of the Lost Sea (HarperTrophy 1982); Lost Garden (Beech Tree, 1991); The Dragon’s child: A Story of Angel Island (written with Dr. Kathleen S. Yep (HarperCollins Children’s, 2008); and The Star Maker (HarperCollins Children’s, 2011).


If you notice the cover, he looks "Asian," but he's not really described as such in the novel!

Dragon of the Lost Sea is the first book in a series of four titles that Yep wrote which focuses on a dragon figure, Shimmer, and her close friendship with a human named Thorn. Unfortunately, Dragon of the Lost Sea is the only book of the series to still remain in print and I’m unsure of the others will receive another printing! In the meantime, I’m going to have to hunt down used copies of the other three books. Dragon of the Lost Sea pairs an outcast/outlaw with an orphan. Our protagonist, the dragon princess known as Shimmer, seeks revenge against a woman known as Civet who has stolen the “sea,” placed it inside a magical pebble, and plans to use the sea for her own schemes. Shimmer at first reluctantly teams up with a human named Thorn, who is an orphan, and who continually proves to be quite the resilient and trusty comrade. Thorn will come to learn that Shimmer is somewhat of an outlaw, after having stolen a magical stone that was intended for her, but later usurped by her brother. She believes that the stone is rightfully hers and employs the stone to change shape at will. Because the sea of Shimmer’s homeland has been taken, her fellow dragons are now scattered and Shimmer hopes that her plan to destroy Civet will enable the dragons to return and for her reputation to be restored. Along this quest, they meet several obstacles, most especially in the form of a nefarious figure known as the Keeper. As time goes on, Shimmer grows to actually rely upon Thorn’s help from time to time and she must reconsider her own rather haughty attitude toward humans—that human indeed might have noble and courageous qualities that make their presence far more tolerable for her. This novel obviously does not end with a neat resolution, as Yep sets up the series for the three other books, but Yep shows an obvious mastery for fantasy as a genre. This work reminded me so much of the Dungeons and Dragons world and I couldn’t help but wonder which fantasy writers that Yep gravitates to most. After having read The Lost Garden, it’s obvious that one of his inspirations was the Oz books, but it’s clear that he has had an extensive interest in the genre beyond that series.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Lost-Sea-Laurence-Yep/dp/0064402274/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321754542&sr=8-1



I’ve been really behind the ball on Laurence Yep who has gone on to publish numerous works over his illustrious career; two of his children’s books have gone on to win the Newberry Award. The first of Yep’s books I decided to read was The Lost Garden, which focuses on Yep’s early life. Though the memoir is quite entertaining to read, I did have one quick, randomish gripe: the paperback version is published on low quality paper stock. By this, I mean that the paper stock is like the one’s used for Dover Thrift Editions; they tear easily and they are impossible to write in without puncturing the paper. In any case, after realizing that it would be difficult to take notes, I switched to using post-its and became immersed in a wonderfully reflective story about how Yep’s early life influenced the trajectory of his writing. One chapter, for instance, focuses on the difficult, but ultimately rewarding time he had working in the family grocery store. Yep was tasked with numerous different responsibilities, depending upon his age and his skill, ranging from pricing the items to make sure the family made a little bit of profit, to restocking shelves and cleaning the store. Yep also goes on to note that the grocery store was the kind of place where he could observe customers and see how their personalities might or might not match up with the way they looked or dressed. He provides different character sketches that begin to reveal how he was using his ways of seeing the world to understand his relationship to others. Yep also explains that given the time period in which he grew up, he had difficulty identifying with his Chinese ancestry. Growing up outside of Chinatown, Yep finds himself not really feeling a part of the Chinese community on the one hand, but also experiencing racism that made him realize that he could not necessarily claim some sort of pure American identity on the other. Yep turns to writing also as a means to take control of his life: “When I wrote, I went from being a puzzle to a puzzle solver. I could reach into the box of rags that was my soul and begin stitching them together. Moreover, I could try out different combinations to see which one pleased me the most. I could take these different elements, each of which belonged to something else, and dip them into my imagination where they were melted down and cast into new shapes so that they became uniquely mine” (91). Thus, while Yep experiences alienation in his day-to-day life, writing allows him the opportunity to remake the world anew, to cast it “into new shapes,” and provide different narratives and new possibilities. While this book seems targeted for a younger audience, Yep’s frank appraisals of racism and the difficulties of the immigrant experience reveal a memoir suited for readerships of all ages.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Garden-Laurence-Yep/dp/0688137016/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320903162&sr=8-2




The Dragon’s Child: A Story of Angel Island is, like much of Yep’s other works, a historically-informed fictional work. Yep pens this work with the help of his niece Dr. Kathleen S. Yep, who found much of the archival material that grounds the plot. The protagonist, Gim Lew Yep, who is only ten years old, is fetched by his father to come to Golden Mountain in the years just prior to the Immigration Act of 1924. By that time, the Angel Island processing station had already been created, so much of the narrative focuses on the preparation for the extensive interviews that the young boy must endure in order to prove that he is actually related to his father. Recall that by this time immigrants could employ their status as paper sons in order to gain entry into the U.S. In order to deter this process, the angel island processing centers were built. Of course, many of those attempting to gain entry remained stuck at Angel Island often for long periods. Famously, some of those who were languishing there authored poems which now appear translated in some popular American literary anthologies. Yep’s work places a personal touch on this now more familiar history. One of the central plot tensions emerges because Gim Lew’s father does not tell him that he is a domestic servant in an American household, the type of job that would not necessarily be well-respected where they were growing up in China. Gim Lew is briefly disillusioned by this change in status, but he grows more curious about what America will be like as the narrative goes on. He also overcomes some insecurity issues that arise early on in the narrative. For instance, he is able to address the fact that he stutters and he later successfully passes his interviews. Like some of Yep’s other works, Yep is aware that he functions as the gateway to a cultural representation and offers a bibliography that follows the conclusion. This work presents a revisionist historical representation, reminding us of the complicated nature of Asian immigration in the early 20th century—the kind of book I would have loved to have read while growing up!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Child-Story-Angel-Island/dp/0062018159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321756483&sr=8-1



In The Star Marker, Yep explores one Chinese American child’s close friendship to his uncle. This work reveals the porous boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, as Yep bases the plotline on his experiences as a child living in Chinatown. The protagonist, Artie, being rather small and unathletic, faces considerable teasing from his relatives. In losing a boardgame against an bullying relative, Artie’s frustrations pushes him to make the proclamation that he will provide all the kids in the family some firecrackers for Chinese New Year; he realizes that backing up this claim is going to be close to impossible and this relative, Petey, harasses him continually as it grows closer to Chinese New Year. Artie forms a particularly close bond to Uncle Chester, a kind of loafer who once served in World War II. The event considerably changes Uncle Chester and he drifts from job to job; Artie, though, sees something special about Uncle Chester and accompanies him on various errands and duties around Chinatown. This relationship was quite endearing to read about. We can see through Artie’s eyes why Uncle Chester is such an important figure for him. He’s kind of an outsider, but still charismatic, someone who Artie can understand and aspire to be. There’s certainly an ethnographic quality to this work, as Yep is aware that he will be providing a sort of native informant’s gaze, even offering an accompanying author’s notes and scholarly bibliography for the text.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Maker-Laurence-Yep/dp/B005Q6G1NI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325572174&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
03 January 2012 @ 09:27 am
Padma Venkatraman's Island's End  
I came across Padma Venkatraman's Island's End (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2011) while browsing the shelves of new releases at the public library.



I was fascinated by the synopsis on the flaps of the dust jacket that explained how the novel grew out of Venkatraman's experiences of visiting the Andaman Islands off the coasts of India ad Burma while doing oceanographic research. The novel deals with the En-ge, a fictional tribal people based on conglomerated histories of the various Indigenous peoples who actually live on the islands. As Venkatraman notes at the end of the book in her Author's Note, she is not writing an anthropological treatise about the Indigenous islanders but is instead creating an imaginative story that engages with the beauty of their worldview as it coexists with Indian modernity in nearby islands.

The novel takes the perspective of Uido, a young girl on the verge of womanhood and on the verge of becoming a spiritual leader for her people. The central question of the novel is how she and her mentor Lah-ame can hold their people together in the face of contact with "strangers" from a nearby island with their different lives. One stranger in particular, Ragavan, visits repeatedly and brings gifts in the form of bountiful piles of food like bananas. Uido does not trust him, though, and what it means for her people to be enticed by such gifts. She later learns what might underlie Ragavan's seeming generosity and how Indian settlers have dispossessed other tribes of their islands.

I liked the way the novel couches this tension between tradition and modernity in a way that tries to honor both. There isn't an outright rejection or embrace of either but rather a concerted attempt to understand how different worldviews might allow the En-ge a fruitful place in the future. Venkatraman also weaves these larger social questions into Uido's relationships with her family members (particularly her adoring younger brother Tawai and her jealous older brother Ashu as well as her best friends Danna, a young man she falls in love with, and Natalang, her boy-crazy childhood friend).

This novel would be excellent in considerations of comparative Indigeneity or global Indigenous conversations. The novel doesn't directly address the complex history of the tribal peoples of the Andaman Islands, but apparently, it includes a very vexed relationship with both British colonizers and Indian settlers over the course of the last century. There is a bit of an anthropological bent to Venkatraman's novel that makes me a little uneasy, but at the same time, she clearly is enthralled by the islanders and seeks to give voice to their worldview for a world that would just as easily forget that they exist.
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
01 January 2012 @ 11:18 pm
Tony D'Souza's Mule: A Novel of Moving Weight  
Tony D'Souza's Mule: A Novel of Moving Weight (Mariner, 2011) was not a novel I planned to read next.



There are three other books ahead of it in my reading queue, but I happened to start reading the first few pages while looking through the books I had downloaded on my ereader from the library, and I was immediately taken by the writing and the story.

D'Souza is one of those authors I would likely never have even heard about if I weren't friends with [info]sa_am and a part of this LJ community. [info]stephenhongsohn also reviewed this third novel by D'Souza a few months ago in this community. Mule is a very intriguing novel about James, a freelance journalist turned drug runner (or a mule, someone who drives drugs from one region to another). As [info]stephenhongsohn describes it, the novel offers some startlingly perceptive insight into "the changing nature of upward mobility," set as it is at the start of the current economic depression and dealing with a protagonist who would otherwise have been considered staunchly middle class except for his sudden (and seemingly unexpectedly) lack of income. Together with his girlfriend Kate, who is let go of her retail management position despite a decade of toiling in the field to attain it, James finds himself unable to find any work and turns to muling as a result.

In terms of an engagement with Asian American experiences, what makes this novel interesting is that the main characters in many ways have to be white (to stand in for that "middle America" that found itself so inexplicably unemployment and unable to pay mortgages), yet there seems to be an attempt to represent unexpected Asian American characters. At the beginning of this journey, when James and Kate are in Austin, Texas, they are close friends with Mason and Emma, refugees from Hurricane Katrina (originally from Biloxi). Mason is a Korean American southerner, someone whose background and location is in some ways paradoxical or absurd but nevertheless utterly necessary because such representations of Asian Americans otherwise are so lacking in literature. There is usually so much insistence on representing the typical (one might say stereotypical) in literature as people look for the truth, but equally important in my estimation is representing the atypical (which is nevertheless true and real). After all, there are a large number of Asian Americans in the south, and their experiences offer some of the most intriguing insights into race in America. That D'Souza folds in both the aftermath of Katrina and the recent economic depression into the backstory of this novel is amazingly perceptive, and there really needs to be more work like D'Souza's that examines contemporary American realities in such complexity.

As [info]stephenhongsohn mentioned in his review, D'Souza excels as well in creating morally-compromised, morally complex characters whom we still identify with. In this case, upwardly-mobile Americans who might read the novel (and let's face it, that's probably 99% of the people who will ever read the novel) will see eerie reflections of ourselves in James and Kate's predicament as well as the disturbing way that decisions to engage in criminal activities seem just to be made. I also kept thinking that the novel would make a very good movie. The characters, plot, and pacing all seem perfect for this kind of antihero story.

I definitely look forward to picking up D'Souza's other novels Whiteman and The Konkans.
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
31 December 2011 @ 03:04 pm
Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees  
I picked out Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India (Knopf, 2006; Vintage, 2007) from the library's ebooks catalog for some light vacation reading.



Jaffrey is a New York City-based food writer and actress who grew up in India. I thought it would be interesting to read her memoir because of her work as a purveyor of Indian cuisine in the West (particularly in the United States and Great Britain) and as an actress in Merchant-Ivory films (among many others). The memoir is a pleasant read, describing Jaffrey's childhood in Delhi living in an extended family household under the patriarch, her grandfather. There is a lot of description of the foods that she ate as a child. Interestingly, she never showed much interest in learning how to cook as a youth.

Jaffrey writes about her Hindu family's background as part of the Kayasthas caste, a lesser known caste in the hierarchical system that has traditionally been known as documenters and record keepers. Her forefathers were always adept at working with the rulers of the land, whether they were Muslim Moghuls or British colonists. This kind of collaboration could at times be dangerous, of course, and even during British colonialism in the early twentieth century, her family's leaders were staunch supporters of Indian independence. Jaffrey also writes about the Partition in 1947 and the impact it had on her social world in school. As many writers and cultural commentators have noted, India's multi-faith, multi-ethnic world up until Partition underwent a dramatic and bloody change as neighbors and friends turned on each other.

There are a number of family photographs dispersed throughout the chapters, and it is fun to see pictures of the people that Jaffrey describes in her recollections. There's certainly a lot to think about with the way photographs serve as evidence in memoirs.

One of the things I thought was most interesting about Jaffrey's writing was her attention to the complex family dynamics of the multi-family household. Though the different nuclear families had their own wings, rooms, or even houses in the large family compound, there was a lot of interaction between the various extended relatives, and Jaffrey had a lot of contact with her cousins. The figure that haunts her childhood, though, is her Uncle Shibbudada whose favor and attention everyone craved though he played favorites and often withheld his affection seemingly randomly. Jaffrey's description of how this uncle effectively disowned his second wife and his children is chilling.

The end of the book contains a number of recipes of the foods from Jaffrey's childhood, from the meat dishes her family learned from their Muslim friends to vegetarian dishes shared on various occasions. It is dangerous to read cookbooks or other food-oriented books because I just want to eat the food now!


Photo: Clara Molden
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
28 December 2011 @ 05:08 pm
Asian American Literature Fans Review Post  
Asian American Literature Fans – Review Post for December, 28, 2011

A Review of Mitali Perkin’s The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen (Little Brown and Company for Young Readers, 1993), Monsoon Summer (Delacorte Press, 2006), Rickshaw Girl (illustrated by Jamie Hogan) (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2008), Secret Keeper (Delacorte Press, 2009), Bamboo People (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2010) and Janet S. Wong’s Me and Rolly Maloo (Illustrated by Elizabeth Buttler) (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2010).



In The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen, the titular Sunita Sen, otherwise known as Sunni (but also Bontu to her mother) navigates her perilous world as the child of immigrants. Sunni has one older sister, Geeti (a radical feminist, vegetarian attending Berkeley) and one older brother, AJ (attending Stanford). Sunni is a young teenager and her relationship to her parents becomes ever more complicated when her mother’s parents move in from Bengal. Sunni’s mother feels the particular pressure to conform to her parents’ sense of traditional Indian values. Sunni’s mother quits her job at a university and spends all of her time in the home; she also reverts to dressing in saris. Further still, Sunni apparently cannot invite male friends over to the house anymore. At school, Sunni faces other issues. While her best friend, Liz, provides her a strong support network, she continually faces subtle discrimination from classmates and other schoolgoers. She also begins to have romantic feelings for a neighbor and friend, Michael Morrison, but she must confront a formidable rival in the form of the utterly acerbic, LeAnn. Because of Sunni’s grandparents, she’s not allowed to bring any boys over and rather than tell Michael what’s going on, she simply does not tell him anything, resulting in a serious strain in their once-strong friendship. What I appreciate most about this novel is that it shows such a strong attention to social contexts, in which issues of immigration, racial formation, and cultural cohesion loom large for this Bengali American family.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Star-Spangled-Life-Sunita-Originally-published/dp/0316734535/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1321754432&sr=8-6



In Monsoon Summer, the title refers to the summer that the protagonist, Jasmine Carol Gardner (nicknamed Jazz) spends in India with her mother (who is of South Asian descent and was adopted by an American Caucasian family), her father (of Caucasian background), and her brother, Eric. Her mother travels there to open a clinic that would be of service to those in need, especially unwed mothers who are intending to give up their children for adoption. Her mother’s quest is in part catalyzed by her desire to return to the orphanage from whence she was adopted in order to provide what support she can to the place that has so generously helped so many in need. At the same time, Jazz (at this point, I can’t help but reference both Bharati Mukherjee’s and Neesha Meminger’s novels with Jasmine characters as protagonists) is semi-reluctant to leave her Berkeley lifestyle behind. She is actually a young entrepreneur and as a high school student possesses a rich social life, which also includes her unexpressed romantic feelings for her business partner, Steve. While in India, Jazz toys with the idea of attending a local school, but later decides to devote time to working in the orphanage. She befriends one of the older girls, Danita, who ends up pushing along the later plot line of the novel: Jazz must make a decision as to how to help Danita avoid a potentially disastrous (at least Jazz thinks it would be disastrous) arranged marriage. In particular, Danita’s situation reveals some of the limits of the orphanage’s benevolence, since the orphanage can only do so much to support one child. Danita strongly considers this marriage proposal only because it would keep she and her two sisters together, rather than splitting them into different homes. Meanwhile, Jazz’s father must put his computer skills to use by helping the nuns modernize their orphanage, which includes computer systems upgrades and internet installments. Like The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen, Monsoon Summer is very much a bildungsroman, as it tracks the coming-of-age of Jazz. My one critique of this otherwise fine young adult novel is that Perkins telegraphs the central romance plot so explicitly that there is practically no surprise by its conclusion.

Buy the Book Here (unfortunately this books look out of print):

http://www.amazon.com/Monsoon-Summer-Mitali-Perkins/dp/0440238404/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324534758&sr=1-1



Rickshaw Girl is a particularly outstanding children’s literature book. I was impressed by how Perkins was able to explore such difficult themes in a narrative aimed at and meant for young children. This story explores such issues as poverty and feminism in the South Asian/ Bangladeshi context. Naima, the young protagonist, is the daughter of a Rickshaw Driver. Her parents are struggling to make ends meet; her mother, in particular, laments the fact that they only have daughters, a problem insofar as neither Naima nor her sister can help their father out occasionally by driving the rickshaw. One day Naima does attempt to drive the rickshaw but damages it. Given their perilous economic situation, this event is particularly difficult for Naima to deal with and as a result, her considerable artistic talent suffers. Indeed, Naima is a gifted artist, one who can draw what are called alpanas: “Girls and women paint these geometrical or floral patterns on the floor during celebrations and holidays. They use crushed rice powder to outline the design, and decorate with colored chalk, vermilion, flower petals, wheat, or lentil powder. Some designs are passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years” (80). Naima’s penchant for drawing these alpanas will lead us into the final arc of this book, revealing the multifaceted nature of heroism in this fine children’s book.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Rickshaw-Girl-Mitali-Perkins/dp/1580893090/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320796311&sr=8-1



Secret Keeper was a novel that absolutely flew by for me. The narrator and our heroine, Asha, called Osh, for short, is the younger sister of Reet, who along with their mother, move to Calcutta. The time is the early 1970s and India is undergoing much change with Indira Gandhi in office and with the creation of independent Bangladesh. The family has moved in with their Uncle, while Osh, Reet, and their mother await news of whether or not their father has landed a job in the booming American technical industry and can then send for them. Their father is part of the “brain drain” phenomenon that occurred after immigration opened again for Asians in 1965. Most of the novel takes place in Calcutta as Osh, Reet, and their mother adjust to living in the household of their uncle. Osh’s grandmother also lives there and she happens to be a strong family matriarch, leading with a relatively firm hand. Troubles begin when Reet is prematurely matched with other eligible men. Looking to foil any early marriage proposals, Osh actually dresses in men’s clothes and defeats one of Reet’s suitors in a tennis match, thereby shaming him and resulting in the withdrawal of the marriage proposal. Osh is coming of age as well and she spends a significant amount of time in the one hideaway in the house in order to compose diary entries, what she calls the “secret keeper” (of the title). While in this location, she realizes that she is being watched by a neighbor named Jay, who happens to be a painter and later requests to complete a painting of Osh. Secret Daughter is a dynamic novel and Perkins, like many other South Asian American and South Asian Anglophone women writers, is concerned with the state of women’s rights in traditional Indian society (something we see in Monsoon Summer with a character like Danita). Osh is obviously a proto-feminist, borne out of the growing transnational awareness of feminism in the wake of the “second wave” and we’ll easily see how the “personal is political” as Osh tries to envision futures for her mother, herself, and her sister that do not necessarily require the presence of a man to support them. In some respect, she does seem to appear almost out of time, cast back into the seventies from our present moment, waging her personal South Asian feminist battle; the conclusion is particularly interesting in the way that Osh devises a tactical plan that comes to the expense of her own personal interests. A lively, young adult novel!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Keeper-Mitali-Perkins/dp/B005SMVPNG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1321753677&sr=8-3



In Bamboo People, Mitali Perkins impressively extends her fictional range, going beyond the South Asian themes of many of her other works. In this novel, she focuses on the contemporary Burmese context and splits narrative perspective between two main characters: a young Burmese boy named Chiko, who dreams of becoming a teacher and educator and Tu Reh, a young Karenni boy who hails from the tribal peoples located on the borders of Burma and Thailand. Early on in the novel, Chiko is essentially conscripted into the Burmese national army. Though life in the army is extremely difficult, Chiko makes friends with another boy named Tai, and also attains a more favored status among the military personnel because of his ability to read and write. Chiko also teaches Tai to write; both of course dream of returning to their families. Chiko leaves behind his mother and a neighbor, Lei, who he has romantic feelings for, while Tai has a beloved sister he feels he must protect. Chiko’s father has not been heard from in some time, as his father is apparently being used by the government for his medical skills. Chiko employs his time in the army secretly finding out the status of his father. At later point in the novel, Chiko sacrifices his chance to be reunited with his family in order to give Tai an opportunity to return to his sister. At that point, Chiko is sent on a dangerous mission that leaves him seriously wounded; the novel thus changes narrative point of view to Tu Peh and we see what a perilous position Chiko is actually in when he is the only survivor of a bomb explosion. Like Kashmira Sheth’s Boys Without Names and Cynthia Kadohata’s A Million Shades of Gray, Perkins takes on a very difficult topic and in this regard, this novel really shifts the stakes of young adult fiction, especially in comparison to the lighter fare that I’ve read (Jenny Han’s Summer series and Melissa de la Cruz’s Girl Stays in the Picture as some examples).

http://www.amazon.com/Bamboo-People-Mitali-Perkins/dp/1580893287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323578012&sr=8-1

A Review of Janet S. Wong’s Me and Rolly Maloo (Illustrated by Elizabeth Buttler) (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2010).



At its core, Janet S. Wong’s Me and Rolly Maloo is a children’s graphic novel aimed at questions of friendship. The main character, Jenna Lee, discovers that the girl that she wanted to be friends with, the ever popular Rolly Maloo, may not actually be the most ideal friend. Jenna Lee, as we discover, is somewhat of an outcast, so much so that the teachers at the school and parents of her classmates think of her as a kind of odd duck. The crisis of the novel occurs after Jenna’s teacher, Dolores Pie, discovers Jenna passing a note during a mathematics exam. Though Jenna isn’t immediately reprimanded, Mrs. Pie wonders exactly who was involved in the cheating. The resolution to this particular mystery is quite entertaining and does involve a little bit of a sleuthing on the part of Mrs. Pie. The novel also gestures to the ethics related to how we choose our friends and how we can maintain our dignity in the face of embarrassing events. One particular detail I really enjoyed is that Jenna Lee’s mother, Nelly, is particularly talented at baking pies. One element that is interesting about the illustrations included is that they make us question whether or not we should be reading any of these characters racially or ethnically. Indeed, the pictures reveal characters of varying hair styles and shades, though the work is published completely in grayscales. There are never any references to racial or ethnic groups within the narrative, so I wondered about both the use of names and the ways in which characters were drawn. Indeed, Jenna’s last name, Lee, might suggest Asian ancestry, but we can never be sure. In any case, such representations are issues, I think, that one can more generally offer for any graphic novel: how it is that race gets read through both narrative text and narrative illustrations. Wong’s work is a fun, lighthearted read.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Me-Rolly-Maloo-Janet-Wong/dp/1580891586/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1320797118&sr=8-5
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
24 December 2011 @ 03:44 am
Larissa Lai's Automaton Biographies redux  
The longer review of Larissa Lai's Automaton Biographies that I wrote for the amazing new journal The Asian American Literary Review has been reprinted online at Galatea Resurrects, a wonderful site that focuses on reviews of poetry. Check it out!

(My earlier mention of the book is here: book!)
 
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
24 December 2011 @ 03:33 am
Oliver Chin's 9 of 1: A Window to the World  
Oliver Chin's graphic novel 9 of 1: A Window to the World (Frog Ltd., 2003) is an amazing work about 9/11 and diverse American perspectives on the attacks. I think everyone should read it, and professors should teach it in literature, politics, and history classes!



I had never heard of Chin's novel but came across it in the used books bins at the Twin Cities Book Festival a couple months ago. I kept meaning to read it as soon as I bought it, but it wasn't until a couple days ago that I managed to dive into it while on a plane trip to the East Coast.

In contrast to some of the graphic novels reviewed on this community that have been amazing for their lack of text (and use of illustrations to convey narrative and subtle characterizations), Chin's book is heavily text-based, with the text often outweighing the black-and-white illustrations on the page. Some paragraphs are even in smaller font, as if a standard font size were not adequate to squeeze the words into the limited spaces between illustrations. However, this text-heaviness is by no means a liability for the novel. In fact, the stories being told in this graphic novel are perhaps best done in textual narrative form. What we get are a number of personal histories linked to world events, and the weaving of facts and emotional experience are best accomplished in the text, combined with illustrations that are often portraits of individuals. Those illustrations are black-and-white ink drawings, often pulled from photographs, and carry a kind of documentary quality. This image, for example, begins the novel:



The introduction explores the presence of an Afghan diaspora in Fremont, California, and the communities' efforts to create life anew in familiar yet novel ways half a world away from Afghanistan.

This graphic novel takes the form of student presentations for a class assignment. The setup is that the attacks of 9/11 lead a high school history teacher to revise his lesson plans and to give his 11th grade students a new assignment to interview a stranger over the age of 35 about their perspectives on the attacks. It sounds like an amazing assignment, actually, and I wonder if any teachers have done something similar. After explaining how the students felt on 9/10 and 9/11 of 2001, the novel then details the assignment. The bulk of the novel, though, takes the form of 9 of these presentations by different students. What is fascinating about the novel is the diversity of voices represented. The school is in Union City, California, and the novel makes a particular claim about the fact that the Bay Area region is incredibly diverse and rich in its history of people from different backgrounds and parts of the world. The novel draws a parallel between the Silicon Valley in California and Iraq (between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) as "fertile crescents" (a term often used to describe why civilization emerged so richly in the Middle East, a place where the rivers created rich agricultural land as well as ease of transportation to make the region an important site of cultural interaction from all directions.

The students offer some reflections on their personal and family histories, often tracing resonances between those experiences and the strands of world-historical events that led to and flowed from the 9/11 attacks. Maylene Abellar is the first student's report, and she begins by explaining that she is Filipina and that the project led her to think about the long history of US military presence and intervention in the Philippines. She interviewed a white man for her assignment. This man had a close friend who died in the World Trade Center towers, and he expressed a mixture of anger, sadness, and confusion about what had happened as well as what should be done. He was quite clear that he wanted the US military to find who was responsible and to exact justice, but he also noted that he was aware of the difficulties of war since his father was a veteran of the Korean War. He mentions President Eisenhower's discussion of the military industrial complex, which leads Maylene to offer a lengthy aside (in smaller font) about the military industrial complex as the ramping up of industries that keep the United States in a perpetual state of readiness for war.

The second student, Celeste Quincy, is a white British girl who interviews Usha, an Afghan woman who advocates for women's rights. Usha provides much of the history of Afghanistan in the 20th century, starting with British colonialism (see the connection there?) through the Cold War struggles involving the Soviet Union and America and on through the civil wars in which the mujahideen fought each other for control, ultimately helping to bring the Taliban to power as a unifying (though repressive) force. The third student is Hector Gonzalez, a Latino student who interviews an Israeli American man who relates the history of Israel's presence in the Middle East and the intense conflicts between Israel and the Arab world after WWII. Valerie Silverberg is the fourth student; she reflects on her Jewish family's survival of the Holocaust and how that experience made her feel about interviewing a Muslim Egyptian man for the project. Ahmed Mustafa is perhaps the most vocal about anti-American sentiments of all the interview subjects, explaining the importance of oil politics in the region and how the US has inserted itself into that part of the world for access to oil. This section of the graphic novel includes a full page of pictures of the 9/11 hijackers (presumably those oft-reproduced driver's license photos) and concludes with a picture of Osama bin Laden in the classic "Uncle Sam Wants You" war propaganda poster pose.

The fifth student is Wahid Zahir, a Pakistani American who emphasizes how much distinctions between Pakistanis and Indians were when he was growing up in Pakistan versus how little people are able to recognize such differences in the US, often also confusing him for Arab. He speaks with a black woman who grew up in the Fremont area in poor neighborhoods and served in the military. She talks about the lack of attention paid towards helping the poor (problems with the war on drugs, with gang warfare, with gentrification driving out long-time residents) and assorted domestic problems such as homegrown terrorists and the massive prison industry that holds such a high percentage of black men. The sixth student, Phillip Tran, is a Vietnamese American kid whose parents had to flee the civil war in Vietnam. He interviews a Russian immigrant who fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s and saw the effects of an unpopular war on the Russian public. There is a lot more detail about how the Cold War played out in Afghanistan with the changing support of various fighting factions in the country. The section ends with an explicit comparison between the Vietnam War and 9/11 (the infamous image of the naked girl fleeing the My Lai massacre is juxtaposed with images of people walking away from the falling Twin Towers).

The seventh student, Xavier Frazier, is a black American kid who interviews the Japanese American widow of his family's former gardener and learns about the Japanese American internment and the use of the atomic bomb in Japan in WWII. Julie Lai is the eighth student, a fourth generation Chinese American, and she starts off with a brief mention of exclusion and Angel Island detentions of Chinese immigrants. She speaks with Iman Farhi, an Iraqi American, and learns about the complex history of modern Iraq, including US support of Saddam Hussein followed by UN sanctions against the country that led to severely difficult living conditions for Iraqis throughout the 1990s. The final report is by Raman Patel, an Indian American who interviews Mrs. Kingfisher, a Karuk Indian from the California region. She talks about Indian-US relations from the colonial era forward and includes a folk tale about fire as a lesson about community and storytelling.

There is a lot to say about this book, and I hope more people read it and talk about it! It clearly is meant to be a book for discussion, too, with reading questions and recommended further reading offered in the back. I'm sure lots of people would think the book is boring, but I like the way it presents history and contemporary politics in the form of personal narrative. The graphic novel format is an added layer worth considering, though I don't know if I buy the basic premise that kids will read graphic novels more readily than other texts. (It's still very common for me to talk to younger adults who have never read comic books or graphic novels, and I wonder who it is that is supposedly more interested in reading this format rather than other texts.)
 
 
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stephenhongsohn
22 December 2011 @ 05:17 pm
Asian American Literature Fans Thursday Mega Review Post  
Asian American Literature Fans Thursday Mega Review Post

December 22, 2011


Reviews of Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers (Picador, 1996); Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Father of the Four Passages (FSG, 2001 and Picador Paperback, 2002); Lois-Ann Yamanaka Behold the Many (Picador, 2006)

It’s cold out there; it’s time to stay by the fire or the heater or the space heater or pile on the blankets and get to some reading. In this post, you’ll find reviews for: Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers (Picador, 1996); Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Father of the Four Passages (FSG, 2001 and Picador Paperback, 2002); Lois-Ann Yamanaka Behold the Many (Picador, 2006); Eugie Foster’s Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Norilana Books, 2009); Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (Simon and Schuster, 2007); Derek Kirk Kim’s Same Difference (First Second, Reissue, 2011).



Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers is narrated from the first person perspective of Lovey Nariyoshi. This novel immediately explores issues of class and racial formation, as Lovey voices the narrative through Hawaiian pidgin. Early on, we discover how much shame Lovey holds for her inability to speak standard English. The structure of this novel is episodic, with each chapter holding a kind of parable-like quality, revealing the complications of Lovey’s family and social life. Her best friend, Jerry, is an effeminate young man; she is otherwise a loner and constantly reveals her desire to be “haole.” The novel is most reminiscent of R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s, as we see that Lovey situates her life through the popular imaginary and through cultural icons. There are extended chapters on Barbie dolls and many references to film and television culture. While this novel doesn’t have a natural progression, Yamanaka is particularly keen on exploring the kinds of tragedies of working class Hawaii that make upward mobility so difficult and so illusory. Though characters obviously desire to alter their circumstances, access to educational, financial, and occupational resources are extremely limited.



Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Father of the Four Passages is narrated from the perspective of Sonia Kurisu, a twenty-something who is struggling to get her life back on track. With a father constantly traveling around the world (Joseph), and an absentee mother (Grace), Sonia, along with her sister, Celeste, are just twelve and thirteen, when they are moved to Hilo to be raised by their Grandmother Alma. As Sonia grows up, she dabbles in drugs, unprotected sex, and later moves to Las Vegas to try to complete an MFA degree. By this time, she’s already aborted three babies and has one living child, Sonny Boy; she’s in particularly bad romantic situation with an abusive man, Drake, and she only survives with the help of two friends, Bob, an elderly African American Vietnam War veteran, and Mark, a student at UNLV with whom Sonia had already known for many years living in Hawaii. The demons from her past come to literally haunt her, as the voices of her three aborted babies come out of nowhere and begin to demand things of her. She also soon discovers that Sonny Boy is autistic. Given Sonia’s age, I couldn’t help but think that she might be suffering from schizophrenia and I wasn’t entirely surprised when she overdoses on pills. At that point, she realizes that, despite her fears that she has become just like her failed mother, she must return to Hilo and get help from her closest family and friends. The novel takes a drastic turn here, as Sonia attends to being a mother, helping address her son’s autism, and dealing with the traumas of her abortions. Like Yamanaka’s other works, spirituality and Christianity always appear as major themes. Sonia finds her own way to navigate a kind of personal faith that combines local mysticism and Christian elements together; indeed, she calls upon a faith healer to help address family ruptures and her inability to properly work through her past. Park of Sonia’s healing process also emerges in establishing old contacts on the island. She meets up with Jacob, who was to be the father of the second aborted child and they tentatively consider their connections to each other. Sonia also finds that Sonny Boy, though not speaking, has attached himself quite closely one of Celeste’s daughters. That Sonia finds a way out of her madness reveals a rather redemptive story arc, one that I will admit I was a little suspicious of, given how incredibly dark the novel can be in its earliest stages. Yamanaka is particularly gifted at rendering a traumatized subjectivity through prose: time and spatial shifts are often unmarked; even within the same sections, sentences are not necessarily sequentially arranged. We’re supposed to be as confused as Sonia is. Not surprisingly, the prose style gets far more direct in a way by the end, though the spirituality is clearly ramped up to a high degree. I couldn’t also help noticing Yamanaka’s interethnic representations in this novel. Given the controversy over Blu’s Hanging and Yamanaka’s depiction of Filipino characters, I wonder what other readers made of Yamanaka’s depiction of the Korean bar hostess, Anna. These scenes were striking in the way that Sonia, given her own rather colorful background, denigrates Anna by calling her Cindy and being rather aggressive with her. In any case, this novel makes an excellent companion text to Behold the Many in its use of ghost narration, ghostly figures, Christian spirituality, and mystical healing.



Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Behold the Many is a very tough read. Set in 1913 on the island of Oahu, the novel focuses on three sisters, Anah, Aki, and Leah, as they struggle to survive the austere environment of an orphanage. They are sent to the orphanage not because they do not have parents, but because their parents cannot properly care for them anymore; what is particularly tragic is that their parents place a premium on the male child who can help their plantation laborer father out in the fields. They all come down with tuberculosis and without adequate medical treatment, Aki and Leah die. The novel takes a dark turn at this point because Anah had promised both Aki and Leah that they would be visited by family and would one day get to go home. Aki and Leah are ghosts who seek retribution on Anah, who they see as a liar; she is repeatedly called “mentirosa.” Anah bears the burden of their deaths, even as she comes to find love with a local boy named Ezroh. Anah is eventually able to leave the orphanage and marries Ezroh, but her demons follow her, even after she gives birth to multiple female children. Indeed, it is almost as if the ghosts demand a sacrifice, but it is unclear why Anah must be the one who is so afflicted and her sins seem to transfer to the lives of her children. As a novel that explores the ways in which trauma is represented, I think Yamanaka’s novel is particularly stunning. Do we see these ghosts as a manifestation of Anah’s guilt or are her experiences serving as an allegory for a historically conditioned form of trauma? And what do we make of the Christian imagery that tracks consistently throughout the novel? Do we read the experiences of Anah and her children as a form of religious allegory as well? These questions are all evidence of a text that provokes rich discussion. Fans of poetic prose will also find Yamanaka’s work quite engaging. This novel is probably my favorite of all of Yamanaka’s works that I’ve read!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Meat-Bully-Burgers-Novel/dp/0312424647/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324601737&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Father-Four-Passages-Lois-Ann-Yamanaka/dp/B005Q8II2S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320194328&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Behold-Many-Novel-Lois-Ann-Yamanaka/dp/B005Q6VNV8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320112103&sr=8-1

A Review of Eugie Foster’s Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Norilana Books, 2009).



Eugie Foster’s Returning My Sister’s Face was a delight to read, the kind of book you can curl up to on a cold winter’s day and be effortlessly transported to another time and place. These “tales” traverse diverse periods and geographical terrains; it includes stories set in China, Japan, and Korea. I read this book after I read Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Cathay and Marilyn Chin’s Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, and there’s something to be said about a college course that explores conceptions of “Asian” folk imagery and mystical tales (one could add Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh and Larissa Lai’s When Fox is a Thousand). I focus on a couple of the tales that resonated most with me. The collection opens with “Daughter of Botu,” a story about a family of rabbits who are transformed into humans and must deal with their new figures and their new lives. The main character, An-Ying, narrates the tale and eventually falls in love with a human of quite noble lineage and marries him. She leaves her family behind to live with him but he grows suspicious of her when she becomes pregnant and is about to bear a child, far earlier than would be possible had he been the father. You see: the problem is that An-Ying is a rabbit-human, thus the gestation period would likely be different. Further still, poisoning her husband’s mind is a fox-demon, Meng Shouzen, who had been pretending to be her husband’s mother. The conclusion to this story features an interesting twist on the romance plot that I didn’t see coming. “A thread of Silk” is a wonderful revenge tale based upon an actual historical figure. In this particular piece, the main character, Mae, intends to avenge the death of her father, a Japanese governor, when her brother, Sadamori, falls deathly ill due to a wound he sustained in the siege on the governor’s palace. She calls upon the power of the gods to help carry out this plan, which involves killing a man, Masakado, who has apparently been granted the a divine gift of almost-categorical invulnerability. Mae receives a cryptic message that love and war will almost certainly result in an incredibly problematic dilemma for her. In “Honor is a Game Mortals Play,” Ayame must avenge the death of her grandfather at the hands of a demon. When the demon, Ronin, she intends to kill actually tricks her and later delivers her into the hands of a beautiful woman, Ayame discovers that this woman is actually her mother, Yuki-onna, who is actually immortal and wants Ayame to give up any trace of her mortality. Ayame thus must make a fateful choice. “Shim Chung the Lotus Queen” takes place in Korea and is one of the few “happy ending” tales in the collection. Shim Chung is willing to sacrifice herself to a sea god, the Dragon King in order to restore the sight of her father. What actually occurs is that she is taken to the Dragon King’s palace, but she is later freed because she is so unhappy. When she returns to the mortal world, she discovers her father’s sight had not actually been restored, but I’ll encourage you to read this work to find out how things do felicitously resolved. My favorite story in this collection was “Year of the Fox.” In this story, a brother-fox and sister-fox, Jin and Mei, vow to avenge their mother’s death, likely perpetrated by a human. They both make an oath to wreak havoc on humans for one year and then reunite. Mei takes up with a noblewoman, Lian, who lives with two aged servants; the story gets very complicated because Mei ends up realizing that all humans are not evil and that she must amend her approach toward revenge. This story also reminds us that foxes cannot be seen solely as villains. Though the fox in the opening story certainly has the most evil plans, Mei comes to an entirely different sense of what it means to be at peace. Again, this collection is great fun to read and Foster certainly masters the mystical tonality of these types of folktales.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Returning-My-Sisters-Face-Eastern/dp/1607620111/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324602113&sr=8-2

A Review of Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (Simon and Schuster, 2007).



Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People is another one of those books that has been on my to-read list forever. I finally sat down over Thanksgiving break to read it and it’s hard to hazard only one impression of it. Off the top of my head, the thing you will immediately note about the novel is that the narrative voice is so unique; Sinha has really taken a risk in using the first person narrative voice to inhabit the psyche of a character like Animal, who is used to thinking of himself as subhuman. His body has been physically damaged due the toxic gases expelled from a local factory and he literally moves on all four appendages. In the interview that follows that conclusion, Sinha writes that the Bhopal disaster was one of the inspirations for this novel, but adds that “This was the background, but novels are about people, not issues. I knew Bhopal too well. To write freely, I had to imagine another city. In this fictional place, which I called Khaufpur (‘khauf’ is an Urdu word that means ‘terror’), the characters could come to life.” I’m not exactly sure if I agree that novels are not “about issues,” but what I gather is that the issues can’t be too abstracted or they don’t make for a compelling novel. But I’m always interested in the relationship between fiction and nonfiction and the quite porous boundaries between the two terms. In any case, the novel is set in this fictional city of the aforementioned Khaufpur and much of the novel’s tensions appear in the guise of an American doctor named Elli, who comes to open a free clinic, only to discover that no patients will visit. Indeed, Zafar, one of the most charismatic local activists believes that Elli is affiliated with the Kampani (another word for “company”) that has perpetrated the toxic environment in which all the Khaufpurians now live. Another set of issues emerges because of Animal’s sexual desires, which are represented to be severely repressed; he places much of his libidinous energies in the fantasies he harbors for Nisha, a young and kind woman that Animal believes is really in love with Zafar. Though Zafar commands so much support in the local community, Animal finds him to be an overstuffed romantic rival. The novel is devastating insofar as it reveals the limits of activist work, the challenges of local communities to organize successfully, and the continuing ethical issues that surround environmental disasters. What is an appropriate settlement for those affected by such catastrophic events? The amount of suffering that many of the characters endure suggests that a dollar value is really incommensurate to the structural traumas encapsulating entire communities, generations, and cultures. What makes the novel quite an interesting piece to discuss is Sinha’s narrator: why Animal? How does his perspective give us the best way to consider these peoples and these issues? I’ll leave these questions for those that end up reading the novel!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Animals-People-Novel-Indra-Sinha/dp/141657879X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322270324&sr=8-1

A Review of Derek Kirk Kim’s Same Difference (First Second, Reissue, 2011).


Simon and Nancy, our anti-heroes

Rejoice! Derek Kirk Kim’s Same Difference has been reissued by First Second and the handsome hardcover edition even includes a section devoted to the sketching, storyboarding, and drafting process that Kim employed while working on this hilarious work. I’d place Kim’s work alongside Tomine’s in his use of traditional panel separations and relatively sparse usage of captioning (though Tomine uses even less in something like Shortcomings). The main characters, Simon and Nancy, are two youthful Korean American, Bay Area denizens who have semi-slackerish qualities to them (again, I couldn’t help but be reminded somewhat of Shortcomings). What ultimately sets this plot into motion is a sort of chance phenomenon in which Nancy discovers that Simon’s hometown is the same residence as the very man who has been sending love letters to Nancy’s current residence. Those letters are not addressed to Nancy but someone else who used to live there, and they show a level of romance, obsession, and level of intimacy that certainly could be construed as stalkerish. Nancy had been playing a sort of prank by responding to this man’s letters. Thus, they embark on a kind of adventure to Simon’s hometown of Pacifica. For those of you who haven’t been there, Pacifica is one of those sleepy Coastal towns (a friend of mine actually lived there for some time) with a relatively modest population, but it’s just south of San Francisco and sits right on the ocean. The view as you drive from the freeway into the town is absolutely breathtaking and Nancy’s first impression was much like mine. In any case, a series of coincidences leads Simon to reconnect with an old high school classmate named Irene, who is blind, and for Simon and Nancy, to bump into Ben, the man sending the letters, at the local grocery store. From there, Kim is intent on exploring the complicated nuances of individuals as they drift in and out of each other’s lives—what assumptions we might have about them or how we might move past our own superficial impulses and impressions. Kim’s drawings are first rate; the humor is particularly the high point in terms of my personal reading experience. Simon and Nancy are an unforgettable Korean American comedic duo who bring this wonderful graphic novel to life.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Same-Difference-Derek-Kirk-Kim/dp/1596436573/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322268718&sr=8-1
 
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shadowy duck
pylduck
20 December 2011 @ 08:07 am
Jason Shiga's Empire State  
I've been looking forward to reading Jason Shiga's Empire State: A Love Story (Or Not) (Abrams Comicarts, 2011) since I saw it mentioned in [info]stephenhongsohn's megapost on graphic novels back in the summer.



One of the strengths of this graphic novel is certainly its minimal use of text and reliance on illustrations to convey the narrative. It makes me wonder how people process these kinds of stories in contrast with text-only novels and how literary critics can analyze these kinds of narratives when much of the theoretical work of literary studies has been obsessed with the Word. Will there be more collaboration and crossover with disciplines like art criticism and art history?

Shiga's novel is charming, offering us the main character Jimmy as a young adult adrift in life without a clear sense of purpose. I might describe him as a twenty-something suffering from quarter-life crisis--that pop psychology concept about educated, relatively well-off people who, after jumping through the hoops of school and college, lack the ability to find a path or find themselves loathing the job that have gone into, either by happenstance or by long-term planning with their parents' expectations. Jimmy works in a library in Oakland, the city where he grew up, and he hangs out wit his mom every week. Here is a page where he teaches a new library staff member or volunteer how to wrap books in plastic:



What is conveyed nicely in the scene is Jimmy's geeky obsession with the details of the process, and this obsession contrasts starkly with his disciple's lack of interest. Yet, there is a kind of cute cluelessness to Jimmy in the scene. He doesn't understand that other people don't really see the world the way he does.

One of my favorite panels comes towards the end of the book. It's a scene where Jimmy is walking in the park with his friend Sara, a nice Jewish girl.



Look at the cute doggy and ducks!

One of the major story lines involves Jimmy's travel to New York City to see Sara after she has moved there to jump start her career. Her literary and cultural tastes are of a more "cultured" variety than Jimmy's (he loves science fiction), and the moments where their tastes and orientation towards the world sort of pass each other like ships in the night are pretty wonderful.

The one thing that didn't sit too well with me in the novel was the narrative technique of splicing together two story lines from different points in Jimmy's life. As Jonathan Liu writes in the GeekDad blog on Wired:
Another interesting thing in Empire State is the way that Shiga uses color. The book is entirely colored in reds and blues, and as you read you realize that the sections that the colors represent different times in Jimmy’s life. The book switches between all-blue and all-red, with just a few scenes that have both colors. Shiga gives some hints so that you can piece together the chronology, but it’s not immediately obvious when you start reading. The colors also tie into the mood of each section, which is a nice but subtle way to affect the reader.
While the coloring is a nice visual cue to these temporal shifts, it still took me a few shifts to realize what was happening, and I ultimately wondered if that splicing was necessary for the story. A more straightforward telling may have emphasized the emotional weight of the story lines in ways that get lost through this splicing.
 
 
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