Today was a quiet day. Self watered back and front yards, then read in the living room, Gracie peacefully snoring at her feet. She also trolled the web (for hours — as evidenced by her aching neck!) And she landed (somehow) on a website for the Department of Medicine in the University of Minnesota.
Self couldn’t resist perusing the list of recommended readings. And a very interesting list it was, too. Self has a particular interest in reading “cross-over” writers from the medical field, writers such as Atul Gawande, Oliver Sacks and Abraham Verghese. Atul Gawande is represented on the list, as are Biloine Young (whose book has the most intriguing title: My Heart It is Delicious), Sherman Alexie (whose The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, still one of self’s all-time favorites), Robert Olen Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain), Jean D’Haem (The Last Camel: True Stories of Somalia), Donna Gehrke-White (The Face Behind the Veil: The Extraordinary Lives of Muslim Women in America), Philip Gourevitch (We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda), Aleksander Hemon (Nowhere Man), and Ryszard Kapuscinski (The Shadow of the Sun).
And then there is this book, that was published by New Rivers Press quite some time ago:
* Lim, Shirley; Chua, Cheng Lok; Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin. Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing
The site has a short review, and self is most astonished to discover herself described as “well known” — !! To which self’s only response is a hearty, hubby-style BWAH-HA HA HA HA!!.
Without further ado, the review:
This anthology of American writers originally from Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaya, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) includes poems and short stories by 41 “emerging” writers in English. The anthology has been divided into themes such as “Family,” “Eating,” “The Different Past,” and “Returnings.” Some of the writers are already well known (editor Lim, Marianne Villanueva), and the others, with one or two exceptions, have already been published. All the writers deal with making a life in the United States while recognizing their differences, adjustments, and traumas. Particularly poignant are poems and stories by Anh Quynh Bui, Aurora Harris, Hanh Hoang, Joseph O. Legaspi, Lim, Ira Sukrungruang, and Villanueva; but all the works are well written and thoughtful. The editors, both professors of literature at California universities, have chosen well. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
