It was the middle of the Saturday afternoon PAWA/Arkipelago Books reading at the Bayanihan Community Center at 1010 Mission Street. Myrna del Rio was singing (that woman has such Read the rest of this entry »
Mayor Newsom Sighting (Be Still, Self’s Beating Heart!)
November 8, 2009 at 1:30 am (Booksellers, Places, Surprises, Voices, Writers and Others)
Tags: Filipino writers, Readings, San Francisco, Saturdays
Better Late Than Never: Mila D. Aguilar on Cory Aquino
October 4, 2009 at 3:36 am (Opportunities, Philippine History, Places, Quotes, Voices, Writers and Others)
Tags: Filipinas Magazine, memoir, Philippine History, The Philippines
Self happened upon Mila D. Aguilar’s first-person account in the September 2009 issue of Filipinas Magazine. (Self is proud to say: she’s been subscribing to the magazine since the very first issue):
My President has been laid to rest. Now I can break my silence. For the one who presently sits on her manufactured throne is not my president. She never was.
My President is she who freed me from a Marcos prison in 1986. I know that she alone is not responsible for 1986, for the Read the rest of this entry »
A Sentence, and Thoughts on a Death Scene
September 28, 2009 at 4:21 pm (Books, Voices, Writing)
Tags: historical novel, reading
From the same book self was reading this morning, Karen Fisher’s A Sudden Country:
- The old dog had become a terrible thing, dull fur and architecture, the back of her tail raw from some disease.
Image is rather appalling but self does love a writer who can make of gross things a thing of beauty. Karen Fisher is a verbal Read the rest of this entry »
Reading for the Day: Tamim Ansary on the War in Afghanistan
September 20, 2009 at 9:46 pm (Places, Quotes, Voices, Writers and Others)
Tags: San Francisco Chronicle
Self has a lot of respect for Ansary. She greatly enjoyed his memoir, West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story, and a few years ago she attended a reading he gave in the Redwood City Library. Last Sunday’s SF Chronicle contained Read the rest of this entry »
New Blog From Women’s Review of Books!
September 17, 2009 at 3:19 pm (Books, Other Sites of Interest, Quotes, Voices, Writers and Others)
Tags: announcements, reviews, Women's Review of Books
Dear Blog Readers,
Amy Hoffman, editor of esteemed Women’s Review of Books, sent me this message yesterday and I was so very excited and happy to get the news. Here’s her letter:
September 16, 2009
I’m writing to introduce you to WRB’s new blog!
Each week, WOMEN=BOOKS will feature a new post by a WRB reviewer or book author. Visitors to the blog can comment, building a network for intelligent debate about everything from women in the military to abortion rights to childcare to sex trafficking. Blog comments are refereed, making the site a safe place for the discussion of controversial topics.
Women’s Review of Books has always been about jumping barriers: between feminist academics and political organizers, theory and practice. WOMEN=BOOKS is extending the range of WRB’s print edition, expanding its audience and deepening the conversation about ideas, politics, and women’s lives.
Here’s the link: WOMEN=BOOKS
What Self Is Reading/ Movies Self Is Looking Forward to Watching
September 16, 2009 at 11:27 pm (Books, Movies, Quotes, Voices, Writers and Others)
Tags: anticipation, Fall movies, novel, reading, reviews
Self is reading Zadie Smith’s first book, White Teeth.
She began to read it a little before midnight last night, then stayed up reading until 3:30 a.m.
After five hours sleep, self was back reading again.
Then she had to go teach in the Writers Center for a few hours.
When she got home, she resumed reading. But found her attention flagging.
So, self did what she always does when she develops an unexpected response to a book. She turns to the reader reviews on Amazon.com.
And here’s what she found:
- This book, published in 2001, when Smith was 24 years old, is ranked Read the rest of this entry »
The Gaitskill Quote
September 12, 2009 at 9:04 pm (Books, Quotes, Voices, Writers and Others)
Tags: novels, reading, short fiction
Self finished reading Veronica a few days ago, and dived right into Bad Behavior, one of Gaitskill’s short story collections. Oh, how self adores Gaitskill (even though almost all the protagonists are spiritually maimed women — for example, writers who moonlight as prostitutes!)
Here’s a typical exchange. It’s from the story “Trying to Be” :
“Hi,” said a man with a hideous hunk of hair. “I like your hat.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you like to dance?”
“No, thank you.” She looked right at him when she said this, meaning to convey that she didn’t consider him repulsive, but that she was deep in thought and couldn’t dance.
It didn’t work; he stared away with a ruffled air and then said, “Do you want to go to the Palladium?”
“No, thank you.”
Burma: A Clipping and a Poem
August 26, 2009 at 12:10 am (Places, Quotes, Voices)
Tags: Burma, memories, poetry, Wall Street Journal
When self was in New York, at the end of June, she alternated between reading The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Since then, she’s posted about the articles she clipped, over and over. In particular, self remembers WSJ movie reviewer Joe Morgenstern’s review of “The Hurt Locker.” (The review was titled “Shock, Awe, Brilliance,” which pretty much sums up self’s own feelings about the movie)
Another WSJ clipping was an article about Burma (which, self’s friend Kyi tells her, is called “Burma” by everyone who knows what’s really going on; only clue-less Western reporters refer to the country as “Myanmar”!) Since self was writing a review on a biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, she read the article with more than the usual interest. Among other things, she learned about the new capital city of Naypyitaw, which the reporters described as “four-lane highways that are largely empty, a gems museum with sapphires and a zoo with air-conditioned arctic habitats for penguins.”
Here’s something else:
The divide between Myanmar’s shining new capital, home to much of its military elite, and its commercial capital underscores the failure of a decade of U.S. and European sanctions, efforts to break the country’s military regime by cutting it off from doing business with much of the Western world. Instead, the country’s leaders and top businessmen have survived and even thrived by replacing Western buyers with Asian ones. Trade with China has more than doubled over the past five years, and sales of natural gas and other resources to Thailand, India and other Asian powers are also growing quickly. In the process, the regime has only tightened its grip.
The bizarreness of Naypyitaw recalls a poem by Kyi May Kaung, from her chapbook Pelted with Petals: The Burmese Poems (Self met Kyi in Berlin, at the same conference where she met Linh Dinh, Teri Yamada, Rattawut Lapcharoensap and so many other wonderful writers)
Rangoon Zoo
The polar bear sat
sweltering
near its single
factory delivered
2 x 1 1/2 x 1 foot
block of
yellow
ice –
dejected bear –
the tropical
heat is killing
the seal in
the rectangular swimming
pool had
a little better
luck –
bear and seal exchanged for
takin
very soon the bear
fed on corn on the cob –
the keepers had stolen the
meat for
their families –
very naturally died –
the otter pool is bereft of swimming and squealing otters and
the tigress — loose skin on bones
must have by now
died –
the same tigress that
in her youth
bit the hand
of the keeper who showing off
too familiarly
patted her
head –
Take that she
said.