By Preston Mark Stone, Whose Mother is Filipina

July 29, 2008 at 3:12 pm (Quotes, Voices, Writers and Others)
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White Power

To explain, for instance, this gas station clerk
who speaks to me in emphasized English, as though
my native language were something he heard in a
movie. I have to go back to my neighbors in Bakersfield,
who listened to metal and shaved their heads

because their neighborhood was filling up with spics,
niggers, fags and me. “Go back to the jungle!” they’d shout
at fruit pickers and drag queens, and I wondered what
imagined world they fought, what tropic in which
people swing from banana trees like crazed gay
Mexican lemurs. “Go back inside,” their mother told them

when she saw me watching from my porch, my face
brown with California sun, my eyes like slants of rice grain.
They vanished into their cluttered besieged house, the deadbolt
dropping as the door shut. To understand the deadbolt,
I have to go back to high school, to a boy who called me gook

every afternoon as he walked past me. His father was a veteran,
his brother a marine, my face the enemy’s face.
Every day for a year, he strolled by me and looked straight ahead
as he said gook in emphasized English, or chink, rice nigger,
slant-eye, Chinaman. The afternoon I caught him alone

and saw the swastika drawn on the back of his hand,
I punched him in the face until he curled up on the floor, arms
shielding his temples, and then I kicked him until
the police came. To explain why I was crying when my boot
met his belly, I have to go back to my first neighborhood

where, when I was eight, white people moved in.
Their sons were a little older, and loved to play cowboys
and Indians. They were the blond and fair frontiersmen,
the rest of us hordes of small dark Cherokee struck down
to make America. You two are Indian scouts, they said.
and you over there, you’re braves. Everyone was a cowboy
or an Indian, except for a little girl and me. We don’t need
no more Indians, they said. Too many
damn Indians already. You two, you’re horses.

We giggled until they pushed us to our hands and knees
and ordered us to eat grass. A year later, I would fight
one of them until he made me cry, but there on all fours,
I ate the grass. The little girl bawled, her mouth green
as money. Get along, they said. They drew
their pistols, and they rode us.

    — from The Missouri Review, Winter 2007

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Congratulations to Aimee, Wins Pushcart

July 6, 2008 at 3:31 pm (Publishers, Voices, Writing)
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Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s poem, “Love in the Orangery,” will be published in the 2009 edition of the Pushcart Prize anthology. The poem was first published in the Fall 2006 issue of Third Coast.

Here’s her bio from the Third Coast website:

  • Nezhukumatathil is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano (2007). Her poetry and essays have been widely anthologized and have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, Third Coast, FIELD, Mid-American Review, and Tin House. She is an associate professor of English at State University of New York-Fredonia.
All hail, Aimee !!!

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A Poem for Burma (with an Update)

May 9, 2008 at 5:24 pm (Voices, Writers and Others)
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This morning, self watching CNN: At a press conference, Burma’s ex- Prime Minister is appealing for more aid.

But this morning brought the news that the current leaders of (so-called) Myanmar have refused to allow in USAID workers, with resulting widespread confusion and dismay.

Yesterday, self’s friend Kyi sent her this poem. It is by Ko Ko Thett, who was born in Rangoon in 1972. His studies at Rangoon Institute of Technology were cut short following his involvement in the December 1996 student uprising. He left Burma after a spell of detention in July 1997. In Bangkok, he worked for Burma Programme at the Jesuit Refugee Service-Asia Pacific until his resettlement in Finland in December 2000. As an independent researcher, Ko Ko Thett has taught, written, and commented extensively on Burma since 1999. As of 2008, he is reading peace and conflict studies at the University of Helsinki, while keeping his dream of return alive.

Nargis Cyclone

The storm struck at dawn.
Blow, blew, blown!
I was thrown into a space unknown.
As I float, my body begins to bloat.
Am I swimming among a million corpses?
A million of my compatriots?
I hear women wailing on the shore.
Is it the muted weep of dying children
I’ve never heard before?

Ko Ko Thett
8.5.2008

* * * *

In other news today, 10 May 2008, the ruling junta in “Myanmar” has stooped to a new low: Myanmar’s military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Poetry, Poetry: A Reading in Boston, A Book Launch in New York

April 8, 2008 at 2:54 am (Books, Opportunities, Places, Quotes, Voices, anthologies)
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Aaah, so many poets, so little time. 

First up, Luisa Igloria, the author of nine books including Encanto (Anvil, 2004), In the Garden of the Three Islands (Moyer Bell/Asphodel, 1995), and Trill and Mordent (WordTech Editions, 2005), reads at the Barnes & Noble at Emerson College with fellow poet Eamon Wall, the author of four collections of poetry, Refuge at De Soto Bend (2004), The Crosses (2000), Iron Mountain Road (1997), and Dyckman-200th Street (1994), all published by Salmon Publishing in Ireland.

Details:  Barnes & Noble, 114 Boylston Street, Boston, on Thursday, April 10, at 6 p.m.

Second, Language for a New Century:  Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia , & Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar, and with a foreword by Carolyn Forché, launches at New York’s Rubin Museum, on Apr. 25, 7 PM.  The Burmese poet Kyi-May Kuang, who self met over two years ago now, in the 2005 Berlin “Sending Signals” conference, has some poetry in this one!  Here are just a few of the to-die-for blurbs: 

“This extraordinary, library-in-one-volume: what a resource! Those to whom poetry is essential as the supreme use of language will find the work of many poets they have never before come to, and those readers who have limited themselves to prose have the opportunity to discover how the poet outreaches everything prose can illuminate in who and what we are, no matter where, on the map. Nine thematic groupings of the work bring us wonderfully, almost perilously close to ultimate experience in childhood, love, war, exile, the inextricable relations between politics and the personal, the tragic and the ironic, the wisdom in sorrow and humor, that only the most intense imagination can plumb. That of the poet. The realm of imagination is one. This anthology gives entry to its vast _expression in the Middle East and Asia , including the changing sensibilities of poets in the ever-growing world of immigration. Assembled here not the Tower of Babel , but the astonishment and subtlety inherent in many languages and their experimental modes to expand the power of words. The introductions to each section offer perceptions engagingly, against which to place one’s own readings. The editors have boldly envisaged and compiled a beautiful achievement for world literature.”
                                                —Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer
 
“Language for a New Century is a symphonic sweep of beckoning cries, praises, prayers, curses, ruminations and revelations.  An ensemble rich with diverse voices, here the old and the new converge, and something wholly human and futuristic emerges—something that possesses a robust lyricism—shining its light, its illuminated certainty into the twenty-first century.  This marvelous anthology assembles a multitude of voices intent on a purposeful, deep singing.”
                                                —Pulitzer Prize Winner, Yusef Komunyakaa   
Details:
 
Friday, April 25th, 2008, 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm
at The Rubin Museum , New York City
Rubin Museum of Art · 150 West 17th Street , New York , NY 10011 ·               212.620.5000    

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The Street: Excerpts From Shlonsky’s “In Tel Aviv”

March 28, 2008 at 3:36 pm (Eavesdropping, Places, Pleasures of Travel, Quotes, Sayings, Some Interesting Articles, Tel Aviv, Voices)

Self’s first Shabbat. Self didn’t know, no buses run after 4 or 5 p.m. A Filipina told her, while self stood waiting in vain at the stop for Bus No. 10 on Arlozoroff.

Ying was asleep when self left the hospital. Less voluble today, but her fever’s gone: her temperature was 36.5. But lymphoblasts — or whatever you call those cells doctors count to measure the body’s immune response — were low, “only 500″ said the nurse. So, self had to wear a mask all day.

Now, back at Ruppin Street. This narrow thoroughfare is like a stage: all manner of people come and go. Self likes sitting on the balcony, where she can enjoy the breeze while listening to Astrud on her brother’s ipod. Motorcycles spurt up and down the street, doors slam, car engines sputter and turn over. And always, there are voices.

Nephew’s back from a trip to Haifa with self’s brother. All excitement: he wants to share his views of Haifa, the bomb shelters and the beautiful palace with the pink trees. Then, he shows me his newest invention: nutella with yoghurt, something he dubs a “nutgurt.” Self has to admit, it looks dee-lish.

Tomorrow self wants to go to Old Jaffa. Nephew told her it was only a 25-minute cab ride. But how much is a 25-minute cab ride? 100 shekel? Self has to husband her finances sooo carefully, especially as hubby’s tales from his office grow increasingly bleak and the economic forecasts in The Jerusalem Post spout doom.

Ah, but let’s deal with that when self returns, in another week. In the meantime, this is an excerpt from a series of poems by Shlonsky — a member of what Barbara Mann calls the “first generation” of Hebrew modernists in Palestine — from the series called “In Tel Aviv”:

Street lamps before evening falls
Ah– who lit you, yellowed eyes?
For what did you bring, empty auto, untimely,
a strange gust to the wine house?

Hackerbrau pictures on the walls,
overturned glasses on the bar.
And in a neglected nook a clock drowses,
and a Jew asleep at the counter.

I, a Jew, came for no reason,
I, a Jew, returning home,
an empty car shifts another moment,
and silence returns to what it was.

And a snoring shofar roars,
A scratch in the skin of silence.
And only streetlights still throw
Yellow rings to the earth.

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What Self Read (At the Frick, On the Plane)

March 23, 2008 at 1:50 pm (Books, Eavesdropping, Insomnia, Places, Quotes, Surprises, Tel Aviv, Voices)
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Brother has gone to the hospital to fetch Ying, who is being allowed to return home (to the apartment) this afternoon. Yes!!! In the meantime, self, who seeks only to crash on a mattress on the floor of the apartment — since she has not slept a wink for over 24 hours — has drawn up a list of all the various books/ magazines/ newspapers she has read in the course of two (very busy) days, starting from Friday, 21 March, when self embarked on the plane for Newark, NJ up to today, Easter Sunday, in Tel Aviv:

1.
Self has finished reading The Bookseller of Kabul (Was able to read straight through to the end while on the plane from New York to Tel Aviv, and while most of the other passengers were sleeping). What a fascinating, heartbreaking book. Self thinks the images of the bookseller’s daughters and wives will remain with her for a very long time.

2.
Read, from cover to cover, the latest issue of People Magazine (featuring on the cover a radiant J Lo, doting over her newborn twins)

3.
Read, in the Frick, while standing in humble obeisance before Parmigianino’s seductive portrait of an unknown lady: several pages by the museum curator, speculating on the model’s identity, which was no help as all the curator did was surmise that the painting was either that of a) a bride; b) a courtesan; or c) a complete figment of the painter’s imagination (which last suggestion self thought was the most un-interesting)

4.
Browsed the Friday New York Times (in which she read that new J-horror flick “Shutter” is not quite a success — in the opinion of reviewer A. O. Scott)

5.
Began reading the next book on her list (shortly after arriving at the apartment where her brother is staying in Tel Aviv), George Howe Colt’s The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home

6.
Began perusing last Friday’s edition of The Jerusalem Post, which was lying on top of the grand piano in the living room of the apartment. Before self begins quoting from an article in said newspaper, she wishes to mention the reading activities of her seatmates on the two planes she was a passenger on:

On the plane from SFO to Newark, NJ:
Boy on her left was reading a many-paged tome which looked to be science fiction, judging from the one-word chapter headings (one went something like Owenaira?). Boy on her right (who looked like a devout student from a yeshiva) was reading issue after issue of Gun Magazine. Self surreptitiously glanced over at the articles he was reading. One was on handguns and had accompanying illustration of a Glock semi-automatic. Another was on “Ammo for Handguns.”

On the plane from Newark, NJ to Tel Aviv:
Seatmate on her left, a middle-aged man with gray hair, scribbled endlessly, page after page, on small pads of yellow ruled paper. And then read USA Today and Newsweek.

And now to the quote for the day, from the Jerusalem Post of Friday, 21 March 2008:

‘Speak English’ signs approved at Philly Shop, article by Patrick Walters (AP):

Dateline: Philadelphia — The owner of a famous cheese-steak shop did not discriminate when he posted signs asking customers to speak English, a city panel ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 vote, a Commission on Human Relations panel found that two signs at Geno’s Steaks telling customers, “This is America: WHEN ORDERING PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH, do not violate the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance.

Shop owner Joe Vento has said he posted the signs in October 2005 because of concerns over immigration reform and an increasing number of people in the area who could not order in English.

Vento has said he never refused service to anyone because they couldn’t speak English. But critics argued that the signs discourage customers of certain backgrounds from eating at the shop.

Commissioners Roxanne E. Covington and Burt Siegel voted to dismiss the complaint, finding that the sign does not communicate that business will be “refused, withheld or denied.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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The Day Before Self’s Departure

March 21, 2008 at 5:11 am (Conversations, Food and Drink, Places, Quotes, Relatives, Surprises, Voices)

Self is stuffed!

First was the lunch in Pasta Moon with cuz Maitoni, nephew Enrique, Maitoni’s cousin (on her mother’s side) Leah, and Leah’s baby daughter, Alyssa Rose. The day was bee-yoo-ti-ful (if a little chilly). Self thinks that Enrique’s dish was the most interesting: porcini mushrooms with papardelle. Enrique declared how he really loved mushrooms. Self asked him which were his favorite mushrooms and he named those exceedingly big mushrooms which you can fry like steaks — what are they called? Portobellos?

Leah had eggplant parmigiana, while self and Maitoni shared a seafood pasta dish and a beet salad (both good).

Then, self took all to her favorite store on Half Moon Bay’s Main Street, Half to Have It, where cousin bought a three-foot long quill feather for her daughter, a student at U of Penn. Cousin was looking everywhere for an egg cracker, or whatever you call that French implement that perfectly slices the tops off hard-boiled eggs, but instead ended up buying one of those newfangled flexible plastic steamers that are so popular because they will not scratch Calphalon pans. And then self bought an Epicurean Cutting Board to replace her old one that is cracked ($24.99). Then, we all wended on back to Redwood City.

Self and cuz left Enrique in the house to watch basketball games, and we wended off to San Carlos, where self showed cuz The Chef Shop on Laurel Street and cousin gazed admiringly at the huge Viking stoves. Then self showed cousin her favorite clothing store (Claire de Lune — closed, boo) and her favorite pastry place (Chocolate Mousse, but cousin said that one of her sacrifices for Lent was to forego all sweets).

Then, we picked up niece G from her dorm at 1115 Campus Drive East, aka The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and niece was wearing the cutest green patent leather ballerina slippers and the cutest plaid coat. Then, we all met up with hubby and had dinner at fave local restaurant New Kapadokia. And there was a camera crew filming inside. And a sign by the door of the restaurant warned that this evening, there would be a television crew filming, so any customers who still elected to eat at the restaurant were in effect providing their consent to being filmed. And all of us agreed that we all wanted that. To be filmed, that is.

So we went inside and made a complete spectacle of ourselves (as only Filipinos know how to do). That is, we talked very loudly and gaily, and pretty soon the cameras were ignoring the other tables and were zooming in on all our faces. Well, not all our faces, exactly: on Maitoni’s and Georgina’s faces. And Enrique then chose to engage self in very earnest discussion of self’s latest book. And self thought it was so sweet, the way he kept insisting (in a very loud voice) that self give him the title of her book. And he declared it to be “absolutely the best love story since Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” (ha ha ha ha ha!!!)

And then afterwards, the manager of the restaurant informed us that we would all be coming out on TV — on a show on KQED called “Check, Please,” that airs on Thursday evenings. And we were all very excited.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Even Though No One Read This Morning’s Post

March 20, 2008 at 12:20 am (Eavesdropping, Food and Drink, Home, Surprises, Voices, Writing)

Self is keeping it! Because self truly feels that dear blog readers should be able to read something other than the pablum being dished to us on the nightly news.

Today, self hied herself out of doors long enough to:

Tie back long-ish stems of:

Self is so proud of herself, dear blog readers! Five years ago self wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea what the above-named plants were. Now she has them all flourishing in her garden. Around noon, self interrupted hubby’s strenuous mid-day labors to inform him that if he watered deeply on the weekends, all the plants would survive. And that he should never, under no circumstances whatsoever, water her roses at night, or they will develop rust and black spots and in two weeks, when self returns, it will be too late to reverse the viruses and self will just have to lop off canes and that will mean no blooming roses this summer.

Then, self ran some errands, which involved doing the following:

    Buying a box of See’s chocolates for Melissa A. for when self sees her in New York, Saturday morning, 7:30 a.m. (Self and Melissa meeting for breakfast! Then high-tailing it to the Frick! Where self’s 16-year-old nephew will meet up with us!). As self was stepping out of the store, she overheard the girl at the See’s counter heave a heartfelt sigh and murmur, “I love this job.”
    High-tailing it to Post Office and mailing a story to Tin House. She hasn’t bothered them since 2006, so she feels she’s entitled. With Tin House, self can be “cool” (unlike with Prairie Schooner, to whom self now submits a story every six months, out of sheer stubborn-ness. Every time the SASEs come back, with the little postage-stamp size rejection slips, with not even a signature — at least, someone has the wherewithal to stamp “Prairie Schooner” on the outside of the envelope, as if self needed to be reminded about who exactly it is rejecting her — self just turns around and pops another one in the mail. She’s pretty sure by now no one even bothers to read the first page. Probably all a first reader has to do is look at the name and go, “Put this in the s__t pile!”)
    Bought a New York Times, because tonight self is blessedly free (Hubby informed self he’d be coming home late again, and even if he does show up earlier than expected, self is prepared to serve him a rotisserie chicken from Safeway — Ha ha ha ha!). Tomorrow self will be running around with cousin Maitoni who is visiting from Virginia: she’ll be picking up niece G from Stanford, right after teaching her morning class at xxxx community college, and we are all going to Half Moon Bay for a late lunch at Pasta Moon. Then we will meander down the coast a bit, then wend back, and hopefully by the time we get back to Redwood City, hubby will be home so he can treat us to margaritas at Margarita’s.

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Since No One Read Last Night’s Post II

March 18, 2008 at 1:18 pm (Books, Quotes, Surprises, Voices)

Gone: “Monday Evening, Returning (Late) From Writing Center”

Ahhh, so many things to blog about, so little time! This morning, early (6 a.m.), self engrossed in perusing the Weekend section of last Friday’s New York Times (14 March), which is just chock-a-block full of interesting articles. Got to the end of the Holland Cotter article on the painting “Wang Xizhi Watching Geese.” It’s a fantastic article, and gets even better towards the end. Self thinks everyone should read it.

Then, self read a book review by Michiko Kakutani of Michael Scheurer’s new book, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Here’s a quote from the review:

Mr. Scheuer’s appraisal of the situation in which the United States now finds itself is grim. Because of the “profound and willful ignorance” of the “bipartisan governing elite” (those “individuals who have influenced, contributed ideas to, drafted and conducted U.S. foreign policy for the past 35 years”), he argues, “America has traveled a path that has seen the lethal nuisance originally presented by Sunni militants transformed into an existential threat that is poised to strike at the core of our social and civil institutions in a way that could change our collective lifestyle for many decades, perhaps forever.” If there is “a place worse than hell in 2008,” he adds, “Americans are now in it.”

Mr. Scheuer also wrote Imperial Hubris (published 2004, under byline “Anonymous”), which self thinks would be an exceedingly interesting read.

In other news: Bernanke cuts interest rates again (in order to forestall “market correction,” aka “recession” — which, by the way, self thinks is already here), and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s unassailable (it was thought) reputation is beginning to show some mighty big cracks.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

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Quote of the Day: Another Student Paper

March 18, 2008 at 4:37 am (Quotes, Surprises, Voices)

The winter after 9/11, self was a guest professor in the Creative Writing Program at xxxxxx University. She devised a writing exercise to tap into students’ emotions about the attacks. Imagine her surprise when self’s proposal was met with exceeding scorn by the students: They said, What a cliché! Can’t you come up with a better prompt for a writing exercise than that?

Because self is quite tenacious (if not stubborn), she resolved from then on that she would never, ever stop bringing up the World Trade Center in class.

This quarter, self has her students in xxxx community college write their last paper for the quarter on an event that marked their lives. Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly, since self did show “United 93″ in class a few weeks ago), about half chose to write about the World Trade Center attacks. Here’s the big difference in the two classes: The students in self’s Creative Writing class at xxxxxx university were almost all white. The ones at xxxx community college are mostly non-white, and over half are new, first-generation immigrants.

Tonight (while watching “Project Runway” — was there ever a more glaring example of situational irony?), she reads a paper from a student whose family immigrated from Bolivia. This boy can really write. It took him only a few years to master English. Here are his words, words that seared self, almost as much as the image of Ying’s blindness:

So the terrorist attacks did much more damage to our country than the actual destruction of the buildings themselves and the death of thousands. The events of September 11 caused a wave of misplaced hatred and ignorance that infiltrated our communities, because of the paranoia and the fear that the attacks spread throughout our nation.

The essay continues for two more pages. Read the rest of this entry »

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