March 18, 2013 at 5:00 am (anthologies, Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, California, Events, Just published, lists, Readings, Sundays
Just heard about this from the fabulous Donna Miscolta. Self is going, for sure!
Come to the launch for the 3rd of the Heyday series on New California Writing, edited by Gayle Wattawa and Kirk Glaser: New California Writing 2013: Shifts and Rifts.
When: Thursday, Apr. 11, 6 to 8:30 pm
Where: California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco
Tickets: $5 general admission, $20 book + admission
6 p.m. reception will have free tacos, beer and wine!
Readings begin at 6:30. Featured readers: Jodi Angel, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Elizabeth Creely, Chieun “Gloria” Kim, David Mas Masumoto, Zara Raab, Greg Sarris, Stephen Gutierrez, Robert Hass, Kevin Hearle, Sylvia Linsteadt, Donna Miscolta, Juan Velasco Moreno, Keenan Norris
The official announcement is here.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 14, 2013 at 5:29 pm (Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, causes, conferences, humor, indulgences, Keanu Reeves, Literary Magazines, short story, teaching, Timothy Olyphant
Self knows she spotlighted The AALR already, but one can never have too much of a good thing.
She is so admiring of the tireless energy of its editors. They are now trying to get more people overseas to know about Asian American writers. Bravo!
Kindly hook up with Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis, Gerald Maa, or Cathy J. Shlund-Vials (English and Asian American Studies, University of Connecticut). Cathy will be at the upcoming AAS conference, April 17- 20, in Seattle.
Here’s the beginning of self’s story “Homeopathy,” which was in AALR Vol. 3, Issue 1 (Spring 2012):
On Friday I return from my trip. Laundry is still in the dryer, a jumble of clothes. The food I’d bought before I left is still in the fridge, though the radishes are pockmarked with green fuzz and the potatoes are growing roots. The man sits on the sofa, smoking a cigarette.
Has he even known I was gone? I can’t be sure. Perhaps I’m an alien, teleported into his life.
On TV, Speed is showing. It’s the scene where Dennis Hopper talks to Keanu Reeves and tells him, “Do not attempt to grow a brain.”
Finally, self has succeeded in getting the finest words in the English language into a story!
KEANU REEVES. KEANU REEVES. KEANU REEVES.
But that was so years ago. Now self must figure out a way to get these words into a story:
TIMOTHY OLYPHANT. TIMOTHY OLYPHANT. TIMOTHY OLYPHANT.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 10, 2013 at 6:43 am (anthologies, Books, Places, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, San Francisco, Saturdays, short pieces, under-appreciated
Union Square, San Francisco (View From the Top Floor of Macy’s)
KRISTINE
by Shirley Ancheta
Kristine turns a corner in San Francisco and is struck by an oncoming car. She is floating, she thinks, in the air with the seagulls. Her teeth ache. A man steps up to her and says, “Dear God, I’m sorry. What can I do?” What? She thinks he has said, “Desire . . . here . . . what will you do?” The only man she wants to reach is married or dead or related to her. She smiles. She can’t remember.
She thought he was kissing a boy in the dark, in back of the house near the pineapple field. His hands could hold down a pig for the killing. They were caught by their grandmother who threw her slipper across the yard. “No do dat wit your cah-sin! Wassamaddah you kids? You no feel shame o’ what? No good fo’ cah-sins fo’ make li’ dat!”
It is cold on the pavement of Stockton and Pine. The wind is enough to pick up Kristine’s skirt. She rolls her head from side to side. As someone puts a blanket on her, she hears a siren rising to meet the ringing in her ears.
After they butchered the pig, they hosed down the concrete of pig guts and urine. He had held a pan to catch the blood after Uncle had slit the pig’s throat. She had stirred the blood with a metal spoon until it became foamy then thick with the odor of vinegar.
Was it desire that made her straddle him later, or was it his desire that brought the tips of her breasts into his mouth? Did they finish before Grandma saw them or after?
“Hello,” says the man who opens her eyes and lets the light in. “Do you know where you are?”
Kristine wants to say the name on her tongue. If she closes her eyes, a warm rain will come. Kunia Village, Kunia Village. This is the place she is.
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March 7, 2013 at 7:16 am (anthologies, Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Calyx Press, poetry
View From Rooftop Terrace, L’Fisher Chalet, Bacolod
An excerpt from “No Sleep” by Catalina Cariaga
Moonlight fills our bedroom
through slats of open blinds.
The brightness of ninety-nine horizontal candles
reveals your expectant smile.
Don’t touch my breasts
while I’m reading.
You knew I was a writer
when you married me.
The brightness of ninety-nine horizontal candles
reveals your expectant smile.
I wake up suddenly
to re-read a poem I’ve written earlier.
You knew I was a writer
when you married me,
And my aunties like to talk about that interval of time
before we married they call, “courting.”
* * * *
An excerpt from my father has stopped eating
by Virginia Cerenio
I.
my father has stopped eating.
at 96 years
he has lost his appetite, he says
his favorite foods have no taste.
the french fries grow cold
in their grease-stained box.
the donuts lay on the plate
eating air in their staleness.
the coffee, creamed & sugared,
only a chaste sip.
my father has stopped eating.
he has lost his appetite, he says
and is ready to die
any time now
but God will not let him.
instead father grows gaunt.
his brown skin, stretched
tight across his cheekbones
mottled with sun kisses.
my father has stopped eating.
i remember our evening snacks
shared like a secret between us two.
buttered toast with maple syrup or sprinkled sugar
fresh sliced peaches heaped in a bowl with milk and sugar.
just last year, he brought me alamang
shrimp paste sautéed with garlic and eggs.
we finished off the leftover rice
with fried Spam
eating until we could eat no more
each bite another memory swallowed into the past.
II.
my father has stopped eating.
a Filipino who no longer thinks of the next meal
is either insane or close to death.
we look for excuses to share a meal.
you cannot understand us
until we have shared rice together.
to turn down food is an insult to our brown souls.
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February 25, 2013 at 3:34 pm (anthologies, Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers, Zack)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, essays, Filipino writers, Mondays, novel, poetry, science fiction, short story, speculative fiction, travel
Self still lost in the thickets of son’s room. But the end is in sight!
The number of books on the 2nd shelf above son’s desk: 47
1079 + 47 = 1126 Total Books Counted Thus Far
Some of the titles: The Father, a poetry collection by Sharon Olds; 50 Stories From Israel: An Anthology, edited by Zisi Stavi; The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene; 100 Cases That Every Scots Law Student Needs to Know, edited by W. Green; Drive-By Vigils, by R. Zamora Linmark; Pinoy Capital: The Filipino Nation in Daly City, by Benito M. Vergara, Jr.; The Best American Travel Writing 2011, edited by Sloane Crosley (“Treason only matters when it is committed by trusted men.”); Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively, by Rebecca McClanahan; Winterbirth: The Godless World, Book One, by Brian Ruckley (This one self picked up in a bookstore in Edinburgh); If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly: Poems, by Simeon Dumdum, Jr.
Here’s a short passage from Winterbirth:
The great column was led by a hundred or more mounted warriors. Many bore wounds, still fresh from the lost battle on the fields by Kan Avor; all bore, in their red-rimmed eyes and wan skin, the marks of exhaustion. Behind them came the multitude: women, children and men, though fewest of the last. Thousands of widows had been made that year.
It was a punishing exodus. Their way was paved with hard rock and sharp stones that cut feet and turned ankles. There could be no pause. Any who fell ill were seized by those who came behind, hauled upright with shouts of encouragement, as if noise alone could put strength back into their legs. If they could not rise, they were left. There were already dozens of buzzards and ravens drifting lazily above the column. Some had followed it all the way up the Glas valley from the south; others were residents of the mountains, drawn from their lofty perches by the promise of carrion.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 4, 2013 at 6:04 pm (Links, Recommended)
Tags: Asian American Writers, lists, Literary Magazines, reviews
How does a literary magazine survive? Self at one time had high ambitions: She thought she’d like to edit one. Then she realized how much time she’d have to give up. Time she could spend writing, or traveling, or growing a garden, or writing her friends (or, now, blogging), or cooking, or walking her dog, or cleaning up, or getting organized, or watching movies, or exercising.
Today she’d like to honor the people who put out The Asian American Literary Review.
Have you seen it, dear blog readers? It is so substantial, so hefty, it is easily twice the size of Ploughshares, or the Paris Review. And the editors, Lawrence Minh Bui Davis and Gerald Maa, not satisfied with this vast labor, still organize symposiums in conjunction with other entities, like last April’s tie-in with the National Portrait Gallery. And they are so humble. And open to new ideas. And always coming up with thought-provoking themed issues.
The Winter 2012 issue is on “Portraiture.”
Among the writers featured are: Luisa Igloria, Brian Ascalon Roley, Lillian Howan, and Brian Komei Dempster. There are interviews of Gary Snyder by Shawna Yang Ryan, and of Garrett Hongo by Michael Collier.
There are reviews of books like My Postwar Life: New Writings from Japan and Okinawa, edited by Elizabeth McKenzie, and No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems, by Liu Xiaobo.
Buy the issue here, or take out a subscription. You won’t regret it, dear blog readers.
Stay tuned.
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January 27, 2013 at 6:33 am (Links, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, bargains, Filipino writers, invitations, Just published, novellas, short story collections, The Lost Language
And here’s the link, dear blog readers!
It’s very experimental storytelling.
And it’s available FREE for a very limited time (NOT! You waited too long! Now you have to pay $2.99!)
If anyone is interested in reviewing Jenalyn or The Lost Language (more about this collection, below), please contact self so that she can send you review copies!
* * * *
And here’s something else: Because The Lost Language, self’s third collection of short stories, was published by a Philippine press, Anvil, it hasn’t been readily available here in the States. Self has told many people that, if they should chance to be in the Philippines, they should drop by their local National Bookstore or Powerbooks and pick up a copy there. That, or have a visiting relative bring over a copy.
But self has just discovered that Linda Nietes of Philippine Expressions (L.A.-based long-time purveyor of Filipiniana) gets a monthly shipment of books from the Philippines, so if you want a copy, all you need to do is e-mail her at:
linda@philippineexpressions.com
She has a Paypal account.
When self’s first book, Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila, was published, it was Linda Nietes who organized the launch in L.A. And she has done the same for untold numbers of Filipino and Filipino American writers. Really, self cannot thank her enough!
Stay tuned.
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January 21, 2013 at 8:07 am (anthologies, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Plays, Recommended, Women Writers, Zack)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, historical fiction, novel, poetry
Still with the book tabulation project. Still counting books, still in son’s room (which she’s filling with her own books, spreading like an amoeba)
The top shelf of a bookcase in son’s room has 45 books.
799 + 45 = 844 Total Books Counted So Far
Books on this self include: Living to Tell the Tale, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Cheng Lok Chua; The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne; The Evolution of a Sigh, by R. Zamora Linmark; Filipino Woman Writing: Home and Exile in the Autobiographical Narratives of Ten Writers, edited by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo (Chapter 1: Writing and Re-writing the Self, begins: “In this country, autobiographical writing is not quite recognized as a literary genre.”); When the Elephants Dance, by Tess Uriza Holthe; Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar (Browsing through, self really likes a piece by John Yau, In the Fourth Year of the Plague, that begins “Oil began dripping from the black and violet clouds bunched together near the top of the back stairs.” And, as well, a beautiful poem on Baguio: “Hill Station,” by Luisa A. Igloria); The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston; Black Robe, by Brian Moore; Homebody/ Kabul, a play by Tony Kushner.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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December 27, 2012 at 3:16 am (anthologies, Books, Filipino Writers, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, Calyx Press, Cebu, Filipino writers, Japan, novel, poetry, short story collections
449 + 53 = 502 Total Books Tallied So Far
Self is now starting on the second bookcase in the dining room (Let’s see how long she can keep this up!). Titles on this shelf include:
The Illustrated Sherlock Holmes Treasury; The Ophelia Dimalanta Reader: Selected Prose, vol. 2; The World of the Shining Prince, by Ivan Morris; When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard; Exactly Here, Exactly Now, by Nadine L. Sarreal; Deep Light: New and Selected Poems, 1987 – 2007, by Rebecca McClanahan; Blood and Soap: Stories, by Linh Dinh; The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience, by Lillian Faderman with Ghia Xiong; ERAPtion: How to Speak English Without Really Trial, by Emil P. Jurado and Reli L. German; Life of Pi, by Yann Martel; Birthmark: Poems, by Jon Pineda; The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women’s Anthology, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Mayumi Tsutakawa, and Margarita Donnelly (Managing Editor); Oregon Handbook, 2nd edition, by Stuart Warren & Ted Long Ishikawa (part of the excellent Moon Handbook Travel Series); The Cebu We Know, edited by Erma M. Cuizon
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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December 25, 2012 at 7:41 pm (anthologies, Books, Filipino Writers, Holidays, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Weather)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, Christmas, Doreen Fernandez, Filipino writers, lists, poetry, short story, speculative fiction
Merry Christmas, dear blog readers!
It is raining again.
But so what. Self likes the rain. As long as it doesn’t come with high winds. Like, this morning, self was even able to go outside without a poncho and plant a new begonia. Getting wet now and then is very good for the soul.
Onward with the book tabulation!
Self is now starting with the second bookcase in the dining room. This is the one right underneath the Santi Bose painting, “The White Room.” There are 21 books in this area.
428 + 21 = 449 total of books catalogued thus far
Books in this section include: The Translator’s Diary, by Jon Pineda; The Art of the Novel, by Milan Kundera; Another Kind of Paradise: Short Stories From the New Asia-Pacific, edited by Trevor Carolan (Self’s story “Lizard” is in here); Philippine Speculative Fiction IV: Literature of the Fantastic, edited by Dean Francis Alfar and Nikki Alfar (Among the authors: Maryanne Moll, Charles Tan, Apol Lejano-Massebieau); Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, edited by Carolyn Forché; Palayok, by Doreen Fernandez; My Shining Archipelago: Poems by Talvikki Ansel
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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