June 7, 2021 at 9:25 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Filipino Writers, Recommended, short story collections, Surprises, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: COVID Reading, Mondays, reading lists, summer, superstition
Superior’s retired miners talk about “tommyknockers,” phantoms they encountered in the mine. Sometimes it was just a sensation — something you felt on your body, or a presence nearby. A Magma miner named John Sixsmith told friends he saw white boots, walking around without a body.
— Chapter Six, Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West
What an unusual book this is. It’s a book about the Southwest, and a book about mines, and it also has artwork — very simple illustrations (by the author) of her interview subjects. Self finds the art (and the text) very moving. Self just found out that the author received a MacArthur “genius” grant. (Also, her copy is overdue at the Library. Please, nobody out her, she’s having to cope with so many things right now; she snatches reading time in between keeping herself awake with coffee and Coke)
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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February 17, 2021 at 12:09 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Events, Readings, short story, short story collections
Nine more days till the Redwood City Library online reading for ms. aligned volume 3! (Thursday, Feb. 25, 5:30 p.m. – 6:45 p.m. PST) Much thanks to the library outreach staff, who gave us the slot and prepared beautiful flyers. And much thanks to series editor Pat Matsueda for coming up with the idea of a series focused on women writing about men.
Super-excited. Register here.
One of the readers on Feb. 25 is Donna Lee Miele. Self has just finished re-reading her fantastic story, “Crocodile Teeth.” From her Contributor Bio in ms. aligned 3:
- Donna Lee Miele plays with characters, settings, and conflicts that evoke her mixed heritage and her parents’ experiences of war. While she also writes historical fiction, she finds greater freedom to explore (and greater fun) in stories with less concise settings, which was her intention with “Crocodile Teeth.”
An excerpt:
I was scared of Edward’s sister. After Edward’s parents got lost looking for work upriver, she took over their grandma’s house like she’d just been waiting for the chance. She bullied Edward, she bullied their grandma, and she even bullied the guys that started hanging around, who offered everything from repairs to the wornout old house to actual money for the chance to date her. They thought she’d be easy because she and Edward were orphans. She didn’t even pretend to be nice to them. She had a look so cold she could make the bag shrivel between your legs.
If you were one of those guys, and you tried to come up on her grandma’s veranda, she would stand on its edge, look down on you, and say something like, “Take yourself to the beach and remember me to your family,” meaning Last Beach, though even she wouldn’t say that right out. Last Beach is full of whores of every kind; and every one of them, of course, is someone’s family.
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February 7, 2021 at 11:22 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers)
Tags: causes, essay, Events, Readings, teaching
There’s still almost an hour before the game begins, so self can squeeze in a few more things. Self’s quote of the day is from Rebecca Thomas, Editor of ms. aligned 3: women writing about men. (Published by El Leon Literary Arts of Berkeley and Manoa Books)
For the past nine years, I have been teaching composition at West Virginia University. I primarily teach freshmen, and one of their first papers is a narrative. In so many of the narratives, students — of all genders — explore issues connected to masculinity, in particular the effects of toxic masculinity. I receive papers about abusive relationships in high school, peer pressure to act a certain way, loneliness in emotionally connecting with peers, and the very real risk and fallout from coming out. My students are young, so it’s natural that they write about their childhood, the childhood moments where they begin to construct their identity. In our class discussions and in their reflections, I see so many grappling with the concept of masculinity. How did it shape their life? How will it shape their life as they journey into adulthood?
In this Me Too era, it’s hard not to think about masculinity and how it can be toxic. Working on a college campus, I know that many of my students have been assaulted. I know that many of them are trying to find the space to talk about it, and I know that many of them are starting to test the waters of self-acceptance, to see if it’s safe to be who they are. Since I am the mother of two young boys, toxic masculinity is something that I have to consider constantly: how do we raise our children in this environment? What conversations do I need to have with my kids?
Contributors to ms. aligned 3, and series editor Pat Matsueda, will be on-hand at an online event hosted by Redwood City Library. Register here.
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February 6, 2021 at 1:38 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Events, Fridays, Readings, Redwood City, short story
ms aligned 3 is a collaboration between El Léon Literary Arts (Berkeley, CA) and Manoa Books, Hawai’i. More information can be found here.
Upcoming Online Event: Redwood City Library Reading, Thursday, Feb. 25, 5:30 p.m. – 6:45 p.m. Register here.
“Daniel attempted to lead me; I tried to lead him. We struggled. I pushed him on the shoulder; he pushed me back. I kicked him in the shin. Hunching, he grabbed my right hand in both of his and bit me hard.”
— Excerpt from Angela Nishimoto’s “Sex Education: A Tragicomedy, Part II” in ms aligned 3
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February 1, 2021 at 9:51 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, COVID Reading, Events, Mondays, Readings, short story
My whole life I’ve been a model of responsibility and good sense, and you know what? It’s not a recipe for joy. I follow the rules. I never eat more than half a bowl of rice because I’m diabetic, although lately I allow myself a small bowl of red bean soup, or a tiny piece of cheesecake, no bigger than two fingers. I deserve to live a little, don’t I?
— “Teddy” by Grace Loh Prasad, Ms Aligned 3, edited by Rebecca Thomas
Grace Loh Prasad was born in Taiwan and raised in New Jersey and Hong Kong before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and is an alumna of the VONA Workshop for writers of color along with residencies at Hedgebrook and the Ragdale Foundation. Her piece, “Unfinished Translation,” is in the new issue of Khora.
Grace will be reading with contributors to Ms Aligned in an on-line event hosted by the Redwood City Library on Thursday, Feb. 25 at 5:30 p.m. – 6:45 p.m.
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January 31, 2021 at 7:24 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Links, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Events, opportunities, Readings, Redwood City
Dear blog readers:
Here’s your chance to listen to some of the contributors to Ms Aligned 3: Women Writing About Men!
Online reading February 25 for the Redwood City Library, 5:30 p.m. – 6:45.
Here are just a few of the lovely authors who will be reading:
Pat Matsueda (Series Editor) * Lillian Howan * Donna Lee Miele * Angela Nishimoto * Cassandra Lane * Jill McCabe Johnson * Rachel King * Ryan Nicole Granados * Grace Loh Prasad
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December 28, 2020 at 5:55 pm (Books, Conversations, Family, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, COVID Reading
Son say:
When I grow up, I’m going to be David Letterman.
Daughter say:
I’m going to be an immigration lawyer.
Son now vice president in bank. Daughter immigration lawyer. They happy. I happy, of course. Make everything worth it. How come I depress?
— Story # 1 in The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, by Caroline Kim
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December 24, 2020 at 7:19 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Links, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, COVID Reading, favorites, wisdom
Who say talking make life better?
from Mr. Oh, Story # 1 in The Prince of Mournful Thoughts: Stories, by Caroline Kim
Caroline Kim was born in South Korea. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award, and an MA in fiction from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow.
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December 23, 2020 at 9:19 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Holidays, Personal Bookshelf, plans, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, interviews, literary awards, short story, writing process
Dear blog readers, are you in for a treat.
Caroline Kim, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and currently on the Long List for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, has agreed to share with self her process for writing a short story.
The story we’ll be parsing is Mr. Oh, the first story in the collection. Among other things, self will be asking her why this story came first. Or, put another way, how does she decide the order in which to put her stories?
Caroline’s answers to self’s questions will be posted next week. But read her story first. Read her collection, the entire collection. If you think of any questions, you can leave comments here, and self will pass on to Caroline.
So excited! SQUEEEE!!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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December 10, 2020 at 3:49 pm (Books, Conversations, Family, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: beagles, book lists, COVID Reading, grief, memories, reading lists
Self knows what she feels most like writing from the kind of books she chooses to read. There was a year she read only travel books. Travel books by women. Two years ago, she decided to read books written on, or about, islands.
Hard to say what the theme was for her 2020 reading. In the early part, she read a lot of science fiction. Towards the end, she read some great books about American politics: Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, by Larry Tye (Five Stars), and Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy, by Edward Ball.
She stayed up all night reading Megan Mayhew Bergman’s short story collection, Birds of a Lesser Paradise. (This was a year for really excellent short story collections: Caroline Kim’s The Prince of Mournful Thoughts, and Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory)
In the final story in Bergman’s collection, the main character’s dog has swallowed one of her socks. He’s done this before, the sock always works itself out. But this time, she’s not so lucky and ends up having to take the dog to the vet.
- I said we’d do anything, but I was worried we couldn’t afford to treat him. I knew his eyes would convince me to mortgage the house, become a one-car family, eat ramen noodles five days a week.
It reminds self of that time when her beagle, Gracie, went into seizures. Self found her one morning, tongue purple and hanging out of her mouth. She rushed her to the vet, and the vet said self would have to take her to a more equipped vet hospital. They would put her in intensive care: $1,500/day. And self decided, right then and there, that she couldn’t afford it. And she cried her heart out in the vet’s office, after calling son in Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (He did not want to put her down). They let her hold Gracie when they gave her the shot. Self was depressed, non-stop crying, for at least a month. That was one of the hardest decisions she’d had to make in her life (Gracie had cancer; new tumors kept popping up, in strange places: in her mouth, under her tail, in her breasts. A new tumor a week, by the end)
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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