September 16, 2019 at 1:32 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Family, Links, Memoirs, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, essay, fiction, flash fiction, Just published, Literary Magazines, memoirs, Mondays
From the Introduction by Grace Loh Prasad:
A hand or patch over one eye. A rainbow flag. A kneeling athlete. An eggplant emoji. A thumb pointing down.
What do these have in common? They are all symbols, representing something more than what is literally pictured. A symbol is a kind of sign — at its simplest, a unit of meaning. Whether they’re labels for places or ideas, indicators of prestige or health, or warnings of what’s ahead, signs operate at a level deeper than language. A sign is like a boat, but instead of water it navigates through meaning, through a shared set of references within a community.
Read the rest of the introduction, here.
Stay tuned.
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July 24, 2019 at 2:10 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Filipino Writers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Calyx Press, flash fiction, prose poetry, San Francisco
Kristine appeared in Going Home to a Landscape: a Filipino Women’s Anthology, co-edited by self and Virginica Cerenio (Calyx Press). From the moment self first came across the piece in the submissions pile, she fell in love. This is an ace piece of writing, one that straddles prose and poetry, and is so achingly poignant.
Where is Shirley Ancheta now? Self doesn’t know. She hopes she is well.
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 she was kissing a boy in the dark, in the 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 slippers across the yard. “No do dat wit your cah-sun! 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.
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July 21, 2019 at 5:36 am (Books, destinations, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Places, Recommended, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, English writers, Kepler's, memoir, Menlo Park, novel, restaurants, Saturday, summer
Bookstores are fine places.
Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park: That woman is very wisely dressed.
Staff Picks, Kepler’s Books
More Staff Picks! Leanne Shapton’s mother is Pinay.
The order line at Café Borrone, around 10 a.m.
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July 10, 2019 at 1:38 am (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Literary Magazines, poetry, websites
Luisa Igloria In Her Kingdom
Excerpt from Passing Inspection (First posted in Via Negativa, 22 June 2019)
When my father’s only sister migrated to East
Lansing, Michigan forty years ago, she hand-carried
the x-ray film of her lungs in a large brown Manila
envelope, as proof she didn’t have tuberculosis
or any other malignant respiratory condition
that in the US CDC should be aware of. She came
back to visit only thrice; we never saw her again,
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April 13, 2019 at 11:43 pm (Artists and Writers, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Saturday, short story, The New Yorker
- Once upon a time, I was addicted to a salon.
— First Line, All Will Be Well, in the 11 March 2019 New Yorker
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March 18, 2019 at 4:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, essays, history, nonfiction, Salon.com, San Francisco
Love Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. Reading the essays in it painstakingly slowly.
Gary Kamiya was one of the founders of Salon.com (still going strong!). An ex-fellow Fellow from Stanford, Jim Paul, used to write for them. As did Chitra Divakaruni. As did Laura Miller. As did Heather Havrilesky.
Self is on Essay # 5, The Harbor at the End of the World:
A 1508 map by Johannes Ruysch depicts South America as the New World, with Asia in the place where North America actually is.
Private beach access for this homeowner along the Mendocino coast
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 25, 2019 at 12:28 am (Books, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, favorites, nonfiction, San Francisco, science writing
- Hundreds of giant bison, weighing two tons and standing more than eight feet high, headed through the Golden Gate on their seasonal migration, next to the roaring river . . . At the top of the food chain stood the American lion and the short-faced bear.
— from The Alcatraz Triangle, Ch. 3 of Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco
San Francisco, Viewed From Point Richmond: February 2015
View of the Mendocino Headlands from Main Street
Tomorrow, straight to the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 24, 2019 at 6:14 pm (Books, destinations, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Sundays, Surprises)
Tags: Asian American Writers, discoveries, history, nonfiction, San Francisco
The oldest skeleton found in the City is that of a female, unearthed during excavation for the Civic Center BART station in 1969, dating to about 5,000 years ago.
— from Cool Gray City of Love, Chapter 3: The Alcatraz Triangle
Fourth Sunday of February 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 5, 2019 at 8:56 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Filipino Writers, Memoirs, Publishers, Relatives, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, grief, illness, Mayor of the Roses, medicine, memoir, memories, Miami University Press, short story, teaching, writing process
For the workshop this weekend, re-reading some old stories to show different ways of writing memoir. In particular, thinking of a story called Lenox Hill, December 1991, which Jessica Hagedorn included in the anthology Charlie Chan is Dead.
When Jessica contacted self to solicit a piece, self had nothing, nothing, nothing.
Her sister had died just the month before. She did keep a diary, though.
The diary became the story. The first story in what later become a cycle of grief stories: Mayor of the Roses (Miami University Press)
For a while, a course called Ethics in Medicine, taught at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, included the story in their syllabus.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 3, 2019 at 5:38 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Filipino Writers, Publishers, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, experimental, Literary Magazines, science fiction, short story, writing process
Yesterday, someone on Twitter posted a question to the Asian American writing community: share your 2018 achievements. Self’s response began with: “I am an experimental science fiction writer.” Which she’s sure had people scratching their heads.
To explain what she meant by “experimental science fiction writer”, here’s an excerpt from a story that Quarterly West published in Issue #89. The story takes place in a classroom of the future. The narrator is a boy named Dragon who is NOT a dragon. The professor, who really IS turning into a lizard, is named Fire Lizard. The other characters are Drinker, Knot, and Big. Big’s just gone missing.
Drinker says, low, “Big passed.”
I answer: “Fucker. Big’s not Big. He’s Big XXX. Mark it.” I slash three quick XXX’s across my screen. Knot looks to the side quickly, then glances down.
“The All-Powerful, the Everlasting,” I start to sing, lowly.
Drinker shudders, pulls slightly out of his seat.
“You!” Fire Lizard screams, pointing at Drinker. “What’s your issue?”
“Obscure,” Drinker mutters.
Fire Lizard’s eyes seem to bug out of his head. “Who remembers rain?” he shouts. “Last rain? Who remembers?”
I hold up my hand. “Ghost of,” I say. “243 days since.”
Self would like to take this opportunity to express her gratitude to Quarterly West for taking a chance and accepting this story. It’s wild, it’s crazy, it’s not easy to understand. But did she ever have fun writing it.
Stay tuned.
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