Talking with My Friend & Colleague, Jolie Sheffer, about Mixed-Race/Hapa Identity in Writing, Marginalized Voices, Hypertext, & the Question of Likeability for the BG Ideas Podcast
My very first podcast, where I chat with my friend & colleague, Jolie Sheffer, about the role of mixed-race identity in fiction, the question of likeability in literature, and my two texts, AMNESIA OF JUNE BUGS & DUKKHA, MY LOVE for the BG Ideas Podcast at the Institute for Cultural Studies at Bowling Green
Read MoreMy craft essay, “The Cult of Likeability,” is now up at TriQuarterly
Read MoreThis morning I learned that my craft essay, “The Cult of Likeability (or Why You Should Kill Your Literary Friendships)” was accepted for publication in TriQuarterly.
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A new litmus test for APIA literary fiction
Like the Bechdel Test, these ten rules are not intended to be the final word on any work by, from, or about Asian American literature, but rather, should be treated as the first critical lens that readers (can) use to call out and contest orientalism in publishing while also serving as a mandatory metric by which all readers (can) hold APIA writing accountable, as well as the presses that publish those works by and about us. The following test allows all of us to expect more of ourselves, of our readers, and of the publishing industry at large, but it is only a first step in a life of engaged reading.
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The Western canon has no objective nomination process, which is why it is both axiomatic and controversial. Literature written by (and often for) white writers is still treated as classic, crucial, and central to our literary archive, codifying a clear but tacit anglonormativity. But why have APIA voices been erased from the so-called “Great Books” for so long, and how should APIA writers respond to this longstanding erasure?
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The Sympathizer forces readers of Asian American Pacific Islander (APIA) literary fiction to reconsider our own craft dogma and ask questions about the value of literary didacticism all over again: when is didactic literature useful, even necessary, and what purposes can it serve in our society as art, historiography, and also racial, cultural, and moral education?
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Where literary and cultural analysis get a face lift
I got the great news recently that I'll be blogging for Ploughshares for 2017, focusing on APIA literature, gender constructions, and video games as literature, among other things.
I agonize over my own workshop pedagogy now that the mic is in my hand. This agony comes partially from memory: I remember the completely avoidable trauma I experienced in my own MFA program as a hapa fiction writer whose racial and cultural legibility was confusing at best and dismissed at worst.
Read MoreMatthew Salesses runs and directs an awesome column at Pleiades about workshop craft and workshop pedagogy and I'm happy to say that my essay "The Velocity of Flying Objects" about my own workshop methodology will be published soon on the magazine's website. Stay tuned.
Bryan Hurt
My Interview with the hilarious and talented fiction writer Bryan Hurt (who is both a friend and a classmate of mine from SC) was published today at Full Stop. In some ways, it's less of an interview (which tends to be stuffy, formal, and intellectually demonstrative in like an annoying way) and more of a playful conversation I could easily have had with Bryan one random night at a swanky wine bar or something in DTLA. As far as "interviews" go, this one has a great flow to it I think.