It’s just a flirtation at this point, but LB and I have talked seriously several times now about moving to . . .
Read MoreProtecting this Delicate Thing Called Hope
So much of writing for me is sitting my ass down and writing, even when I don't want to. I have really good discipline. I can write for fifteen hours straight sometimes, and then revise and edit for days and weeks afterwards. The hardest part of writing I can do and have done since my first workshop back in 2002. The other crucial part of writing for me involves psychological and emotional maintenance (aka self-care), which is just as important. Normally, self-care for me means not only exercising, meditating, getting enough sleep, eating well, and going on dates with LB every week, but also ignoring my own negative thinking and putting myself out there again and again (even when it feels POINTLESS) and not getting discouraged (even when NOTHING is happening), which has been particularly difficult this summer.
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Being Part of the Hapa Project
I volunteered to have my picture taken for Kip Fulbeck's 2017-2018 photographic project known as Hapa Me, not knowing whether my picture (which for the record, I don't love) would be included in the 2018 collection. I received an email a few months later telling me that I was either in the installation or in the book, or both. The suspense was killing me.
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A new litmus test for APIA literary fiction
(My) Ten Rules for APIA, Asian American, and Hapa 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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Alternate title: "Male Characters in Search of Female Characters who Can Force them to Get out of their Daily Routine and Finally Evolve"
Essay about Murakami's Men Without Women Published in Ploughshares
Men Without Women is a familiar, easily identifiable, and oddly comforting book for the Murakami reader, privileging the emotional landscape of lonely Japanese men through scaffolding characterization, personal idiosyncrasy, and monkey-wrench narratives instead of dramatic Hollywood plot lines, food porn, or cultural didacticism.
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Guernica Daily 17 August 2016
Lyrical Essay Published in Guernica
There was a flower arrangement to our entrées, a harmony of light and darkness inside the dining room, a small ceremony for the chilled chickpeas and sun-dried tomatoes, crisp Arugula salads, haunting ginger slices and incinerating Thai soups, that was uniquely Japanese in spirit and decor
Read More1st Piece Accepted in 2016
I got the good news recently that my flash fiction piece "Living in the Future," which is part of my short story collection Atlas of Tiny American Desires, was accepted in the literary journal Arts & Letters and will be appearing in either the Fall 2016 or Spring 2017 issue. Nothing like a short story acceptance to keep my spirits up.
Freedom, Vacation, and Compulsion
Compared to my friends on the tenure track, my deal isn't as sweet, but compared to my friends suffering through the adjunctification of academia, my life is pretty damn good. So, I finished reading and grading 60 final portfolios two days ago after reading 60 advocacy projects the week before, which means I'm now free until classes start in the fall. That's to say, I'm fucking free for a few months!
Last summer, I made the colossal mistake of playing it by ear, which got me dropped in a wormhole. One minute I was playing video games obsessively on my PS4 without a care in the world, spending my free time mindlessly like a rich baron, then my fam came up for a long weekend, then LB's fam came from Chicago, then LB and I went to Scandinavia, and then the next thing I knew, my summer vacay was fucking gone. Suddenly, I was psychologically preparing myself for another year of teaching, my first paid summer just a tiny dot in my rear-view mirror. This summer, I vow (strong word, I know, but I mean it) to not let this summer slip by. Yes, I'll sleep in and enjoy my time off like a profligate Beverly Hills lawyer watering his lawn obsessively but this time I want to find a good compromise between wasting the summer away and scheduling the shit out of it.
These are my goals for this summer:
1. Play the second and third Unchartered Remastered Nate Drake games and remember why I was once so obsessed with Indiana Jones as a kid (well, minus the Temple of Doom, that one totally sucked)
2. Play Final Fantasy X-II in time for the epic release of Final Fantasy XV that was supposed to come out like ten years ago
3. Finally play Raymond Legends (it's been in my wishlist for years now)
4. Begin working on my second LP, which will be mostly post-rock instrumental music (piano, strings, and some beats)
5. Since LB and I will be back in Vienna this summer for a few days, I'd like to study German this summer
6. Study 日本語
7. Run three times a week, lift weights twice a week, and possibly (but not realistically) take a spinning class
8. If a manuscript of mine gets accepted for publication soon inshallah, then revise that for much of the summer first and foremost (still waiting to hear back from a few presses). Either way, revise my manuscripts and work on my third novel
9. Submit short stories and lyrical essays to journals
10. Invest in my wardrobe some more because you know, I don't already have enough excuses to buy shit online (or enough button downs, for that matter)
11. Meditate regularly
12. Stop going to be bed at 4 in the morning
13. Get some new ink on my right arm
14. Blog more often
15. Read the complete graphic novel series about the Shōwa period by Shigeru Mizuki
16. Read 1-2 books by Susan Sontag
17. Read another novel by Zadie Smith
18. Read another novel by Salman Rushdie
19. (Re)-read one "big book" this summer: the choices are DFW's Infinite Jest, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, Ulysses by James Joyce, or Underworld by Don Delillo.
20. Finally read Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist
21. I know this is a stereotypical LA thing to do, but maybe whiten my teeth because I drink so much fucking tea, it's ridiculous
22. Stop making so many damn lists . . ..