Stone, Ink, Brush and Paper

Taiwanese American Artists for Typhoon Relief

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:51:00 +0000

[reposted from taiwaneseamerican.org]

Taiwanese American musicians and artists unite to benefit for efforts to relief the catastrophe caused by Typhone Morakot in Taiwan last week. This announcement came through via TaiwaneseAmerican.org. All proceeds made from these artists' events and merchandise sales until August 31 will go toward relief funds. YellowBuzz gives a shout-out to all artists and organizers involved in this benefit!

Taiwanese American Artists & Performers Contribute to Typhoon Relief Efforts!

As of Sunday, August 16th, the government has reported over a hundred deaths and countless injuries in Taiwan due to Typhoon Morakot. Our hearts go out to the many families suffering. Indeed there has been agitation and different emotions as more developments unfold in Taiwan, but we call on Taiwanese America to see this as a time to stand together as a global community.

Showing their true colors of generosity and compassion, many previously mentioned or highlighted artists on TaiwaneseAmerican.org have risen to the occasion! Until August 31st (or other mentioned dates), the following artists have offered to donate a percentage of all their sales to typhoon relief efforts. (Proceeds will be directed towards several of the coordinating organizations and charities that TaiwaneseAmerican.org has mentioned previously.) These artists are doing some amazing and interesting things within our community! Check them out and contribute to Taiwan relief by supporting them with purchases!

Alice Tong:
We last saw her performing and wowing the crowd at Tuesday Night Cafe in Los Angeles! What an amazing and soulful voice! Check out her April 22nd, 2009 Spotlight! http://taiwaneseamerican.org/2009/04/check-out-singer-songwriter-alice-tong.html

Purchase her CD "Small" on Blacklava at: http://tinyurl.com/qkmhgu
Check out her music at: http://www.myspace.com/alicetongmusic

Kelly Tsai:
We also saw Kelly spitting spoken fire in Los Angeles earlier this month. Check out Kelly's website at http://www.yellowgurl.com for your daily dose of wisdom and sass.

All the proceeds from any CD's and chapbooks bought on http://www.yellowgurl.com/store from now until Tuesday, August 18th to the Taiwan Relief Fund! Act fast!

Dawen Wang:
With exciting news of his long-awaited "American Me" CD Release Party on September 12th, Dawen has generously offered us a space where TaiwaneseAmerican.org T-shirts will be selling next to a venue-matched Taiwan Relief donation box. If you're in the Los Angeles area, check it out!

http://www.dawenwangmusic.com

Our July 13th, 2009 Spotlight on Dawen: http://spotlight.taiwaneseamerican.org/2009/07/conversation-with-singer-songwriter.html
Want something a bit more personal? Video interview with Dawen: http://vodpod.com/watch/1900267-conversation-with-dawen-wang

Abe Young:
Abe was quick to offer donations from sales from his thought-provoking and articulate book written as a conversation among three particular individuals. Humanity at Stake: On Why the World Should Now End China's MIlitary & Political Aggression, Understand Taiwan's Democracy, and Defend 23 Million Citizens' Human Right to Self-Determination is available on Amazon and on www.HumanityAtStake.com

Calista Wu:
Our June 10th, 2009 Spotlight, soulful and passionate singer Calista Wu debuted a wildly successful first EP "The Prologue" and didn't hesitate on giving back! Check out and purchase "The Prologue" from Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/nxnwf6

Calista's Spotlight: http://spotlight.taiwaneseamerican.org/2009_06_01_archive.html
http://www.calistawu.com
http://www.myspace.com/calistawu

Grace Lin:
The prolific and ever so talented children's book author of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is also donating portions of her book sales!
http://www.wherethemountainmeetsthemoon.com

She has many other books under her belt that look like perfect gifts for a loved one or younger friend that's starting to read! Head on over to IndieBooks for more information: http://tinyurl.com/mprt9j

She's donating a portion of sales of her lovely artwork collection at her store: http://www.cafepress.com/gracepacy

Johnny Hi-Fi:
Feel like rocking out and giving to a good cause? Eric Hsu, lead vocalist from Johnny Hi-Fi, has upped the ante and offered to donate $2 from each ticket, CD, and merchandise sale from two upcoming performances at the Taiwan Fest in Canada (Toronto on 8/29 and Vancouver on 9/7)!

If you're in the area, this is a great opportunity to give back and enjoy an amazing concert!

http://www.johnnyhifi.com

Jenton Lee:
For those that just want to donate by clicking, check out Jenton! A rising YouTube sensation, Jenton has entertained us with his vibrant, likable personality, keen vocals, and such songs like "Taiwanese Night Market".

Watch Jenton's performance of the song here-- donation based on the number of clicks: http://www.youtube.com/jenton#play/uploads/13/fQFxhakOnhM

http://www.jentonlee.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/jenton
http://www.thesixtyone.com/Jenton

Shawna Yang Ryan:
Author of the poetically-written and recently-published novel, Water Ghosts, Shawna is donating a portion of her book sales if you forward her your receipt by email. An easy way to do this is to buy your copy online before August 31st at: http://www.amazon.com/Water-Ghosts-Shawna-Yang-Ryan/dp/1594202079 then send an email to shawnayangryan@gmail.com. Tracking sales is not automatic, so don't forget to email!

Visit Shawna's Blog: http://shawnayangryan.blogspot.com

Karen Lin:
You've seen several of the works of music video producer and independent filmmaker Karen Lin, but she's so behind-the-scenes, you often don't know that she's behind some amazing videos out there. On the side, she's been working on some independent film productions, and her current project will be set in Taiwan. Buy a DVD copy of her first award-winning short film, Perfection, and she will donate 50% of the proceeds!

http://zuzufilms.com

Smash Your (Literary) Idols

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:52:00 +0000

When I was 21, I had a mini English major crisis when I found out T.S. Eliot was anti-semitic. I asked my creative writing prof if it would be--well, not quite un-ethical--but unseemly to keep loving "The Wasteland." Could I separate the man from the work? UC Berkeley in the mid to late 90s was a Foucault/Barthes/Derrida Lovefest (probably still is), and the fashionable route was think the author was dead, even if s/he was not dead. But T.S. Eliot was dead. However, I still can't read my favorite lines in all of poetry--

Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

--without thinking of...old anti-semitic Thomas Stearns (to be fair, in researching this post, there seems to be more recent disputes about these charges).

Anyway, I'm having T.S. Eliot flashbacks as I grapple with my admiration for Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose." It is a fictional account of the life of writer/frontier woman Mary Hallock Foote. The controversy is that he had unfettered access to her letters and included large chunks of them, unchanged and uncredited, in his novel.

The book is, without a doubt, structurally impressive, and flawlessly weaves the stories of two generations, and has a bit of metafiction that is also a fun surprise. But as someone who understands the work it takes to sift through historical documents for that one right detail, I wonder if he got an unfair shortcut, which would diminish my admiration of the skill and work it took to pull off such a rigorously detailed piece of historical fiction. And then there is the ethical problem of plagiarism, of course. If he had used huge excerpts and then acknowledged them as such, I would have thought that was pretty cool--mixing historical document with fiction. But there is no acknowledement in the book that this is based on her at all. The only acknowledgment reads:

My thanks to J.M and her sister for the loan of their ancestors. Though I have used many details of their lives and characters, I have not hesitated to warp both personalities and events to fictional needs. This is a novel which utilizes selected facts from their real lives. It is in no sense a family history.

In the pre-Google world, how would anybody know that this book was about Foote? Thus, in combination of his very liberal use of her letters, it's pretty sneaky.

Ironically, Foote's family was apparently more upset at the part of the book that deviated greatly from their ancestor's actual life--the fictional plot turn (not quite twist) that really solidifies the meaning of the book.

Despite my google research, I have not found anything that puts her letters side-by-side with his version of her letters, so I can't say definitively to what extent the book was plagiarized, and Stegner defenders still call bs on the whole accusation.

So last night, I was just about reconciled to the whole controversy, willing to just say "whatever," because the book as a whole is so artful, and there is no one to credit but Stegner for that, when I came across a quote from Gary Snyder as part as a hippie manifesto by one of the characters. In part:

If we are lucky we may eventually arrive at a totally integrated world culture with matrilineal descent, freeform marriage, natural-credit Communist economy, less industry, far less population, and lots more national parks.

Hmm, I thought. I'm pretty familiar with Snyder's work, and, except for the national parks line, it didn't sound much like him. It lacked the playfulness of a Snyder line, and it's uncharacteristically sloppy. But at least Stegner was crediting someone, right?

Ha! It turns out that Stegner made up the quote.

So now I am just irritated. He doesn't credit who he quotes, then credits fake quotes by real people. I just want to shake my Farrah Fawcet hair and snap my gum and ask, "What's up with that?"

Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:08:00 +0000

This is my #444 post--a very inauspicious number in Chinese culture ("four" sounds like "death") but if you add them up and add them up again, you end up with 3 (4 +4+4=12, 1+2=3), so let's go with the auspicious number three.

After my little respite in the woods, I've decided to retire the blog indefinitely. I'll put up occasional posts about events and readings, but otherwise, I'm going to try to take a break from interfacing with people via the web.

So perhaps I'll see you via email--or better yet--at the local bar?

Little House in the Big Woods

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:06:00 +0000

A little over a week ago, I was in New York, racing through the Met with my friend Jeffrey to check out the Francis Bacon exhibit before the museum closed, and then we headed downtown to meet his friends for drinks and then dinner at Schiller's, where, when we got the bill, I pointed out they had charged us for two carafes of wine and then was told, no, we drank two carafes of wine. I was just too wined up to notice.

And then, in about 36 hours, I went from that to a quiet cabin outside Nevada City, so far away from anything that it is "off the grid," that magical land of solar energy and well water (and an "outhouse," albeit a nice one) where on my first night I heard a little bear shushing itself against the side of the house. Well, it might have been a wild boar or any manner of large, furry, shushing-type snorting animal, as I was too scared to peek out to see, and I was bewildered by my dogs' lack of notice. They just kept snoring. I am about a quarter mile from the nearest house, there is no internet, tv, or radio. Just food, dogs, books, and my mind, which is an okay place to inhabit, though I notice that the urban world affords a lot of defenses that help one avoid thinking too deeply about things one might feel more comfortable ignoring. Without those defenses, I am supposed to write, but I also find myself running over relationships, pondering regrets, dreaming of long lost friends and I get a bit achey. (But hey--at least there's no immediate internet so I am prevented from sending out emails I might regret!)

The cabin is owned by a former professor of mine, and he is within yelling distance (sound travels well in the woods!). He has been wonderfully hospitable, checking up on me, offering me use of his library, providing better conversation than the dogs (though they are quite good listeners, even if my stories put the little one to sleep).

So that is where I'll be for at least another week: watching my dogs spin around delightedly in piles of dead leaves and hearing my footsteps on gravel against the backdrop of birdsong.

"Slow-food Organic Radio"

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:28:00 +0000

Hi Friends, I'll be on West Coast Live this Saturday, June 6. The show runs on KALW 91.7 in SF from 10-12, but it also streams online. Additionally, the show is recorded in front of a live studio audience! And if you are looking for something fun to do Saturday morning, and would like to spend a nice morning in Napa, you can be part of that studio audience because tickets are for sale. I'm linking their site with all streaming/ticket/show info here.

ok, pitch over. :)

Ron Takaki, 1939-2009

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:01:00 +0000

He passed away last night.

Vacation!

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:04:00 +0000

Only one more set of bluebooks, then enter the grades into my magic grade calculating program and I am on summer vacation. I'll be taking a break from the blog for a bit...See you in June!

In the meantime, check out one of my favorite blogs: http://evyan-r-osborne.blogspot.com/
She lives in Texas, and in addition to blogging about life and books, she tells great, sometimes funny and sometimes sad and always entertaining, stories about the women in her family.

Here's a taste from a recent post:

We live in a rural part of Fort Worth. This past weekend, we were preoccupied with our niece and nephew. In the quiet of the evening, we suddenly hear a male voice and loud cries from a horse, not neighing, but cries...I go out to the porch. I see a fat, sturdy drunk male on top of a horse, kicking deep into its sides yelling, "You do as I say...when I say...like I say...[kick, stab, kick, whip] you heh? Get yo ass over heh! [whip, kick, whip, kick, kick, kick] As I say...I'mo teach you...As I say!" It went on more than one can imagine...I was in disbelief...angry...I wanted to call someone...the police...is there such a thing as animal abuse police? Later, I told Gera, "That's the kind of motherfucker who beats the hell out of a woman." He looks at me and says, "You don't know that." I said, "My grandmother taught me how to recognize that kind."

Um..."The China Problem"

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:24:00 +0000

From Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, published in 1994 by the Mainland Affairs Council of the Executive Yuan:

Many countries throughout history have experienced periods of division and reunification, and the history of China is also one of periodic partition and unity. Modern China has been unable to escape this historical cycle. Since 1949, the Chinese people have lived in one of two societies on either side of the Taiwan Strait with differing ideologies and political, economic, and social systems....In February of 1991, the ROC government drew upon the insight of people inside and outside the ruling party in drawing up the "Guidelines for National Unification," part of an attempt to form a national consensus for the advance toward unification.

The "Burden of Representation"

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:48:00 +0000

Working on a talk about Asian American fiction that I'm giving tomorrow to some Asian American student groups, and I came across this interesting editorial:

'At times I feel like a plastic Paki'
Anvar Khan, who got Greg Dyke to admit the BBC was 'hideously white', admits she's a rent-a-quote race pundit because white writers are too scared to say what they think

Anvar Khan
The Guardian, Monday 27 March 2006

When your nationality is an accident of geography, a mere matter of an atlas and joyous circumstance, you have to admit that the colour you are when you get here is just as ludicrously fateful. As a mixed-race Scottish Asian I have to admit I care as little about my colour as I do about the mating rituals of the Tasmanian mongoose, yet in the predominantly white media my racial identity has a currency and a value.
It both fascinates and appals me that I am in a position where my voice is important because it comes from a brown person. My colour is neither my responsibility nor my fault. Yet it is a passport into debates that Whitey is too scared to gatecrash.
Whether on Jeremy Vine or BBC News 24 my subjects have included the Islamic treatment of women and whether Asian youth are truly proud to be British. A white reporter would not be asked to comment on any race-related issue, and frankly I have a problem with that.
The British media are in the sad and desperate situation of not having many high-profile black or Asian journalists, and even fewer wannabes. It's a hard place to be. As long as the media are overwhelmingly white then the industry will always be open to accusations of racism.
When I asked the former BBC director general Greg Dyke, in a programme I was presenting for Radio Scotland, if he thought the BBC was "hideously white", his agreement created uproar and division throughout the media world. Whitey wrote concerned and outraged letters to the Guardian and the Times, sore at what they perceived to be his betrayal of his own race. Quite. And it's here in this peculiar and complex sphere, where white racial sensitivity equals that of any highly-strung Muslim demonstrator, that I work. As a writer, as just another journo, but one who by the nature of my parents' coupling has the option of taking up racial comment as a career move.
And all because the media operate a voluntary self-censorship, where white journalists aren't allowed, or do not choose, to speak candidly about race. Paranoid and self-protective, the industry chooses to spotlight Asian journalists rather than discuss Asian issues freely.
It is not compulsory for a white journalist to defend or attack views from minorities, but it is for me. I almost do it as a favour. The liberal, left-leaning media are so terrified of causing offence to any minority that they look to a person of colour to do their arguing for them.
When controversial subjects erupt, regarding Shabina Begum's so-called right to wear the jilbab at school or the preponderance of ham sandwiches at council meetings, whatever, the white media turn tactician, and, in order to deflect any potential criticism, recruit brown faces. That's where I come in.
The logic is obvious; an Asian person can call another Asian a bigot, but a white pundit cannot. I suspect many more white writers could comment if they did not sit at their laptops in fear of being called racist for any view that does not flatter the ethnic minority. I am hired simply because the media has decided, albeit perhaps subconsciously, that the subject of race is the domain of people of colour.
This is hypocrisy. The basis of equality is that you are not treated differently. Yet black or Asian journalists are asked to carry the burden of racial comment. It's a double standard that demands I take my skin colour far more seriously than I would like.
In the aftermath of the Iraq war and the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad (it's a really bad time for Muslims), perhaps it is the responsibility of British-born Asians who come from a Muslim background such as myself to react intelligently to Islamic extremism. If by meeting the media's need for black and Asian voices you can also bring balance then it seems churlish to refuse.
But there are times when I walk away from the studio feeling like a fake, like a "plastic Paki". Yes, I can use this term and you cannot, because if you did the CRE would be paying you a call.
When people are awarded space in a newspaper or a few minutes on air just because the media are hungry for this elusive and intangible thing called "racial experience", then being the token minority can be a great career move, especially when you have no talent.
Your voice, however faint, sounds unreasonably amplified, possibly even important. I worry about the danger of inadvertently becoming a "professional Asian". If you play along with the "person of colour" routine you will be stereotyped as such. I am reluctant to play the game, but even so I am often asked to comment on racial stereotyping - you can see the irony. It's a no win situation.
Sure, I can shun every request to speak. But in a period of ongoing Muslim intensity and hurt, you talk so that the radical cleric is not recognised as the sole representative of what it is to be Asian. It's a political and personal decision, and a white reporter would never, ever have to make such a serious choice, nor risk being perceived as "professionally white".
The media needs to be told what it is like to be black, in other words, it needs the perspective of an outsider almost to colour the white landscape of comment. While there's no such thing as the black or Asian mind, there is, the Asian-centric view, however manufactured, and it is a desirable commodity.
Skin colour
I understand this and I accept it, but I don't like it. If I wanted a newspaper career based on whether I believe in God or not I'd have gone straight off to work with the Pastoral Review. If I wanted my colour to speak louder than my words I'd apply to Eastern Eye.
Whitey must feel frustrated at being classed as the racist, the enemy, and I despair at the pressure of having to provide racial analysis.
But I do believe that one day we will be able to chuck out quotas and boo and hiss at positive discrimination, as black and Asian people will be so integrated into society there will be no need to pander to racial sensitivities. There should come a time when a black or Asian writer is not expected to exploit their skin colour as a matter of obligation; a time when Whitey is allowed to express his or her own views free from the terror of being labelled politically incorrect or lampooned as a bigot. Yet I know what you are thinking, my fellow media darlings, that occasion seems so near and yet so fatwa.

Last Week

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:28:00 +0000

It's the last week of the tour! Tonight, I hit Clayton Books, and tomorrow the Capitola Book Cafe.

I'm sorry to see it end. Though I first faced the readings with some dread, I've come to enjoy them. I think I like reading out loud. I even caught myself reading to my class from the class text. "Listen to the words," I urged them. I make them read aloud too. It's good to remember that words have a physical presence. (of course, this is an old trick from Professor Farber.;) )

And in other books news, today, Water Ghosts received a very lovely review in the Boston Globe.

Literary Cinderella

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:37:00 +0000

From Leah Garchik's SF Chron column today. FYI, El Leon Literary Arts was the original publisher of Water Ghosts (then called Locke 1928):

El León Literary Arts, a small Berkeley publishing house incorporated as a private foundation, had set May 1 as the official pub date for "Matterhorn," ex-Marine Karl Marlantes' 700-page novel about the Vietnam War. The book was printed and review copies mailed out, but in late April, writer Tom Farber, who presides over El León, received calls from several New York publishers.

They had heard about the book from staffers at Barnes & Noble who'd read it when it was submitted in a first-novel contest, and they were interested in pre-empting El León's edition and joining forces to create a more widely distributed edition.
A deal was struck between Farber and Morgan Entrekin of Grove Atlantic, and copies already printed but not yet distributed will become galleys for the El León/Grove joint publication, on Jan. 1. This huge book couldn't at first find an agent or a publisher. Farber recognized its power. Take heart, writers.

(ps from shawna: I was lucky enough to get an advance copy. I can vouch--the book is really really good!)

What Happens on Page 69?

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:31:00 +0000

Find out at Marshal Zeringue's blog, "The Page 69 Test."

Aha! The Locke/KMT Connection....

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:56:00 +0000

And my two favorite topics come together....

From Peter C.Y. Leung's One Day, One Dollar: The Chinese Farming Experience in the Sacramento River Delta, California:

Other projects of the KMT in Locke and Locke's vicinity met with greater success. As part of its effort to revive and modernize thinking in China, the KMT launched the "New Life Movement" in China in the 1930s. In America, this was reflected by a renewed emphasis on Chinese schools for native born Chinese Americans. The Chinese schools, which provided instruction in the afternoons and evenings, were designed to teach Chinese American children of their Chinese cultural heritage; help them learn to speak, read, and write Chinese; and prepare them to pursue a career in China if they found opportunities in America too restricted. Locke had its Chinese school, closely tied to the KMT. Bing Lee was an early organizer and supporter of this school. A later supporter was Joe Shoong, the millionaire owner of National Dollar Stores.

A Chinese tenant farmer near Locke also assisted in the purchase of a few KMT planes. A lot of KMT financial support also came out of Locke.

(picture via militarygnome.com)

This post may contain scenes of Brief Nudity

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:28:00 +0000

In 1997, I entered a classroom on the third floor of Wheeler Hall. It was 3 pm. I'd just walked 2 brisk miles from my apartment on Alcatraz; I was probably drenched in sweat. The professor was a tall man with a black beanie, mustache, and piercing brown eyes. It was to be a three hour class, a graduate writing workshop. Three hours. I was not sure how any class could go on for so long.

He made us read poetry.

Aloud.

It was one of the first times I'd done so. From him, I heard of Philip Larkin, James Agee, Wallace Stevens, among others. I was intimidated by the professor, who was so naturally erudite, never had notes but seemed to keep the entire library of English literature in his head. He had standards. He didn't put up with any bullshit. He made us want to write our best, even though he ran the workshop in such a way we never knew what he thought of our work. He let writers breathe. I had never had such an exhilarating time in a class. The energy suffused my classmates as well--I am still in touch with many of them, and they are still writing.

And he gave us the best advice on writing I've ever received. It's common among writers to hear them complain (even at the undergraduate level), Oh it's so hard. I'm terrible. I'm giving up writing (hand at forehead). Contrary to what you might expect of the nurturing teacher figure, he didn't respond with, Oh no. Keep writing! You have so much talent. We need you.

Instead he assured us the world would go on without our words. No one would beg us to keep writing. Sure, writing was our gift to the world--but what if the world didn't want it?

I understood that my writing was not critical to anyone but me. And it would have to be critical to me if I were to pursue it, because it's not an easy path, not a lucrative path (I'm not looking at you, Stephenie Meyer), and it may not save lives. So you really got to do it for the love of it, critics (self and otherwise) be damned. His words, perhaps designed to thin the herd, inspired many of us to work harder.

So I'm so very pleased to be here, 12 years later, interviewing him on the occasion of his 22nd publication, Brief Nudity, a memoir of his life as a writer, set in his Berkeley cottage. A simple description, but keep in mind, this is Thomas Farber, recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim, and NEA grants, current professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and publisher of the non-profit press, El Leon Literary Arts.

Starling Lawrence says of the book:

Brief Nudity is a beautifully articulated exploration of the writer's space and the milestones of his life. Photographs, cancelled checks, the shelf of his mother's books, the trove of love letters...evocative as these items may be, there are no infinities here, but instead a graceful acceptance of possibilities unrealized, stories untold.

Our chat is just a teaser--check the book out yourself!

SR: Though I’m eager to talk about your new book, Brief Nudity, I’m intrigued by an epigram in your collection The Twoness of Oneness: “Famous author, eighty, bullish on the future, discussing work-in-progress with ambitious young writers. As if he and they are on the same page.”

You’ve done what many aspire to but few actually do: spend a life writing—and writing exactly what you’ve wanted to. How did you do that? And what advice would you give a the young writer who wants to get on the same page as you?

TF: In the epigram you quote, I’m teasing the old writer for still being so single-minded about his art. As, maybe, I am still, at age 65. I think that most of all along the way I was stubborn. Stubborn about writing only the books I wanted; stubborn about not negotiating the book’s qualities with editor or agent; stubborn about not taking on things in other parts of my life that would have precluded being able to be a writer. For instance, I did not take a regular teaching job until age 50, and then just one semester a year. I think I knew my limits, that if I talked too much about writing I would cease to write. And so in other aspects of my life. Such stubbornness doesn’t necessarily make you a better human being, but it does allow you to persist at one thing you say you want. All artists also have to be wily, like Odysseus, particularly in a market-driven culture when one wants to do one’s own thing but somehow interface with the world of commerce. Finally, you have to be willing to say no thank you to some opportunities—in my case, full time teaching or running a foundation or becoming a radio commentator—in order to leave the space, and time, and energy for what may or may not become another book. This gets harder as one ages, since of course security and social context are also essential to us.

SR: Another writer-life question before we get into the book: What do you think is the give-and-take between balancing teaching and writing?

TF: As I said, I was careful to keep real limits on my teaching. For three decades, it was no more than a semester every three or four years. I savored teaching on those limited terms, hungry every once in a while to talk about books and writing, to encourage young writers to discipline and focus themselves. Teaching also gave me a wonderful respite from the self-absorption of writing, allowed me to make a brief nod in the direction of my father’s extraordinary life of service as a physician. But I remain wary of art in institutions, despite the former students who say they had rich experiences in my seminars, who have gone on to become very, very good writers. There’s the danger of too much received wisdom in institutions, when the artist is trying to make something new. As for the writer teaching, to work well with students requires nurturing, giving—lactating! This is honorable work, but it is not at all the set of hormones that, say, writes a novel.

SR: Brief Nudity is unlike any memoir I’ve seen. It’s non-linear, full of word play, and centers on life as it passes through the Berkeley cottage that you have inhabited for thirty years. How did you decide on the book’s form and style?

TF: I think I was both amazed and dismayed to realize I had spent so much time in the cottage. Now nearly thirty-five years, despite much time traveling. The cottage had both given great shelter and incarnated, inevitably, the other lives I had not been living. This was the bed I made… And of course it was teeming with stories after so many years. As for the non-linear narrative, well, I’ve been playing with that for years, in both fiction and nonfiction. Just seems to accord with how I live in time. As for the wordplay, well, I was raised in a family where wordplay was incessant, and I am in particular my mother’s son in my love of getting to the root meaning of words, savoring their color and sound and vector—force and direction. I simply made that a more explicit concern in this book, constantly referring to my own habit of cherishing words, wanting to know more about them, heading to the dictionary yet once again. Kind of taking the reader along with me in the act of writing. In terms of starting the book, though I had thought about stories set in the cottage for some years, the writing itself began with the three domestic “plagues” described in the opening section. I felt I was drowning not in the ocean, where I’ve so much time, but in a puddle, suppose I hoped I could transmute the puddle into an ocean by the force of my art. I had the idea, and not for the first time, that I could alchemize my life into something better by writing, though writing was no doubt also part of the problem.

SR: What perils, if any, did you encounter in writing this memoir? For example, was it hard to expose yourself in this way, or did you worry about what your friends would think when they saw themselves in your book?

TF: A book is not the self, exactly, it’s a performance, the self mediated by art. One learns over time how much one can reveal in order to transmute, also how much one pays in his art by too much withholding. And even apparently confessional writing, for instance, is only a tiny part of ‘the truth’ for any writer. Is, finally, no more than the writer could or would reveal. As for friends finding themselves in one’s work, well, the writer has to hope—and pray—that they deem the art worth the intrusion.

SR: Finally, one last question: What would be the cottage’s epigrammatic response to the book?

TF: Since the book’s pub date, the cottage and I have finally had a chance to talk things out. Though still miffed at not being described with the love-struck hyperbole some writers have conjured for their palazzos in Italy, the cottage is secure now about its documented place in the writer’s life. Says, if I may quote verbatim, “You know, Tom, I’ve always been there for you.” The agave in the front yard by the front steps, however, are still threatening to testify against me, should it ever come to that. They’ve heard everything, everything…

photo credit: Andrea Young (2003)

It's May...Do you know where your Asian Pacific American Heritage is?

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:18:00 +0000

My final Kepler's post is up--some book recommendations for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month....

Video Killed The Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:38:00 +0000

My business school friend, schooling me on social media, said video blogging is the sport of the future. I said, I can't video blog! I hate video blogs. But I decided to try it....
(We'll see how long before youtube takes down the Arcade Fire soundtrack.)

Blah.

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Sat, 02 May 2009 00:35:00 +0000

All of sudden, I woke up this morning with a headache and nausea. Of course, the first thought is swine flu, but there's no fever or aches. I had to cancel a reading this afternoon!

So I am curled up in bed, having apocalypse nightmares. I did one productive thing today--I'm guest blogging at Kepler's blog in preparation for my reading there next week, so if you don't see anything here, it's because my writing brain has been spent on another blog.

Hope you are all well! I'm going back to sleep now....

My Sister Thinks I'm Boring

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:49:00 +0000

This just in: my 21-yr-old sister, in conversation with a good friend from junior high (the inimitable Davey G), declared I was boring in response to his claim that he thought I was a spaz.

I guess that's why I get doubly nervous reading in front of friends and family, as I did last night at the Avid Reader in Davis. Everyone knows me in a slightly different way, and it feels strange to be inhabiting all those roles at once--while trying to present yourself as a "real" writer. Meanwhile, you have sisters in the back of the room who have been with you through your acne-angsty years and they can't believe that you might 1) be able to form a coherent sentence about something beyond "Why didn't you put a new roll of toilet paper on?" and 2) people will come to hear it.

So I blushed hard. I thought it rose from my chest and covered my face, but a friend in the audience told me it actually starts from behind my ears. I touched my neck, trying to cool it. I was like a flushed southern belle, wanting to murmur "Oh my!" and call for my smelling salts.

And Davey G twittered the whole thing in a high school found-poem kind of way. Here is a sample:

A couple hours. Light the stove. Dishes stacked deep red mahogany years before nude wood mended.
7:54 PM Apr 28th from Tweetie

Afterward, my friend, the writer Spring Warren (get her book Turpentine--it was a finalist for a ton of awards--really fun, Twain-esque read!) threw a party for me. Check out the pic above--look at that great table she set up--and the water ghosts cookies she made with eggs from her own chickens and duck!

This morning, an event at Bookshop Benicia. A modest turn-out, but pretty good, I thought, for a noon event. And the most amazing thing--I didn't blush at all.

Barbie Wa-wa

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:04:00 +0000

From 1967 to 1987, Mattel employed about 10,000 people in their Taishan manufacturing site in Taiwan. About 8,000 worked in the factory/ies while another few thousand did freelance work out of their homes, usually sewing clothes. The women made about $10 (US) a day, more than their husbands made working on farms. The Taishan Mattel women were also rumored to be the most lovely.

Before Google and all the awesome tech companies made us all long for Silicon Valley jobs with their lure of ping pong tables in the breakroom, free meals, dry cleaning, and subsidized vending machines, Mattel provided housing and other perks for their workers. Free meals, an on-site health clinic, language classes, extracurricular classes and clubs—even buses home for the holidays.

When Mattel moved their manufacturing to China in the late 80s, Taishan was devastated. It took them nearly a decade to recover, and now they are using their Barbie history as a tourist lure to the town. They are even thinking of creating their own Taishan doll, since the doll-making infrastructure is all still there.

Life in plastic; it’s fantastic.

Reading Report

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:11:00 +0000

The first week of the reading circuit is over. The book has been out for a week. A couple friends asked me to blog about the reading tour experience, so here it is.

Though the birth metaphor for books is overplayed (and perhaps a bit silly coming from someone who’s never given birth!), I do feel how I imagine a new mother to feel. A sort of awe that this creation now exists in the world for everyone to see, with the attendant joy and terror. What do I do now? Am I the only one who thinks it’s pretty? Aren’t all mothers, high on endorphins, deluded into thinking their newborn is the cutest thing to ever slip down a birth canal? ☺

And, like a new mother, I find caring for it a bit exhausting. I’ve definitely been sleeping more. I really enjoy the readings, but the hours before each one are full of anxiety, an inability to focus, a red flush that spreads up my neck at the thought of it. I do the dishes, check my email, twitter, facebook, iron my clothes, check my email, twitter, facebook, keep thinking that there are probably more productive things to be done but I can’t concentrate. I wonder: Will anybody come? Will they throw tomatoes at me? Will this be the reading where I burst into tears? Or forget everything? (I have found that readings have a tendency to make me forget the names of people I know well who show up. This can be (ahem) problematic when signing books.)

Then I go and of course the bookstore people are super nice. I sit in the back room, wondering if the chatter in the front are customers or people coming for the reading. In SF, I came out to find the audience in whole consisted of the two friends who’d given me a ride, a friend who lived nearby, the store owner and the woman who was introducing me. And I was really grateful. And it was then pretty thrilling when I began to read and some new people came over from other parts of the store to listen in. In Berkeley, however, I walked out to a nice crowd of about twenty, including friends whom I didn’t know would attend. Love! And when it is all over, I have a little rush and can’t wait for the next one (even though I know it will be preceded by the return of the stomachache.)

The other great thing is that I get a good glimpse at how much independent bookstores rock, how much they love books. Each store has its own personality, and is set up in various cozy and pretty ways. And they treat their authors well! The Booksmith gave me a thank you card and a dvd documentary of independent bookstores; Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley thanked me with a book (Wrack and Ruin by Don Lee).

This coming week, I read at the Avid Reader in Davis, Bookshop Benicia, and Bookshop West Portal. I hope to see some of you there!

Picture, at Mrs. Dalloway's, is courtesy of Andrea Young.

April 26th

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:10:00 +0000

April 26th.
I was typing the date into my novel, writing a scene, when the automatic fill offered "April 26th, 2009," and I had one of those spine-tingling moments as I remembered that today is April 26th.

Taiwanese around the world commemorate February 28th as the anniversary of the start of the 1947 March Massacre, which I have written about a few times on this blog. The Massacre is more famously known as 2-28.

But 2-28, less famously, has a coda: April 26th, “Thanksgiving Day” during which schoolchildren were required to pay money—“tokens of thanks”—to the Nationalist soldiers for protecting them. Of course, in sick irony, “protection” meant killing these same children’s brothers, fathers, uncles and grandfathers.

Humans never fail to astound me.

This anecdote is from page 336 of George Kerr’s Formosa Betrayed.

And the Winner Is....

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:51:00 +0000

A tie!
Yesterday's question about who came up with the term "cold war" (which was political-speak master George Orwell) was the absolutely, positively last question, and both Donn and Isaac got it. They were neck-and-neck for the last five or more questions. They often got the same questions right and missed the same questions. In (related?) news, I have never seen the both of them together in the same room....
Anyway, congratulations! Two copies of Water Ghosts will be going out to opposite sides of the country.

Again, thank you all for playing.

The final scores:
Score:
Donn:13
Isaac: 13
Philip: 10
Rob: 7
Annie: 5
Amit:4
Sean:4
Brian: 3
JC:3
Arthur:1
Cliff:1
DaveyG:1
Gautami: 1
JLehr:1
Renee: 1

Is Trivia Over?

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:48:00 +0000

Because I got only two answers for the last question. Should we just call the game?
Anyhow, the three-word titled bestseller was
Eat
Pray
Love
and the countries were Italy, India and Indonesia.

Score:
Donn:12
Isaac: 12
Philip: 10
Rob: 6
Annie: 5
Amit:4
Sean:4
Brian: 3
JC:3
Arthur:1
Cliff:1
DaveyG:1
Gautami: 1
JLehr:1
Renee: 1

So, one last question. And then that's it. I swear.
What novelist coined the term "cold war" in a 1945 article in London's Tribune?

Photos and text by...

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:43:00 +0000

Thanks to Ho Chie Tsai of TaiwaneseAmerican.org and freelance photographer Anna Wu for featuring me in this week's Taiwanese American.org's "Spotlight."

FYI: Readings start this week.
This week's schedule:
Tuesday, 4 pm: Orinda Books, Orinda.
Wednesday, 7:30 pm: The Booksmith, San Francisco
Friday, 7:30 pm: Mrs. Dalloway's, Berkeley.

JG Ballard: 1930-2009

noreply@blogger.com (Shawna Yang Ryan) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:27:00 +0000

J. G. Ballard has passed away at the age of 78.