Uh ... was anyone actually suggesting that Obama invade Iran? I mean, other than crazy mans on da streets?
Because (m)O('bettah)bama is the very opposite of a brutal regime dictator tyrant evil axis thingie. (m)O('bettah)bama is good. It is Ahmadinejad who is brutal 'n' evil. And Kim Il thingie. And, like, Angela Merkel, and Johnson & Johnson. And Metallica.
Actually, if you look around, the Brutal Regimes are everywhere. Everywhere. Wow. It's frightening.
Continue reading "Hyphen Lynks: Brutal Regime (Watch Out!) Edition"
Posted by Claire at 3:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It seems, in fact, that now somebody's written a book about them ... that somebody being a white dude married to an Asian woman. Sigh.
Continue reading "More On Asian Sexual Fetishes: Laura Miller on 'The East, the West, and Sex'"
Posted by Claire at 4:11 PM | Comments (42) | TrackBack (0)
Continue reading "Celebration Reading for Hyphen and AAWW Short Story Contest: May 28th, NYC"
Posted by Neela at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Sung Woo's debut book of interwoven short stories Everything Asian (Thomas Dunne Books) is set mostly in East Meets West, an Asian gift shop located in a strip mall in New Jersey during the 1980s, and concerns a Korean immigrant family trying to acculturate and get reacquainted with their father/husband -- who had already been in the US for five years. We asked Woo -- a former literature section contributor to Hyphen -- to subject himself to our set of literary questions. Continue reading "The WRITE Questions with Sung Woo"
Posted by Neela at 8:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It's May, peoples! It's Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! This year is also the 20th Anniversary of the publication of Amy Tan's classic Asian American immigrant novel, The Joy Luck Club.
We have a love/hate relationship with that book. Love because it was our first foray into the mainstream of American fiction, a moment of broad self-acknowledgment many Asian Americans remember with fondness. Hate for many reasons: because it focused on women to the detriment of men (for a perspective, see Alvin's comments here); because it proposed an immigrant arc similar to that of Europeans, glossing over the continuing issues Asian immigrants have in this country; because it was so successful it coerced a generation of Asian American novelists to Joy Luck their way into a writing career.
So, to express our ambivalent Happy Birthday, here's a bouquet of tiny immigration tales. These are 300-word, true stories, from real Asian Americans, that complicate and argue with the story The Joy Luck Club tells. The complete awesomeness, vitality, and real diversity of these stories is exactly what my problem with the Joy Lucking of Asian American writing is about. We always knew these stories were out there; I just didn't know we could get so many great ones in such a short time.
(My only caveat is that we didn't get enough stories from men. Imagine how much broader the range would be if we had! Maybe next year ...)
Enjoy(luck)!
Continue reading "The Joy Luck Hub Blog Carnival: Asian American Immigrant Stories!"
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All stories are due May 1! Just in time for Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Here's the rules 'n' stuff.
Posted by Claire at 5:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I always wish that Hyphen blog could do more in the way of promoting literature from our communities, but we have a lot to cover and none of us has the time to do the one topic justice (do we?)
Fortunately, we don't have to! Terry Hong at the Smithsonian
Plus, although the blog is new, it goes back to 2001 right now because
I'm populating this blog both backwards and forwards – I've got lots of reviewed titles from years back which I'm adding in slowly (clearly signs of old age, I realize!).She can get as old as she likes! Read on, you crazy dragon.
Posted by Claire at 8:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
It's being called "#amazonfail" because the word went out over Twitter last week: Amazon has a grand new scheme for censoring LGBT books.
Continue reading "Amazon Censors LGBT Books"
Posted by Claire at 1:15 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Help us honor and argue with The Joy Luck Club on the 20th Anniversary of its publication AND celebrate API Heritage Month in May! Send us your immigrant story in 300 words or less!Continue reading "The Joy Luck Hub: Call for Submissions!"
Posted by Claire at 9:17 PM | Comments (36) | TrackBack (0)
has been described as "in-your-face punk realism with touches
of the surreal and subversive black humor."
His second novel, Tetched, takes the experimental form of "fractals" -- or chapters composed of several paragraph-sized vignettes.
We asked the New York-based writer to subject himself to
our set of literary questions. [See Rutkowski read at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, Saturday April 4th at 7 p.m.]
Continue reading "The WRITE Questions with Thaddeus Rutkowski"
Posted by Neela at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
But in the meantime, the success of two Bay Area-based Asian American writers -- Minal Hajratwala and Yiyun Li -- has been buoying my dismal thoughts with the release of their latest books.
Continue reading "Against the Grain: Minal Hajratwala and Yiyun Li"
Posted by Neela at 3:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Film adaptations of comic books are a dime a dozen in Hollywood these days, with a track record that suggests studios are pumping out more Batman Forevers than Dark Knights. But what happens when your task is to bring the words of history's most acclaimed graphic novel -- and one of Time magazine's 100 greatest novels of all time -- to the big screen?
Enter Alex Tse, a San Francisco native who is the co-screenwriter of the much-anticipated Watchmen adaptation, which opened last week to the tune of $55 million. Tse first came onto the scene as the writer of 2004's multiethnic crime drama, Sucker Free City, directed by Spike Lee. Now with the success of Watchmen, he's in demand but still making time to return to his roots. Hyphen caught up with Tse before his visit to the 2009 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival to learn about his climb from a kid in journalism camp to bona fide Hollywood screenwriter.
Read the interview in our web features area and comeback here if you have a comment. (Unfortunately, our publishing system doesn't allow commenting on articles.)
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Continue reading "What Asian Americans Are Writing About"
Posted by Neela at 12:01 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
The following is directly quoted from Kundiman's announcement. Please don't ask us for more information; we don't have any! Just go to the links below and ask them.
Continue reading "Calling All Poets: Kundiman Retreat"
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Continue reading "An Aside on Revising"
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Grace Cho, author of Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War, will be presenting her book, followed by a community discussion, this Saturday at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle. Her book is an analysis of US neocolonialism, militarized prostitution, and transgenerational trauma, examining the history between Korean women and American servicemen through sex work and marriage. Since the Korean War, over a million women have acted as sex workers for US soldiers, and over 100,000 married GIs and emigrated to America. Haunting the Korean Diaspora also explores the repressed history of violence and consequences of such sexual relationships for Koreans and Korean Americans in both the private realm and public discourse. The discussion will also include topics of adoption, memory, and occupation.
Grace Cho is also a contributing performance artist to the Wing Luke Museum's current exhibit "Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the Forgotten War." I recently saw the exhibit and it's definitely worth checking out, as a powerful collection of oral and visual accounts from survivors and their families. Both the book discussion and exhibition are included as part of Wing Luke's free third Saturdays programming.
Saturday January 17th
5:30 to 7:30pm
Free!
Wing Luke Asian Museum
719 South King Street (Chinatown-International District)
Seattle, WA
Posted by Cynthia at 8:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Just like champagne, party dresses and forced kisses, nothing says "New Year's Time" like a BEST OF list. I scoured literary pages from the New York Times to the School Library Journal to find out how Asian American (and Asian British and Asian Australian) writers fared on the Best Books of 2008 lists.Continue reading "Best Asian American Books of 2008"
Posted by Neela at 11:04 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
I'm not going to lie. I like stuff. I like getting it and I like giving it. As much as I can bravely plow through a mall during the holiday season ('tis the Hong Kong heritage in me), it's more pleasant to buy artist-made goods from the comfort and convenience of the Interwebs. Here're a few crafty, small-run, and indie media gifts.Continue reading "Melissa's Crafty Holiday Gift Guide"
Posted by Melissa at 12:18 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
The good news is that, by pretending to be a conscious aZn who only cares about kultcher, you can save money on gifts, AND out-virtue all your friends! Here's how!
Continue reading "Claire's aZn KulTchuR Holiday Gift Guide"
Posted by Claire at 1:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Why is this man jumping?
Well, could be he's just been awarded a Fellowship in Creative Writing by the National Endowment for the Arts! That means $25,000, just for him, and all the status and free drinks a poet can stand.
The man is Bryan Thao Worra, and he's a Minnesota-based Laotian American poet. Bryan doesn't have an MFA or formal training, yet he recently won a 2008 Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to market his second collection of poems, On the Other Side of the Eye, which is an exploration of Laotian American identity through fantasy, science fiction, spies, secret wars, and ancient history. Yes, he's unique.
And now my skeletal editors call on me
with their chattering skulls:
"Where are your words for Fa Ngum and Chao Anou,
or the fallen honored at the Patuxai?
In all of this time, surely one word about Vientiane
will not kill you or your friends."
It's hard to answer, sitting down to eat in July.
"Write what you know," my teachers admonish.
Sipping my soda, I turn the pages of a
weathered book of Van Gogh prints
inspired by Hokusai and the Ukiyo-e
and sigh.
My flag is as obsolete as the word Indochine, and
I realized today I am older than my father lived to be.
It's been too long since I last saw an elephant
or the monstrous river catfish.
They tell me somberly the freshwater Irrawaddy
will be extinct before the next time I come by.
I couldn't sketch any of them worth a damn if I tried.
A part of me wants to smack the next person
who says I won't be Lao if I don't write about Laos.
-- excerpt from "Japonisme, Laoisme"
Continue reading "Laotian American Poet is 2009 NEA Fellow!"
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Posted by Claire at 10:16 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Continue reading "New Book "Asian American Art""
Posted by Sylvie at 11:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
The 10th person to email me at lisalee(at)hyphenmagazine.com with the correct answer to "when was KSW founded" will win big. In your email, please also let me know what performance you'd like to attend.
Continue reading "Kearny Street Workshop Presents APAture 2008 & Win Free Tickets"
Posted by LisaLee at 11:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Chalk this up to a book I won't be buying because I'm sick of askaninja.com, white guys who create ninja characters, white ninjas, bad white ninja opening songs, white ninja accents, and just all around white ninja-like people and characters.
I mean do we really need more of this?
Continue reading "Bad Read: 'The Ninja Handbook'"
Posted by Slanty at 4:16 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
Continue reading "Hyphen and AAWW Short Story Contest DEADLINE EXTENDED!!!"
Posted by Neela at 12:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Continue reading "Ed Park's debut novel "Personal Days""
Posted by Sylvie at 1:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Continue reading "30 More Days to Submit to the Hyphen/AAWW Short Story Contest?!"
Posted by Neela at 4:06 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
As one of Le's characters says in the opening story, "You could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead, you choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins and Hiroshima orphans -- and New York painters with hemorrhoids." Ditto.
To read the full NYTimes review, click here.
Posted by Elaine at 2:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
The day it was available I had rushed over to the indie bookstore near my office and preened the shelf for the nicest looking copy there, gushing to the bookseller about how excited I was that they were hosting a reading the next week. She seemed less than ecstatic, giving me a polite smile as she rang up the sage hardcover.
Still, I was concerned about the other Lahiri fans who would be in attendance. Would they, too, be wearing shirts with Lahiri's face printed on the front? Would a neon or black posterboard stand out better? Should I be the one who coordinated the synchronized "We love Lahiri!" shouts from the audience?
Continue reading "Jhumpa Lahiri as Subtle as Her Writing"
Posted by Elaine at 11:05 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Ever wondered about the history of chop suey, General Tso's chicken, fortune cookies? Let me give you a clue, the answer does not include China. This is for all you curious foodies out there, including people like me, someone who's way into food but cannot cook to save her life.
New York Times reporter and author Jennifer 8. Lee will be in San Francisco tonight to celebrate the launch of her first book, "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food." I heard that Jennifer will be giving a multimedia presentation and sharing some stories from her travels to 42 states and countless countries to uncover the mysteries of Chinese food.
Continue reading ""The Fortune Cookie Chronicles" Launch Party"
Posted by LisaLee at 1:13 AM | Comments (0)
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