http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVYf9xZTR-o&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKeYvv65EEw&feature=related
http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Early-Poems-Lights-Pocket/dp/0872862550/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259133355&sr=1-5
http://www.amazon.com/Somewhere-Advance-Nowhere-High-Books/dp/1852424222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259132921&sr=8-1
Jayne Cortez is New York City!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB3SY8xZtVk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJqSNEx4_Fg&feature=related
good morning
jacaranda bloomed
left purple halos of car
parkings on asphalt
—by Mike Willard
#8
year in year out
trees’ lives hovering over
the parked vehicles
2009 End of the Automotive Era! Year of Wind and Light!
#9
birds and squirrels in
trees year after year above
streets with passing cars
East Los Angeles Dirigible Transport Lines Courtesy Shuttle from your home to our tower in Lincoln Heights
dirt dust pigeon shit
like driving undersea in
time’s rearview mirror
Ken Chen, director of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and winner of the 2009 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize
This Saturday I was lucky enough to check out the first half of the Inaugural day-long Page Turner Asian American Literary Fest, presented by the nonprofit literary arts organization Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
Held in the expansive Brooklyn PowerHouse Arena, the festival was packed with compelling sessions featuring writers, performers, academics, and journalists, making it hard for this gal to choose which ones to drop in on. The sessions had an impressive turnout, and with speakers parked on couches as opposed to stuck behind a podium or table, had a less stiff, formalized vibe than your typical panel.
Andrew Hsiao, journalist and editor, and David Henry Hwang, playwright
Porochista Khakpour and the New Eclectics
“One-Way or Round Trip? Immigrant Arrival and Return” focused on the intersection between personal migration stories, diasporic identity, and immigration policy. Kavitha Rajagopalan read from Muslims of Metropolis, which takes an intimate look at three families’ immigration experiences, while Mae Ngai (Impossible Subjects) tied unauthorized entry to macro factors such as the US’ broken immigration system and the policy reforms needed to address immigration in a humane and practical way.
I read my Utah poems to get some West Coast interjectionh in the East Coast Saturday afternoon.
Dorothy Wang, professor of American Studies, Williams College
Mitra Kalita read from her book Suburban Sahibs, about her decision to move her family from New York to India, only to return after discovering she felt even more of an outsider in India than she did in America. Professor Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet (Frontier Fictions) discussed the growth of the Iranian American community, and how the decision to stay is not only due to political factors, but perhaps a sense of not quite belonging in contemporary Iran. I found that the dialogue among speakers approaching immigration from varied disciplines was an effective and interesting way to link the personal to political (and back again) in framing this pressing policy issue.
Cathy Park Hong, author of Translating Mo Um and Dance Dance Revolution!
Thanks to Cathy Park Hong, Dorothy Wang and Steven Hong Sohn for the 2009 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry!
"The New Eclectics" panel featured Ed Lin (This is a Bust), comedian Jen Kwok (of "Date An Asian" fame), Porochista Khakpour, and poet and American Book Award winner Sesshu Foster, selected for their quirky and comedic writing style. Sesshu Foster read a poem from his new book World Ball Notebook — about being pulled over and harassed by smalltown Utah cops — and Porochista Khakpour read a "wet dream" excerpt from Sons and Other Flammable Objects, the focal point being "I Dream of Jeannie's" Barbara Eden, who Khakpour half-jokingly described as every Middle Eastern man's boyhood fantasy.
Jen Kwok serenaded us with a ukelele’d rendition of “Date an Asian”, as well as the first song she ever wrote, about the difficulties of being a sassy fat girl stuck in a skinny Asian girl’s body. Ed Lin read several short pieces recounting his childhood hatred of playing clarinet and getting cursed out by his exacting, uptight music teacher. Lin then channeled his mom to tell a ghost story, which turned out to just be her describing the anxiety she experienced while watching The Ring.
.
Jen Kwok!
The speakers then discussed issues of being looked to as an “authentic” Asian American voice — whether from white readers or their own communities — and how their “eclectic style” was sometimes met with resistance or confusion. Ironically, a white lady in the audience made the comment that she was surprised by the panelists’ humor and even (gasp!) vulgarity, and found that Asian American writing was not usually like that…was this a trend in Asian American literature? After some palpable squirming and cringing in the audience (I was hoping for a bellowing AW HELL NAW from the back), Porochista Khakpour replied: “People of color are funny and vulgar and raw just like other people,” to which Sesshu Foster added: “There’s a trend in mainstream culture of boring and staid literature, and I don’t want to be that.” Boom! And that’s real talk!
photo by Ed Lin in a Manhattan Chinese eatery
The last panel I attended, “Beyond Harold and Kumar: Representation in a Not-Yet-Post-Racial-Era”, was packed with folks to see playwright David Henry Hwang, CUNY Director of Asian American Studies Jennifer Hayashida, and Columbia School of Journalism Dean of Student Affairs Sree Sreenivasan, discussing the invisibility/visibility of Asian America in everyday American culture. Hwang read an excerpt from Yellowface, and Sreenivasan described his obsession with “Desi-spotting”, and how it embarasses his kids, who consider themselves American as opposed to Indian.
While the well-worn issue of the generational gap came up, the discussion interestingly turned to the role of new blogs and social media in reclaiming Asian American identity. Hayashida felt that sites like My Mom Is A Fob, Stuff Indians Like, and Disgrasian are able to re-write racial constructs and re-claim pride in Asian American idiosyncracies in a way that may have been frowned upon by our activist predecessors. Everyone seemed in agreement that “post-racial” is a unhelpful and meaningless attempt at solidarity (with similar pitfalls as the “colorblind” argument), and moving beyond “Otherness” requires proactively talking more — not less — about race, class, and all the things that make up our differing and multiple identities.
Overall, the Page Turner Festival made clear that Asian American writers are no longer relegated to being racial ambassadors or bridges between the mainstream and ethnic. While sometimes overshadowed by the Amy Tans and Maxine Hong Kingstons (at least in mainstream lit), there is no dearth of powerful, raw, hilarious, touching and everything-in-between Asian American literature, which must be supported so we can continue to have a strong community of writers that voice the complexity of Asian America.
article originally posted at:
http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2009/11/page-turner-asian-american-lit.html
more pictures from Page Turner including Jumpha Lahiri and the mass crowd that turned out for her:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaww/sets/72157622805092982/
pictures courtesy of the Asian American Writers Workshop NYC
Sesshu Foster’s World Ball Notebook is a tour de force of the wide shot and the close-up. On the “world ball” field, the actions of governments ricochet off each other and their citizens; simultaneously, the moves each individual makes in her life produce private effects and global reverberations. Very few contemporary writers have captured with such skill and feeling the specific geography and register of Los Angeles—its relentless highways, urban milieu, mixes of peoples and languages, various local struggles–and its inextricability from much larger geographical, political and human landscapes that stretch from the American West to Central and South America to Asia. Past and present and future constitute their own playing fields, too. What distinguishes World Ball Notebook from an array of contemporary poetry books is the capaciousness of Foster’s vision, one that never generalizes or makes reductive, and his empathetic respect for the individual characters whose lives might otherwise be lost to history.
-Dorothy Wang, Judge for the Poetry category of the Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Awards
http://pageturnerfest.org/awards/poetry/
World Ball Notebook, enjoyed by all ages! Recommended for youth! Erases unsightly wrinkles!
Since 1998, The Workshop has honored Asian American writers for literary excellence. The culminating event of Page Turner, the Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Awards will honor great contributions to Asian American letters. Come have a drink and raise a glass to three award winning writers!
Since 1998, The Annual Asian American Literary Awards have honored Asian American writers for excellence in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, stage plays and screenplays. Literary awards recipients are determined by a national panel of judges who are selected on the basis of expertise in a literary genre and/or experience in academic environments relevant to Asian American literature; residence in the U.S. and ethnic background as to create a diverse committee.
http://pageturnerfest.org/schedule/
PAGE TURNER
The Asian American Literary Festival Presented by The Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Readings at PowerHouse Arena
PowerHouse Arena
37 Main Street,
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Saturday, November 14, 2009
11am-6pm: Reading Events on the Hour
6pm-7pm 12th Annual Literary Awards & Cocktail Reception
Join us at PowerHouse Arena for PAGE TURNER: The Asian American Literary Festival, a groundbreaking event that’ll cover topics from the quirky to the academic. Listen to writers “narrate” a film clip with one of their creative works, explore Japanese American and post 9/11 South Asian internment, and or just sip cocktails with renowned writers. The day will conclude with the presentation of the 12th Annual Asian American Literary Awards and Cocktail Reception to honor last year’s best Asian American writing.
Confirmed guests include a wide range of talents, including: Pulitzer winner Jhumpa Lahiri; Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang; hot stand-up comic Jen Kwok; one of the country’s most respected historians, Columbia University Professor Mae Ngai; Believer magazine editor Ed Park; Crossword Book finalist Amitava Kumar; and many more!
Poetic Research Bureau shares a little theater space near the intersection of Glendale Blvd and San Fernando Road in Glendale. I read there before at a reading organized by David Lloyd of USC to raise money for Palestinian children. Thursday November 5, 2009, the PRB hosted Mark Nowak, who used to live in Minneapolis (but moved to Maryland, he said). I chatted at the door with Brian Kim Stefans, who said he was teaching my recent book, World Ball Notebook, in his class at UCLA. Tisa Bryant showed up, saying she’d recently moved to L.A. (this venue in in her neighborhood) from NYC for a teaching gig at Calarts. She said she’s working on a new book of exsperimental essays (perhaps like her 2007 Unexplained Presence, from Leon Books). Martha Ronk ducked through door when we didn’t get out of the way.
$5 donation, the little theater seats plush and comfortable. With the briefest of intros, the lights went out and Mark Nowak started a DVD which featured three poems being read, an older worker with gray hair in a ponytail reading a poem in front of a chainlink fence and parking lot about working for decades—”I grew up in the plant/ I bled in the plant…”—only to have Ford close down the plant and lay him off, then Philemon from South Africa reading about being a ford worker in South Africa, “anything can happen,” and Philemon among a group of other auto workers reading a group poem—”managers get training if they make a phonecall, workers get training if they take to the streets”—followed by the group chorus: “Oh! What a life!”
As he cued the video, Mark explained that he’d done some poetry workshops with auto workers, but that otherwise the UAW did not return his calls, presumably “because they don’t see culture as important, at least not part of their mission; they see themselves more like an insurance company providing support for the workers if something goes wrong.” But he said that he wrote to the South African trade union umbrella COSATU and received via email, I guess from NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, almost immediately a long itinerary of 8 hour per day workshops that he might provide for Ford auto workers in South Africa, along with information requests which included whether or not he was a vegetarian for meals they provided. Mark outlined how he ran the first 8 hour workshop to focus on production of “first person” poems by individuals and the second 8 hour day with workshops that produced a “first person plural poem,” essentially the poem read by the group on the video.
Nowak read parts of his new Coffeehouse Press book Coal Mountain Elementary, which is about coal miners, their deadly industry and the disasters that befall them in the U.S. and China. He discussed his writing process (as much of the book is selections from transcripts or testimony which Mark said that he culled from several thousand pages of material, distilling it to a couple hundred pages, keyed to selected photographs by Ian Teh) as well as his aesthetic. “I like it that this book is not available on Kindle,” he said, “instead the pages face each other and say,” he demonstrates with the book in front of him, “unless you cover up the photo [by Ian Teh from China] you have to keep in mind at the same time, or all the time that it’s facing something in the U.S., and I also like that the book is not entirely classifiable or pigeonholed by genre as creative nonfiction, poetry, a play or democratic testimony.”
Mark showed a slideshow of pictures from a recent trip to Argentina, where workers had taken over abandoned factories and fought off the police to occupy them and bring them back into production, including an aluminum plant which made cans and toothpaste tubes, and where, he noted, they offered a range of cultural classes or workshops, and he showed a picture of their lending library. He said this movement had organized some ten thousand workers. He read more from the new book, and then conducted a quick Q & A. Since he’d mentioned that some of his writing had been performed as theater, his Mac laptop was set up at his right hand so he could click on an NPR website video of a “readers theater” production where actors read from his Coal Mountain Elementary as a script, materials related to the “Sago mine disaster” where a dozen miners were killed. In response to another question he projected behind him on the portable screen his blog about mining accidents and disasters globally: http://coalmountain.wordpress.com/. The questions ranged from the relation of pictures to text in the work (my question) to questions about his process or approach in the Sago area, where he mentioned how CNN paid a local homeowner $250,000 so Anderson Cooper could stand on their property and use the Sago mine in the background as backdrop for his broadcasts. I was sort of more interested in languagy text-based questions, but Mark’s presentation and the thrust of his comments had gone global in more ways than one. Mark said he’d recently read at UC Santa Cruz for fellow Coffee House Press author Karen Yamashita, and the students mentioned I’d read there recently and they’d liked my book.
Mark, Tisa, Brian and others were headed to a bar in Echo Park, not far, but I couldn’t make it, because these days, with misty lights on top of Mount Wilson, I’m heading down the driveway at 5:20 AM for the gym. I went to my predawn work out inspired and envious of Mark’s powerful documentary process and projects, like an engine humming in my mind.
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