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Aug. 2nd, 2008 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionMaking More Waves: New Writing by Asian American Women - Edited by Elaine H. Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California. This second anthology (the first being Making Waves) doesn't feel nearly as dated to me as its predecessor, & not just because it's slightly newer. Somehow it just feels like less of an artifact. Probably my favorite piece was the somber "A Letter to My Sister," Lisa Park's thoughts about her sister's suicide, & how the construction of in/sanity, & the treatment of deviance, is racialized:
Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America - Edited by Quang Bao and Hanya Yanagihara. In some ways this is a broad anthology: writings about being queer & Asian, writings by queer Asians that may not explicitly talk about queerness, maybe even writings about the intersection of queerness & Asian-ness by non-queer Asians (I certainly don't know the sexuality of all the authors!). But the introduction by the editors, in which they talk about the process of selecting pieces for this book, mentions that they decided not to "worry too much about gender equity," & I feel like it shows. While I did not do a count of the table of contents, the book feels pretty male-dominated, although there are a number of female contributors. Sigh.
Despite that, this is still an impressive collection, with a lot of strong pieces. I thought it was odd that the anthology was arranged alphabetically, not topically or perhaps by type of writing (fiction, poetry, essay, etc.). Anyway--lots to sink one's teeth into. Noel Alumit's writing is always a pleasure--I love him!!--& his one-man show, "The Rice Room," reprinted here, is hilarious & apt & poignant. R. Zamora Linmark is another contributor whose work I generally enjoy, although one of his pieces, a letter to Claire Danes (in response to her insulting words about Manila), seemed strangely flat & ineffective to me.
New (to me) & notable: Andy Quan's short story "Calendar Boy" was a smart exploration of the perceptions of queer Asians (in this case, men) in gay culture & the media. Also new to me was Shyam Selvadurai, with an excerpt from his novel Funny Boy, in which a young boy in Sri Lanka is ostracized by his extended family for his gender non-conforming ways. It captures well, I thought, the small cruelties, intricate rules & mercurial allegiances that happen when a whole bunch of kids (especially extended family) get together. Alec Mapa's piece talks humorously about his failed relationships with men. And Natasha Singh's "For All the Indian Girls I've Ever Loved" lays out the unspoken rules for Indian women, exoticized in different ways depending on the races & genders of those they date; it could've been a funny piece but instead the subject is treated quite seriously, which I think works better.
Shadow Man - Melissa Scott. Really really fascinating science fiction novel dealing with gender, sexuality, trans & intersex issues, yay. In the world of this book, a drug used to help people deal w/the physical trauma of faster-than-light travel has been found to heavily increase the number of intersex births. Hara, a colony settled by early travelers using the drug, gets cut off from the rest of the Concord Worlds for hundreds of years. Harans develop with the same five sexes as the rest of the Concord, but only legally & culturally recognize two (male & female). The Concord Worlds, meanwhile, recognize five sexes as normal & natural. Now that Hara is back in contact with the Concord Worlds, & heavily involved in pharmaceutical trade (as well as sex trade) with offworlders, the issue of gender law becomes more & more heated as those members of the other 3 sexes, unacknowledged on Hara, agitate for the recognition of their true selves & for the loosening of gender roles.
Scott treats the complicated subject with the thoughtfulness it deserves. When I first started reading the novel, I was annoyed at how many italicized made-up terms she throws in quickly--something that annoys me generally--but the book is worth wending through the terminology for. (I also wished that she would've found more synonyms for "grinned," but okay.) Anyway, it is ridiculous that this book is out of print; snag a copy somewhere & pass it around!
Why would you want to place yourself in the hands of an institution that seeks to resocialize you into the environment that made a mess of you in the first place? Our inclusion into the American process turned out to be our worst form of oppression. Most people are proud to call themselves Americans, but why would you want to become a productive, well-adjusted citizen when the primary requisite of American-ness is racism? Isn't our madness often the only evidence we have at all to show for this civilizing terror?I'd read Grace Elaine Suh's short story "Gifts of the Magi" before, & it still triggered me big-time. I may have to photocopy it to keep on hand for easy explanations of my childhood & the mindset of my father. I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading the story, per se, but I find it very affecting.
Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America - Edited by Quang Bao and Hanya Yanagihara. In some ways this is a broad anthology: writings about being queer & Asian, writings by queer Asians that may not explicitly talk about queerness, maybe even writings about the intersection of queerness & Asian-ness by non-queer Asians (I certainly don't know the sexuality of all the authors!). But the introduction by the editors, in which they talk about the process of selecting pieces for this book, mentions that they decided not to "worry too much about gender equity," & I feel like it shows. While I did not do a count of the table of contents, the book feels pretty male-dominated, although there are a number of female contributors. Sigh.
Despite that, this is still an impressive collection, with a lot of strong pieces. I thought it was odd that the anthology was arranged alphabetically, not topically or perhaps by type of writing (fiction, poetry, essay, etc.). Anyway--lots to sink one's teeth into. Noel Alumit's writing is always a pleasure--I love him!!--& his one-man show, "The Rice Room," reprinted here, is hilarious & apt & poignant. R. Zamora Linmark is another contributor whose work I generally enjoy, although one of his pieces, a letter to Claire Danes (in response to her insulting words about Manila), seemed strangely flat & ineffective to me.
New (to me) & notable: Andy Quan's short story "Calendar Boy" was a smart exploration of the perceptions of queer Asians (in this case, men) in gay culture & the media. Also new to me was Shyam Selvadurai, with an excerpt from his novel Funny Boy, in which a young boy in Sri Lanka is ostracized by his extended family for his gender non-conforming ways. It captures well, I thought, the small cruelties, intricate rules & mercurial allegiances that happen when a whole bunch of kids (especially extended family) get together. Alec Mapa's piece talks humorously about his failed relationships with men. And Natasha Singh's "For All the Indian Girls I've Ever Loved" lays out the unspoken rules for Indian women, exoticized in different ways depending on the races & genders of those they date; it could've been a funny piece but instead the subject is treated quite seriously, which I think works better.
Shadow Man - Melissa Scott. Really really fascinating science fiction novel dealing with gender, sexuality, trans & intersex issues, yay. In the world of this book, a drug used to help people deal w/the physical trauma of faster-than-light travel has been found to heavily increase the number of intersex births. Hara, a colony settled by early travelers using the drug, gets cut off from the rest of the Concord Worlds for hundreds of years. Harans develop with the same five sexes as the rest of the Concord, but only legally & culturally recognize two (male & female). The Concord Worlds, meanwhile, recognize five sexes as normal & natural. Now that Hara is back in contact with the Concord Worlds, & heavily involved in pharmaceutical trade (as well as sex trade) with offworlders, the issue of gender law becomes more & more heated as those members of the other 3 sexes, unacknowledged on Hara, agitate for the recognition of their true selves & for the loosening of gender roles.
Scott treats the complicated subject with the thoughtfulness it deserves. When I first started reading the novel, I was annoyed at how many italicized made-up terms she throws in quickly--something that annoys me generally--but the book is worth wending through the terminology for. (I also wished that she would've found more synonyms for "grinned," but okay.) Anyway, it is ridiculous that this book is out of print; snag a copy somewhere & pass it around!