I chatted with Seneca Women about journaling your thoughts and feelings without judgement. Check out the November 6, 2020 episode of Here’s Something Good.
Author: Stephanie Han
Aloha, it’s TUESDAY books! This will become MONDAY books as of November 2!
The pick this week is THE BODY PAPERS by Grace Talusan. A first generation Filipina, Talusan is a woman of faith and intellect and heart, and the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. This is a beautiful and honest book of personal exploration and reckoning.
It is a very fast read—the prose is clear, the voice is steady and humbling. Her words are without pretense. Talusan’s strength is her ability to tell truths. This ferocity and vulnerability are rare qualities. They are the mark of a writer who SEES…writer as seer.
This is on my list of books to teach. Through spirit, family, definitions of womanhood, and her body we are witness to Talusan’s journey. This is a body that travels, bends, and transcends.
This body and mind do not break. Her triumph is ours.
I do not know a single woman who at one time or another, hasn’t been vexed by her body size or weight, who hasn’t felt vulnerable to assault (if not assaulted #metoo), who hasn’t felt that her body at one point in time, a source of shame or discomfort. The ONLY women I know who do not feel this have moved BEYOND it because they have faced the reality of what it means to have a woman’s body in this time period in history. In other words, the average woman is made to feel that her very physical self is in some way wrong, her body is a flawed body. Read this to understand how and why we feel this and learn how we might begin to feel.
This book describes with excruciating honesty what it means to understand your body and the body of those you love.
~teaching women the power of narrative~
Register for Women’s Creative Writing Workshop (5 weeks) at drstephaniehan.com starts 10/31.
#drstephaniehan #asianwriters #bipoc #literature #writing
Aloha, time for Tuesday books! Totem: America by Debra Kang Dean, author of five collections of poetry, reminds us how poetry opens us to feelings that are often too complicated to express and gives us the words we need to heal and live. Born in Hawai’i and of Korean and Okinawan ancestry, Dean is a serious practitioner of taiji, a master of lyricism, and writes of grief, connection, color and story. She guides the reader with narrative and sharp descriptions that oblige the reader to reframe the ordinary.
She lets us in. What sensory moments linger with us when faced with the fading of people and memory? I thought a lot about how the very sharp fragments are often how we make meaning and the choice becomes this: which moments do we move closer to in order to make our lives cohesive?
We go to poetry to ask: what should I note? WHY? As with all writing that moves one to a space of deep contemplation, Dean obliges us to ask this question (as I’d be inclined to casually say): HEY, YEAH, SO WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
Apples, Elvis, sky and words. Grief. And the HAN comes through—this is the Korean word that has no direct translation—of resilience and pathos, memory and loss—a binding to a feeling rooted in sorrow.
Kang writes poems we read once. And then decide, (in my case) a day later, to read again!
I also appreciate the references of place and experience. Poetry is both universal and specific, and for me personally, having grown up in Iowa, but having come to HI for family, there are certain cultural aspects that resonate. This is also very teachable poetry, and so teachers out there–I would pick up Totem: America or Dean’s other work. Dean writes her truth, and we nod in agreement;)
From ‘An Open Eye’: “I know that Death, like God,/wears many faces,/ but the heart, indiscriminate,/ only hammers out its/one note.”
Debra Kang Dean will be visiting Women’s Creative Writing Workshop on Wednesday 10/21! So excited to have her zoom in!
~teaching women the power of narrative~
Women’s Creative Writing Workshop begins 10/24
Aloha, time for Tuesday books! The Birth of Korean Cool (How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture) by EunyHong is a funny exuberant read and will inform people about the basic hows and whys of Korean culture and the machinations of global K-pop culture. I believe that this book is highly relevantgiven the anti-Asian sentiment due to COVID, the Black/Asian dynamic in the US, and the truth of polyculturalism. K-pop embodies an idea of polyculturalism and how the point of exchange is crucial.
I’m not a big K-pop fan because I’m rather ambivalent about a lot of pop culture, yet STILL I found this a fascinating read. Nation building through pop culture. I confess: I have a HUGE BTS blanket. A gift from Dad who informed me and The Kid that BTS was Korean World Famous Important Group Everyone Like. It’s thick and soft. I live in Hawaii.
How are we connected? What are some key facts about Korea that might be relevant about this nation on the global stage? We see Korean culture at PLAY. This book reveals insights applicable on a smaller scale to arts administrators. It’s also a lesson about humor: control the narrative with humor and you can say whatever you want to say. Whip-smart accessible writing. I was disturbed. I laughed. Always a good combo.
~teaching women the power of narrative~
Women’s Creative Writing Workshop begins 10/24
Aloha! Time for Tuesday books! E.J. Koh’s The Magical Language of Others! Koh’s memoir will resonate for those caught between time and place, who seek an understanding between generations, and who look to words for answers. This book exposes the realities of economic global work, Confucian expectations translated into modern lives, and the brutality of people living out their ambitions. It paints a poignant and raw picture of how we try to manifest a certain life. I believe that had I read this at a different time in my life I would have come to different conclusions, but I think that is what makes this a good book—this is one you will reread.
On a personal note, the book made me think about the life of my Korean cousin from Seoul. He’s back in Korea and spent years in the US as a parachute kid. My uncle was a cultural envoy and was called back. He took his youngest son and left his older one to live on his own at the age of 13 in New York. The belief in education and the excruciating conformity and misery that the Korean education system imposes on its young results in serious family disruption. Yet too, the chase for status, for acceptance, for money, a very real attempt to carve out a place and declare one’s existence in this life, is all too human.
This is a book for all, but what I think is important is that this book can cross various populations and age groups, and I would place it both on a university and secondary level reading list. I don’t say that about many books. We watch two women come of age or to an understanding—the narrator and her mother. There’s a raw pathos here—what is it we want family to be? How do we love and speak to each other? What does it mean to let go? How do we live in memory? Beautiful, sorrowful and meaningful questions we all must answer.
So excited to have EJ Koh visit Women’s Creative Writing Workshop on 10/3! Her growing body of work speaks to the global questions raised by those in the Korean diaspora, and I believe that her serious endeavors to bridge the literary questions raised by those in Korea, as well as those in the United States, mark her as one who will lead Korean American writing forward in the 21st century. Global. Woman. Poet. Writer. Translator. Editor. Read her now.
Write your story. Register at drstephaniehan.com
~teaching women the power of narrative~
It’s Tuesday! Time for a book recommendation. I deem I-Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita as the one novel to read if you want to understand the foundation of Asian America—its culture and art, its politics and aspirations. This book pushes aesthetic boundaries as seen in form, and it innovates in its delivery on every level. I would make this required reading for Asian American Studies and stick this on a university level American Literature syllabus. It’s fun! It’s cool. It’s cinematic. There’s something for everyone. This. Is. Art.
For my fellow Asian Americans who missed Asian American studies class (there was no class, you couldn’t be bothered, your parents wanted you to be more practical, you felt socially rejected by the guy who was the Asian American Studies cool person, this is your go-to one book you should read now…and in doing so, you can gain some cool points). This is the story of how and why Asian America came into being, how Asian people began to construct an American identity. Yamashita chronicles the cultural moment when Asian Americans declared themselves part of the creative American project and galvanized their communities, built alliances across ethnicities and races, and paved the way for our existence today.
What you’ll find and understand—the how and whys of the Black Asian alliance, class struggle and belonging, the manong, communism, food, film, dance, global organization, performance art, jazz, the questions of gender, and romance and all the while asking: how do we belong?
I did a dissertation chapter on this book. I believe it to be one of the most significant novels written by an Asian American for its aesthetics, form, and content, and predict that this will be one of the books that will be read in the decades to come. It is ahead of its time. Read it now.
Learn to write in a class that honors your voice and story: Women’s Creative Writing Workshop, Divorce: Write Your Journey and Beyond, Power Journal: Write to Transform, Reading Poetry for Girls.
~teaching women the power of narrative~