Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 57

John Yau and Thomas Nozkowski's Ing Grish

Ing Grish (Saturnalia Books, 2005) is a book of poems by John Yau and artwork by Thomas Nozkowski. Yau's characteristic breadth of poetic experimentation and a self-referential and metacritical awareness of language and meaning are as usual present in the poems of this collection. The pairing of this poetry with Nozkowski's art is curious; it is definitely not the relationship of text-to-illustration but is a particular kind of juxtaposition that only barely puts the words and the visual art in conversation.



In the introduction to the book, Barry Schwabsky suggests that putting the work of this poet and visual artist together is in some ways simply an echo of how Yau builds an artistic community around himself, where people working in different media and with various perspectives on art come to associate with him and each other. But Schwabsky also suggests that both Yau and Nozkowski have an ability to exceed or frustrate expectations in their work. Furthermore, he writes that Nozkowski has a "fascination with the (possible arbitrary and contingent) associations that attach themselves to and modify any perception or memory," which points to an interest in the open-ended and constantly changing meanings of artworks. Schwabsky ultimately concludes, "What's at stake is a refusal of premature definition," and he notes that both Yau and Nozkowski share this intent on pushing for the disruption of too-easy-meaning.



Small illustrations by Nozkowski, almost like cellular parts afloat in a cell, appear on some of the pages of Yau's poetry. The shapes are abstract but suggestive, sometimes absurdist in their connections (or lack of connection) to Yau's words. The beginning of "Two Baboons on a Beach" depicted above shows a shape composed of a square squished against a circle. The list of objects observed at the beginning of the poem seem similarly to be a smooshing together of dissimilar things.

It depends upon your pronunciations
It depends on whether the emphasis
Is on phlegm or ish
As in
do you speak Flemish

At other points, full-color art by Nozkowski are the only things on the page.

In "Diaspora," the speaker of the poem reminisces:

Upside down, the wok looked like a flying saucer, so I carefully surrounded it with rows of plastic Indians and Cuban gueriillas dressed like American marines. The only problem was that none of them had beards. It was the Fifties but already I was on the wrong side.

I like the oblique reference to the Cold War, sci-fi alien stories, and nationalism.

The final poem in the book is the title poem, "Ing Grish," full of insightful comments about corrupting language and cultural critique.

I do not know Ing Grish, but I will study it down to its
black and broken bones.

The claims the speaker makes about not knowing language unfurl into commentary about cultural misunderstanding and judgements about people based on the languages they do or do not speak and the ways they speak languages (with accents or in pidgin forms).

Because I do not know Chinese I have been told that means
I am not Chinese by a man who translates from the Spanish.

To speak a language or not to speak a language because a claim for and against cultural identity, to be authentic or not.

Both the poems by Yau and the art by Nozkowski are thoughtfully enigmatic at times.

Bino A. Realuyo's The Gods We Worship Live Next Door

Bino A. Realuyo's The Gods We Worship Live Next Door (University of Utah Press, 2006) is a historically-oriented collection of poems, considering the layers of colonialism that have structured Filipino lives in the archipelago and the diaspora.



Realuyo's work echoes other Filipino American poets' thoughtful engagements with language, history, transnational movements, and identity. Many of Realuyo's poems in this collection include prefatory notes about the historical situation addressed. For example, "Consummatum Est (It is finished)" includes a headnote that reads, "U.S. military bases in the Philippines were officially closed in 1992. Departing American servicemen left behind more than 30,000 unacknowledged children born to Filipino girlfriends and bar girls." And the poem ends with a footnote that the title comes from the "alleged last words of Jose P. Rizal, a national hero of the Philippines before he was shot by a firing squad in 1896, two years before Spain surrendered to the U.S. to end the Spanish-American war." These notes are helpful for framing the poems themselves and offer important starting points for readers to understand the enfolding of historical events into poetic exploration.

The Gods We Worship Live Next Door contains six sections of poems. The first focuses on diaspora, the second on the Spanish colonial era (1565–1898), the third on the U.S. colonial era (1898–1946), the fourth on the Japanese colonial era during World War II (1942–1946, overlapping with U.S. rule), the fifth on witnessing, and the sixth on a long poem titled "The Gods We Worship Live Next Door," which is a phrase borrowed from a poem by Filipino American writer Bienvenido Santos.

The first poem in the collection, "Filipineza," begins with the note, "In the modern Greek dictionary, the word 'Filipiniza' means 'maid.'" The poem imagines the position of Filipino maids in the diaspora:

If I became the brown woman mistaken
for a shadow, please tell your people I'm a tree.

The speaker of the poem is a Filipina maid who has left family and home like millions of other Filipinos (mainly women) who work all over the world in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to remit money to their families in the Philippines.

The better to work here in a house full of faces I don't recognize.
Shame is less a burden if spoken in the language of soap and stain.
My whole country cleans houses for food

The poem turns on the figure of Elena, another Filipina maid who disappeared while she was working as an overseas maid. Elena is a cautionary figure for other Filipinas, as the speaker's mother warns her, and the speaker imagines that she had a child by her married employer and then went off into the foreign world to live a secret life, becoming "part myth, part mortal, part soap."

While the poems in the first four sections focus on diasporic and historical realities for Filipinos, the poems in the fifth section imagine the subjectivity of people in the contemporary Philippines, especially the interiority of people referenced in news stories (often sensational ones). "The Pepper-Eater," for instance, takes as a starting point a news item about the Guinness Book of World Record holder for most hot peppers eaten. The speaker of the poem is a champion pepper eater, where the act of eating hot peppers becomes a metaphor for a fiery engagement with life.

Oh, this flavor, this life! If sweetness reveals the fruit,
our character hangs on the burning flesh of bulbous peppers.

The intensity of peppers' heat resonates with the speaker's town's heat, with its "hot-tempered men, / exposed torsos all day, hungry for a night of peppery-itch."

The long poem, "The Gods We Worship Live Next Door," takes an interesting approach to considering religious conflict and political strife in the Philippines, focusing on Islamist separatist groups engaging in guerrilla warfare in the Mindanao region and struggles with Communist forces. The poem seems brings Catholic imagery, especially of mother and child (Mary and Jesus), to bear on questions of war, neighborliness, religious difference, and nationalism. In particular, the poem considers the sexual violence men bring to bear on women during war and the effects of such oppressive acts and conditions on children as well. This poem bears witness to the horrible situation of war and the question of how God or gods allow such suffering.

Shin Yu Pai's AUX ARCS

Fresh off the presses today is Shin Yu Pai's latest poetry collection AUX ARCS (La Alameda Press, 2013).



The book takes its name from the Ozarks, a distinctive geological region in the American South, and a central theme throughout is the landscape, both geographical and social, of the South. Interestingly, the origins of the name Ozarks are uncertain. The term aux arcs serves as folk (faux) etymology, suggesting linguistic corruption of French and the messy intertwining of language, cultures, histories, and peoples that makes up the Americas. Pai's use of AUX ARCS as the title of the collection participates in this sort of genealogical excavation of naming and knowing.


Enchanted Rock, Llano Uplift, TX, digital photo, 2010.

AUX ARCS is both a textual and visual poetic collection, with photographs by the author dispersed throughout. Even before the first poem, just after the copyright page, is an image of broad land from the high vantage point of Enchanted Rock in Texas. The image is open and inviting. In the book, the photographs are not labeled, encouraging contemplation of what is in the image and how the image might connect with the ideas and words of the textual poems. A list at the back of the book provides the captions with location and other image information.


Skull & air conditioning unit, Lake Tawakoni, TX, mobile phone photo, 2006.

After the dedication page and before the first poem is a second photograph, one that signifies Texas with the skull of a Texas Longhorn steer mounted on the outside of a wooden structure next to the protruding backside of an air conditioning unit. The iconic image of the skull, reminiscent of a Wild West ethos and nostalgia, intriguingly sits jarringly next to an image of modernity and the fending off of excessive summer heat.

"Inner Space," the first poem of the collection, follows this image, bringing the speaker of the poem to "the cavern where / my Texan mate takes me to find / relief from heat." The relief of the cool interior space belies the speaker's thoughts of

                the Permian
floodwater maze that claimed

the lives of Ice Age species, mammoth

armadillo and sabre-toothed cat,
swamped in quicksand

The references to a geologically distant past and extinct species that once roamed the region, coupled with the idea of the inner space as a retreat from the outside heat, echo the skull and air conditioner image. The past and the modern collide in both the poem and the image, and the apparition of death (in the Longhorn skull and in the memory of extinct creatures, knowable to modern scientists only in their excavated skeletons) lingers in the presence of the present.

A number of the poems deal explicitly with Asian American presences in the American South and with the jarring experience of racial bias in a region still thought of generally as one divided into (simply) black and white. "Main Street" witnesses white teenage boys who spit at the speaker of the poem as she exits the post office in town, caught in her thoughts of an academic world more supposedly more distanced from everyday gestures of racism. "Black and White and Red All Over" takes the image of "the boy with a scarlet dyed / mohawk" and his siblings/friends wearing "the red & white jerseys / emblazoned w/ wrathful ridge-/ backed peccaries" (a reference to the Arkansas Razorbacks), framing these boys as threatening with a reference to "their shaved heads" (possible skinheads?) and their clustering behavior. The poem ends with images of animals and the observation, "aware more than ever I am / scared witless by wildlife." It is not so much the dogs and cats and hantavirus she mentions that seem to truly terrify her, though, but the mentality of college sports fans.

A more playful poem, "Peabody Ducks," spreads words across the page in meandering fashion, exploring the famous ducks of The Peabody hotel in Memphis. The poem, however, also points to the somewhat unsavory history of ducks in the hotel. The first ducks there were live decoys (restrained or maimed to prevent their flight) used by duck hunters, who placed them in the hotel's fountain for fun. Pai's poem suggests that despite the domestication of ducks in this hotel space, they "hold true to their avian traits" and keep "one orb always open, / against predators."

Many of the poems also take food and the changing cultures of food as topics. "Hybrid Land," for instance, catalogs food products in a list:

recall Country Crock

recall Ocean Mist

recall Frontera

recall Nestle

. The injunction to recall the products suggests both meanings of the word--either to remember these brands or to call it back due to defects. The next page of the poem turns on memories of more organic food practices:

I remember my mother peeling waxed skins from store-bought fruits.

I remember apples we grew — their skins dull, form misshapen.

I remember holes pecked by bird beaks scarring unripe peaches.

I remember the sweet stink of guavas rotting on the earth.

I remember pulling chives from the garden with my father.

The poem contrasts the sterility of packaged products on the shelf and the messiness of growing fruits and vegetables.

Other poems in the collection relate aspects of Asian American history and culture, such as a poem about the "Iron Chink," a fish-cleaning machine made to displace Asian immigrant and Indigenous workers in the Pacific Northwest canneries. "On Seeing Roger Shimomura's Crossing the Delaware" offers a reflection on Shimomura's well-known revisionist painting and the cultural politics of morality, education, and history in U.S. schools.


Agora, Chicago, IL, digital photo, 2012.

There are many other wonderful poems in this collection. They range widely in geography, across the Americas and Asia. They touch on different topics, often examining the histories of things and places to shed light on contemporary circumstances and social relations. One section of poems focuses on animals, especially the control of them such as putting dogs down in shelters to control population ("Cull") or arranging them in museums as objects of knowledge ("Natural History").


Adapations, Iowa City, IA, digital photo, 2010.

I'd be remiss as a crazy dog person note to end with a few lines from "Working Dog, Do Not Pet," a thoughtful poem about the balance of domestication and wildness in dogs:

the cattle dog
has no intimates
her duty is
to guard

to reach a hand
beyond the electric
safety fence might be

to have it bitten off

This collection of poems is expansive in its reach and its observations. While most of the poems are short, lyric verses of just a page, they each and collectively sketch out perspectives of the world that are insightful, scratching below surface understandings and connecting complicated, hidden histories to physical, observable presences.

Order a copy from the wonderful Small Press Distribution.

Asian American Literature Fans – Megapost for June 25, 2013

Asian American Literature Fans – Megapost for June 25, 2013

In this post, reviews of Nadeem Aslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden (Knopf, 2013), Oonya Kempadoo’s All Decent Animals (FSG, 2013), Alison Singh Gee’s Where the Peacocks Sing (St. Martin’s Press, 2003), Farhana Zia’s The Garden of my Imaan (Peachtree Publishers, 2013), Tao Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel (Melville House, 2009), Anis Shivani’s The Fifth Lash and Other Stories (C&R Press, 2012), Brenda Lin’s Wealth Ribbon: Taiwan Bound, America Bound (University of Indianapolis Press, 2004), Lavanya Sankaran’s The Hope Factory (The Dial Press, 2013).


A Review of Nadeem Aslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden (Knopf, 2013).



The Blind Man’s Garden is the kind of novel that makes you immediately wonder about the status of the creative writer as a researcher, historian, and ethnographer. The novel is set in Pakistan and Afghanistan and follows the lives of two sibling figures (Jeo and Mikal). Jeo is recently married, but decides to engage a humanitarian mission, offering his services as a medical doctor to those in war-torn Afghanistan. Jeo and Mikal are able to sneak into Afghanistan, but they are soon ambushed and separated. Jeo is killed, but Mikal’s fate is unknown. Back in Pakistan, Jeo’s wife, Naheed, is grieving, but it soon becomes apparent that she harbors a secret. Under pressure from her mother to remarry, Naheed actually remains steadfast in her belief that Mikal might still be alive. Indeed, Naheed had had a romance with him prior to marrying Jeo. Thus, in some ways, the novel turns into a love story amid a conflict-ridden and devastated landscape. In this sense, The Blind Man’s Garden evokes some of my favorite works to appear in the last couple of years, which include Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists and Roma Tearne’s Mosquito. This novel is an incredibly ambitious work in that Aslam must balance different plot strands alongside providing readers—many of whom will not necessarily be familiar with the history and the culture of the Afghanistan and Pakistan—a sense of the social contexts in which all the characters are mired. Further still, the novel spotlights Aslam’s keen ability to pause a scene and dwell in the richness of description. In this sense, Aslam reveals that even the darkest fictional worlds possess some measure of beauty and hope. The novel is in some ways connected to the world of Aslam’s previous effort, The Wasted Vigil, as one character, David Town, returns. In this case, he is the interrogator assigned to extract information from Mikal. Though the novel occasionally flags as Aslam weaves must weave together the complexity offered by various historical, cultural, and aesthetic strands, The Blind Man’s Garden is an incredibly important work simply for its political considerations, gesturing to the continued and problematic nature of empire-building as it continues in the borderlands of the Middle East and South Asia. Certainly, this novel can be paired with a number of others recently published and reviewed here at Asian American Literature Fans such as Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon and Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Garden-Nadeem-Aslam/dp/0307961710/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370744841&sr=8-1&keywords=the+blind+man%27s+garden

A Review of Oonya Kempadoo’s All Decent Animals (FSG, 2013).



I’m been trying to break some bad habits and pick up some novels of writers who have been on my to-read list for much too long. Oonya Kempadoo’s first two novels have unfortunately been languishing on my bookshelves still (Tide Running and Buxton Spice), but her new novel gave me some extra motivation and I read it in a couple of sittings. Kempadoo, of mixed-background and who has lived in many areas of the world, creates a third novel that is at its core a kuntslerroman, a narrative concerning the development of the artist-figure. Our protagonist is Ata (short for Atalanta), an apt name insofar as Ata is a fiercely independent spirit, who follows her artistic beliefs far enough to the point where she attempts to make a career of it, especially as her work is connected to the festival of Carnival. The novel teems with a spatial register that is imbued with the vitality of a specific geographical setting—that of Trinidad. Ata is a graphic design and costume maker, who will later come to realize that her interests in creative production actually are far wider in scope. She engages in a love affair with man who is working for the French branch of the United Nations, a man by the name of Pierre, but as the narrative moves on, her close friend Fraser is diagnosed with end-stage AIDS. Thus, the novel shifts to the consideration of her life in the shadow of this man’s inevitable death. Kempadoo texturizes the narrative through temporal jumps and occasionally shifts the perspective to other characters and she employs a stream-of-consciousness technique that continually and dynamically refocuses the narrative. Kempadoo’s novel ultimately provides a fascinating lens into the lives of a core group of characters, especially as they collide with and are enmeshed in the social contexts of an island society attempting to keep pace with a global economy. The class stratification, the racial division and segregation, as well as artistic freedom, are all issues that strongly undergird the character trajectories and give weight and heft to Kempadoo’s third novel. Though the narrative does not always completely gel, Kempadoo’s artistic writing style makes the reading experience a luxurious one.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/All-Decent-Animals-Oonya-Kempadoo/dp/0374299714/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371597163&sr=1-1&keywords=all+decent+animals

A Review of Alison Singh Gee’s Where the Peacocks Sing (St. Martin’s Press, 2003).



I was probably not in the right frame of mind to read Alison Singh Gee’s Where the Peacocks Sing, a memoir about the author’s exploration of her identity as well as her romantic relationship with an South Asian man named Ajay. The memoir begins with Gee’s consideration of her early career in journalism, where she is stationed in Hong Kong. This job gives her the opportunity to meet globally recognizable movie stars such as Jackie Chan and Gong Li and enables her to go out practically every night of the week. As a kind of celebrity nexus point, Gee is swept up in the social fervor and lives the high life, dating an affluent man, while rocking all the latest red carpet looks. But, there was something missing in Gee’s life, an aspect that did not become readily apparent until she began a correspondence with another journalist by the name of Ajay. As their relationship becomes more serious, Gee essentially shifts her life priorities, willing to give up her fast-paced life and consider what it would mean to be fully engaged in a romance with a South Asian man who attaches significant importance to his family roots. These family roots include a Palace located in India, which is in some state of disrepair. Gee gamely embarks on a quest to fully embrace the ethnic and provincial roots of her soon-to-be husband, which includes a trip to Mokimpur, but all is not immediately well. Gee struggles to fit in and to find a sense of kinship among Ajay’s closest relatives. Over time, though, Gee begins to acclimate to Ajay’s understanding of both India and his family and by the memoir’s conclusion, she sees that his family has become really an extended part of her own. When I started out the review by stating that I was probably not in the right frame of mind, I mean to say that reviews are necessarily influenced by our own personal states and I was sort of in a bad mood. Fortunately, Gee has an enterprising spirit and this style is fortunately infectious. Where the Peacocks Sing is written to imbue the reader with a sense of rebirth and hope and by the conclusion, I did indeed feel better. In terms of this community, Gee, who hails from a Chinese American background does reveal to us the difference between an ethnoracial U.S-based identity and a South Asian transnational one (through Ajay) and I believe that this memoir would make quite an interesting textual selection in terms of thinking about panethnicity as a paradigm for understanding Asian American racial formation. Undoubtedly, the text also speaks to the growing thematic of multiracial and multiethnic families in American literature.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Peacocks-Sing-Palace-Prince/dp/0312378785/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366912817&sr=8-1&keywords=Alison+Singh+Gee


A Review of Farhana Zia’s The Garden of my Imaan (Peachtree Publishers, 2013).



So I’ve been in a bit of a work funk lately and have been escaping into books here and there. Farhana Zia’s The Garden of my Imaan has been sitting on my “to read” bookshelf, so I finally picked it up! Zia’s debut novel is told from the first person perspective of a fifth grader named Aliya, who happens to be Muslim and South Asian American (of Indian ancestry). The novel is targeted toward advanced elementary and middle-school aged children and its focus is to articulate the challenges of growing up as a religious minority. Indeed, Aliya struggles to balance the universal issues of schooling such as belonging and popularity with particular cultural values such as religious dress and customs. As part of a school project, she starts to write to Allah, as a way to convey conundrums that surface during her daily life. For instance, she finds it difficult to maintain her fasting during Ramadan. Further still, she seeks gain the kind of courage she sees in a new classmate from Morocco named Marwa who is absolutely unapologetic and fearless about her Muslim faith. Fortunately, Aliya has some good friends and reliable family members who keep her grounded and more confident. As with some of the youth-oriented fictions I’ve read, Zia’s aim is undoubtedly to shed like on cultural and religious traditions and communities that have been targeted in light of the heightened animosity that emerged after 9/11. Though the narrative itself is not necessarily the most dynamic or original, Zia’s political rhetoric is unequivocally admirable.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Garden-My-Imaan-Farhana-Zia/dp/1561456985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368997164&sr=8-1&keywords=Farhana+Zia

A Review of Tao Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel (Melville House, 2009).



It’s been awhile since I’ve read anything by Tao Lin. There’s a certain style that Lin has mastered that borders on the absurd and you can never quite figure out where a particular narrative will go. In Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel, a novella of sorts, our protagonist is Sam, a young Taiwanese American writer who moves through a series of relationships and is repeatedly arrested for shoplifting (hence the title). It would be hard to describe a specific plot beyond this statement, except to say that Lin’s novella also operates to document the ubiquity of social media, brand names, and other such ephemera in the contemporary moment (references to youtube, gchat, flickr, photobucket, myspace, Odwalla juice and Moby abound). Though Sam might seem to be a peculiar character, his ennui is mirrored by the many characters who crop up in his life, and the meandering narrative is more largely reflective of the meandering psychic space that is being represented. A representative passage perhaps can be found here: “A few days later he and Sheila were on a train to New York City. They drank from a large plastic bottle containing organic soymilk, energy drink, and green tea extract and wrote sex stories to sell to nerve.com for $500. Sheila’s sex story had chainsaws and Sam’s sex story had Ha Jin doing things in a bathroom at Emory University. Sheila said she felt excited to be in New York City soon. They talked about making their own energy drink company. They got off the train and stood [end of 12] waiting for another train. They climbed a wall and sat in sunlight facing the train tracks” (13). I obviously enjoy this passage for Lin’s irreverent nod to Asian American culture in his reference to Ha Jin, but if we want to take this work seriously for a moment, we can place it perhaps in the mode of the twentysomething-identity quest to be found in a time where humanistic inquiry and the creative life can seem to be superfluous. What meaning can such endeavors hold amongst the preponderance and speed of the internet culture, so while we think on this issue, we might as well pilfer a thing or two.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Shoplifting-American-Apparel-Contemporary-Novella/dp/1933633786/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367445468&sr=8-1&keywords=shoplifting+from+american+apparel

A Review of Anis Shivani’s The Fifth Lash and Other Stories (C&R Press, 2012)



When I saw that Anis Shivani had put out another collection, I was curious to see how it would stack up against Anatolia and Other Stories, which was one of the most surprising reads for me in the last five years. The Fifth Lash and Other Stories is far more thematically unified in terms of an explicit connecting arc, as Shivani’s various stories involve characters typically of South Asian and/or Muslim backgrounds. But from there, Shivani showcases his storytelling versatility through narrative perspective, historical and geographical context and tonality. I’ll briefly focus on a handful to illustrate. The title story takes the narrative perspective of a close and former political advisor to Bhutto and the regime changes that occur in the Pakistani political realm. Here, Shivani’s story takes flight amid the behind-the-scenes drama as well as the shifting alliances that have made Pakistani politics one of the most turbulent in the recent decades. Both “Growing up Blind, in a Hotly Contested State” and “The House on Bahadur Shah Zafar Road” take on the topic of extramarital problematics. In the former story, a U.S.-based academic focused on Middle Eastern politics must come to the realization that his very low-key relationship with his wife is not the result of some common understanding, but a deliberate distancing on her part so that she can engage in an affair. The latter explores the “open secret” of a household servant named Zainab, who is fired due to the fact of indecorous state as an unmarried, pregnant woman. But her dismissal covers up the central issue: her pregnancy is likely the result of a long going affair with one of the family members. In “Alienation, Jihad, Burqa, Apostasy,” the transnational narrator comes full circle, first completely detaching himself from his Pakistani origin and later taking a prominent role in campus politics and reclaiming the importance of his heritage, only to question this shift in his priorities by the story’s end. And my favorite story, “Censor,” takes a fragmented and satirical look at the ways in which laws of propriety—even as outdated and outmoded as they can be—remain central to the regulation of South Asian culture. An eclectic collection full of darkly comic circumstances and complicated narrative perspectives.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fifth-Lash-Other-Stories/dp/1936196042/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1366691350&sr=8-4&keywords=anis+shivani

A Review of Brenda Lin’s Wealth Ribbon: Taiwan Bound, America Bound (University of Indianapolis Press, 2004).



I am reviewing Wealth Ribbon: Taiwan Bound, America Bound, which was already reviewed here by pylduck sometime ago.

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/120496.html?nojs=1&mode=reply

I was encouraged to pick up this title because I’ve actually become part of an impromptu reading group concerning Taiwanese/ American culture and representation. It’s part of an ongoing effort related to the fact that a member of my family wants to get to know more about her heritage, so I’ve been involved in picking out the books and coming up with some questions for each meeting. One of our first book picks is Wealth Ribbon, which is a wonderful creative non-fiction concerning the complications of identity in a very transnational age. Lin would be the quintessential “flexible citizen,” defined by Aihwa Ong in her already classic book, as Lin grows up both in the United States and Taiwan. Her parents are part of a generation that was unsure whether or not Taiwan would survive and so they casted multiple nets of national affiliations, raising Lin as a young child in the U.S. Even when Lin later moves to Taiwan, she is enrolled in an American school, thereby ensuring a continued bilingual upbringing. She will later return to the United States, embark in an interracial relationship with a man named Billy, and then later return to Taiwan with Billy, with all the complications that come with traveling as an as-yet unmarried young woman. This memoir is particularly noteworthy for Lin’s ability to deftly weave together historical elements with a personal account of her family. There is a very strong matrilineal impulse to Lin’s work that makes this memoir one that could be easily paired alongside something like Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, or Ng’s Bone.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Ribbon-Taiwan-Bound-America/dp/0880938544/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370299703&sr=8-1&keywords=brenda+lin+wealth+ribbon

A Review of Lavanya Sankaran’s The Hope Factory (The Dial Press, 2013)



Lavanya Sankaran’s debut novel The Hope Factory (The Dial Press, 2013) follows in the tradition of other South Asian writers seeking to explore the complicated nature of national modernization, especially as it relates to class collisions; the novel is reminiscent of Bharati Mukherjee’s Miss New India and Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower in this regard. Sankaran is also author of the short story collection, The Red Carpet, which pylduck earlier reviewed here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/133756.html

As with The Red Carpet, the majority of this story is set in Bangalore and mainly follows the perspective of two major characters: Anand and Kamala. Anand comes from the upper class, is a factory magnate, and is looking to expand his business. This process requires him to ask favors of various folks, who might be able to get him the land he needs. Anand is “married with children” and seems to be the picture of modern Indian success, but of course, Sankaran wants to complicate this characterization and we begin to see that there are cracks in his marriage and his kinship relationships that will challenge his own vision for economic growth. Then, there is Kamala, who exists on the other side of the class equation. Fortunately hired to work in Ananda’s house, Kamala is a fiercely independent woman who is seeking to keep her life in balance and especially looking to finance a better education for her gifted, but troubled young son Narayan. Sankaran’s novel exposes the incredibly wide gulf between the classes and the perilous challenges that they must face. When Sankaran finally places the two major characters in a more coherent plot trajectory, we begin to see how one life can be leveraged against another. Sankaran’s work appears most luminous in its critique of global capitalism, which reduces land and the lives who reside there to mere parcels of space to be reconfigured for profit.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hope-Factory-A-Novel/dp/0385338198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368804142&sr=8-1&keywords=the+hope+factory

Adaptation ARCs Giveaway!

Malinda Lo is running a fun promotional giveaway of three advance reading copies of her forthcoming novel Inheritance (sequel to Adaptation, reviewed on this site last fall by stephenhongsohn).

Ruth Ozeki is Awesome Blossom!!!

I'm a little late to the game, but Ruth Ozeki is now one of my very favorite writers. If you haven't read her first two novels, My Year of Meats (Penguin 1998) and All Over Creation (Penguin 2003), run out right now & get them ! I’m in the middle of her latest, A Tale for the Time Being (Viking 2013), which is also excellent. All three novels are quite different yet share thematic threads and concerns – food, the environment, and how we’re messing them and ourselves up very badly; fecundity and procreation; Buddhism and peace; and relations between people, particularly how geographical and physical proximity don’t necessary equal intimacy and identification, and vice versa. In other words, sometimes the people nearest to us are strangers, and sometimes we identify and connect with strangers half a world away.

My Year of Meats follows the lives of Jane Takagi-Little, a mixed-race documentary filmmaker in the U.S., and Akiko Ueno, an abused housewife in Japan. Jane is shooting a documentary series titled My American Wife!, sponsored by the American “Beef Export and Trade Syndicate, or, simply, BEEF-EX” (9). The purpose of the show is to bring the “heartland of America into the homes of Japan,” and in the process sell beef to the Japanese; i.e. “Meat is the Message.” In the process, Jane clashes with her Japanese boss, Joichi “John” Ueno, who objects to her featuring families with adopted children, African Americans, working-class people, and – horror of horrors – a lesbian, vegetarian couple. And Jane learns about the horrific effects of synthetic hormones and other chemicals, which affect both animals and humans very badly for generations, as well as the inhumane conditions of producing meat (suffice it to say that I’m off meat for a while). Meanwhile, Akiko cannot get pregnant or keep food down (the two being related), but does appreciate the better of Jane’s shows. Things go extremely downhill for both Jane and Akiko, but I won't spoil it; this intro synopsis doesn’t do justice to the subtlety, complexity, and surprisingness of the novel.

All Over Creation is set in Idaho, potato country, and it’s all about generation, both in sense of families as well as of creation. Yumi Fuller returns with her three children (different fathers) to Liberty Falls, where her Japanese mother is suffering from dementia and her white father is dying of cancer. It’s the first time she’s returned since she was 15, when she ran away after an affair with a teacher (not good). Her neighbor and former best friend, Cass Quinn, is now married and a potato farmer, and she has been trying unsuccessfully to conceive. Amidst the awkward family reunion, the Seeds of Resistance, a group of environmental activists protesting genetic engineering in crops, show up. Trust me, it’s not as crazy as it sounds; Ozeki is always subtle, fair, gentle, believable. And she makes potatoes and the politics of genetic modification fascinating.

Despite their topics, neither novel is ever preachy or didactic. A large part of this, I think, comes from Ozeki’s sure touch with characters – everyone is as complex and as part-good/part-bad as real people are. Not that realism is a requisite for good writing, but Ozeki is just really good at capturing how well meaning yet messed up most of us are.

A Tale for the Time Being is more formally experimental than the previous two novels, but they also tie together characters from far corners and explore how our degradation of the environment also degrades us. It was previously reviewed by obongo on March 12, 2013.

Buy Ozeki's books here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_lbr_one_browse-bin_0?rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Aruth+ozeki%2Cp_lbr_one_browse-bin%3ARuth+L.+Ozeki&keywords=ruth+ozeki&ie=UTF8&qid=1370786553&rnid=2272759011

Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for May 31 2013

Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for May 31 2013

In this post, reviews of: Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self (Harvard University Press, 2013); Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority: Asian American Literature and Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013); A Review of Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs (University of Hawaii Press, 2011); Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir (B&H Books, 2010); Andrew Fukuda’s The Prey (St. Martin’s Press, 2013); Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wasteland (HarperTeen 2013); Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir (Spiegel and Grau, 2013); Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2013).


A Review of Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self (Harvard University Press, 2013).



Gish Jen was selected to be guest lecturer of the distinguished Massey lectures in 2012; the product of this lectureship is Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self. This lecture series once also invited Maxine Hong Kingston and her work, To be the Poet (2000), resulted from that period. It is always a treat to read about a writer’s level of thinking that goes into the creative process. Of course, Jen and her marketers wisely chose a controversial title, bringing to mind the already infamous book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua. Frankly, Jen’s lectures have actually very little to do with Asian parenting per se, but more closely track a rough differentiation in Eastern and Western modes of thinking and of creative production. Jen distinguishes between an independent—more Western—thinking and an interdependent—more Eastern—thinking; I use the word “more” quite deliberately, as Jen herself acknowledges the murkiness and the essentialization she must engage in order to conceive of this general binary. The point of Jen’s lectures seems to be an articulation of a kind of hybridity that she herself explores in her cultural productions; certainly there is the importance of the figure, or the character, but equally so is the context or the great frame of social relations in which the character finds herself enmeshed and often entangled. Jen is not out to say one mode is better or more enlightened than the other, but this sort of meditation is also an opportunity to get a better sense of her own trajectory as a writer, how she relates to her parents, and how even her parents might relate to their ancestors. The first lecture spends a great deal of time exploring Jen’s father’s life and his way of speaking about himself, which is ultimately a way of speaking around himself. By the last of the three lectures, Jen firmly roots her exploration of independence and interdependence from interpretations of her own fiction. It is an absolute treat to see this kind of exploration here and it makes me crave more of these kinds of publications—where writers are given an opportunity to explain some of the intentionality in their work and to engage in cultural analysis.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Writing-Interdependent-Lectures-Civilization/dp/0674072839/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363915326&sr=8-1&keywords=tiger+writing

A Review of Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority: Asian American Literature and Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013); A Review of Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs (University of Hawaii Press, 2011)



There is certainly a risk in writing a book on the everyday, given its potential association with the banal, and yet Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority focuses on that very subject in her enterprising study of Asian American literature in relation what we might call “all things quotidian.” For those engaged in Asian American cultural studies, Lee’s archive is certainly not new or novel. In this respect, we might even call her selections part of the “everyday” of Asian Americanist critique, with chapters focused on Carlos Bulosan and Younghill Kang (chapter 1), Mine Okubo and Hisaye Yamamoto (chapter 2), Jade Snow Wong and Maxine Hong Kingston (chapter 3), Joy Kogawa, Nora Okja Keller, Ha Jin, and Lan Samantha Chang (chapter 4), Chang-rae Lee (chapter 5), and Frank Chin and Lois-Ann Yamanaka (chapter 6). At the same time, Lee’s approach shows the dynamic nature of common practices, familial object and experiences, revealing how Asian Americans have a necessarily vexed relationship to the everyday, in part mediated by the complicated nature and contours of racial formation. In this way, Lee helps us to rethink these canonical works and provides innovative readings in the process. Readings of the everyday within Asian American literature consequently makes for a lush and transformative scholarly study. My personal favorite chapter is the second, which focuses on the “uncanny” nature of the Japanese American internment experience in relation to the ways that internees attempted to reconstruct familiar environments even within the confines of what was a form of a prison. Thus, the familiar becomes slightly off-kilter, out of focus, and finally uncanny, as it becomes increasingly evident that the everyday cannot seamlessly be replicated in such inhospitable environments as the ones depicted in the aforementioned Okubo and Yamamoto. If there is a limit to Lee’s work, it is one common to most monographs: there simply is not enough time or space to cover all the possible works one might or possibly could. Indeed, her very short reading of Lahiri’s fiction in the conclusion makes us thirst for more.



The “racial formalism” phase of Asian American cultural critique continues with Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs, which forms a sort of second volume and companion to her earlier book, Begin Here: Reading Asian North American Autobiographies of Childhood. The shift from autobiography to memoir is deliberate precisely because, as Davis reveals, the memoirs she reads employ a collective standpoint (rather than the autobiographical self) of the family to deploy the narrative involved in life-writing. Of course, as with so many texts rooted in Asian ethnic contexts, these family stories are consistently a way to convey a larger tapestry. Davis contends: “The relational model of auto/biographical identity, I argue, functions on two levels in family memoirs: first, within the tet itself, as the author draws upon the stories of family members to complete her own, and, second, because these texts very consciously interpellate an audience. Asian American family memoirs manifestly present the individual author’s self as discursively constituted, as issues of literary traditions, immigrant history, identity politics, and cultural contingencies participate in the construction of the text” (11). As with Begin Here and Davis’s other book on the short story cycle, her knowledge of a given subfield is far-reading and visionary. She is one of the literary critics I can always go to get recommendations on books I have not even heard of and to expand the archive known more broadly as Asian American literature and culture. Indeed, most of the works she explores have not been reviewed here on Asian American literature fans and further still, most have not received much critical or literary attention elsewhere; these primary texts include: Jael Silliman’s Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames, Bruce Edward Hall’s Tea that Burns, and Mira Kamdar’s Motiba’s Tattoos. As with many other books in cultural criticism, Davis’s monograph remains in the hardcover form, but that should not deter anyone from requesting the title be added to a local university library.

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Minority-American-Literature-Everyday/dp/0199915830/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362341383&sr=8-1&keywords=modern+minority

http://www.amazon.com/Relative-Histories-Mediating-History-American/dp/0824834585/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370056063&sr=8-1&keywords=relative+histories+rocio+davis

A Review of Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir (B&H Books, 2010).

[image error]

I’ve been dealing with an apocalyptic respiratory illness for the last three days; my primary ailment is a brutal sore throat that is making it difficult to sleep at night. Nevertheless, the byproduct of staying in bed more often is that you get to read more books, as sickness-induced insomnia becomes your frequent bed partner. Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir was a book that called out to me for the simple fact of its title. The story is a clever metafiction that seeks to explore the motivations behind why demons would want to torture humans so much. Our narrator is a man named Clay, who also happens to be an editor and who is still reeling from his divorce. One day he happens to bump into Lucian, a demon, who pushes him to tell Lucian’s tale about the Fall. Clay, at first completely horrified by his association with a demon, later comes to realize that this demonic story might actually serve to be a marketable narrative, one that could be consumed a reading public hungry for the spiritual and the supernatural. Lucian is drawn to be an obvious trickster figure; he assumes the guises of a number of different people and Clay is continually caught off guard when he appears. Once he does appear, Lucian provides Clay with another bit of the story of Lucifer’s fall from God’s grace and God’s shift in attention from these fallen angels to humans, who are continually referred to by Lucian as the “clay people.” As Lucian eventually details his story, readers also realize that Clay is revealing more and more about himself: the fallout from his divorce from Audrey, his connections to his coworkers, and his desire to find a sense of personal fulfillment. Tosca Lee provides some extra source material at the book’s conclusion which helps fill in some of the gaps left in by philosophically unclosed ending, but I tended to read this narrative far more metaphorically in relation to the process of writing itself and the demon being a kind of symbol of writing difficulties and blockages. Further still, there is an entire section devoted to Lee’s reconsideration of Biblical passages in her reconstruction of Lucian’s story. Certainly, Lee is able to effectively render the jealousy and the astonishment of the fallen angels over the many ways that the clay people are embraced and redeemed by God. At the same time, Lucian’s appearance as a kind of character who holds the reigns over Clay’s ability to write a manuscript seems to be more largely suggestive of that Higher Power, which plagues writers everywhere as they attempt to find a resolution to their stories and to their research projects.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-A-Memoir-Tosca-Lee/dp/1433668807/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1365876892&sr=8-4&keywords=tosca+lee

A Review of Andrew Fukuda’s The Prey (St. Martin’s Press, 2013).



So, this was the second book I finished during a stint while I was sick. This novel got me through a particularly bad part of my illness and part of it is simply attributable to the fact that Andrew Fukuda’s novel, The Prey, has such a smart concept built into it that even when the plotting might stall or our suspension of disbelief might waver, we still want to know how the various mysteries will be revealed. In Fukuda’s debut, The Hunt, he set up the basic guidelines to a world in which humans are called hepers and have been basically wiped out. The few that remain are in hiding, passing among the vampire-like beings who suspect that more hepers may indeed be out there. The second novel sees Fukuda opening up the story so that we get a better sense of the vampire-like beings and the possibility that more hepers have survived. With that in mind, I issue my “spoiler” warning here and continue.


In The Prey, Gene, along with the humans who had been housed in the dome from book 1 (Sissy, Epap, David, Jacob, and Ben), are still attempting to flee from the vampire-like beings, who are tracking them. Using a boat, they are able to escape by crossing over a waterfall; after some days traveling, they come upon a cabin and are soon spotted by a young girl, who happens to be human. This girl Claire asks them if they have the Origin; they are confused, but later Claire takes them to a small village community filled with humans—a place called the Mission—where they believe they might have been saved. Of course, we are not surprised when all is not as it seems. There is a strict division in gender roles and women are not often allowed to mingle with the men; the elders and Krugman—the so-called leaders—reek of conspiracy and it is not long before Sissy and Gene team up to find out about the secrets that are hidden in the Mission’s history. Fukuda uses this novel to link this fantastical narrative to a realist referents and there is some sense that Sissy and Gene have come to a place that is a post-apocalyptic version of our own world, now having been repopulated and having survived the accidental creation of the duskers, otherwise known as super soldiers and the term for our vampire-like beings. But, even as Sissy and Gene are set to move from the rural outpost to a place called Civilization, they realize that there are still unanswered questions and their pursuit of these questions allows Fukuda to stage a rather bloody ending in which some of our favorite human characters may not survive. As with many other supernatural trilogies being published, we come to discover that our seemingly normal protagonist, Gene, is more of a hero than we ever realized. Fukuda concludes with a cliffhanger ending that will make you immediately wish book 3 was already published. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait too long as it has a November 2013 listing.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Prey-Hunt-Andrew-Fukuda/dp/1250005116/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366081743&sr=8-1&keywords=the+prey

A Review of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wasteland (HarperTeen 2013).



So, this book was the third one I read during what I am calling my 2013 plague period. Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan have already collaborated together on a set of graphic novels and this novel is their debut for the young adult paranormal urban fantasy romance fiction genre. Not surprisingly, Wasteland is planned as a trilogy. The novel is set in some postapocalyptic future in a landscape reminiscent of MadMax or Cherry2000. By this, I mean to say, water and food are scarce. The sun beats down mercilessly, and there are roving bands of baddies. People die by the time they are 19. Esther is 15. You do the math. If you thought it was rough being in the Logan’s Run world, well, Kim and Klavan have taken that up by 11 annual notches. Early on, our hero, Esther, is going about playing in the “wasteland” that is Prin, the town in which she and a few hardy others have decided to settled. She has a little friend named Skar, who is actually a creature called a Variant, beings who are born hermaphroditic, are roughly humanoid, and are generally hated and distrusted by humans. The feelings are mutual from the Variant side, so Esther and Skar’s friendship is already a kind of transgressive relationship. Because there are so few resources, townspeople are forced to work in groups to engage in various acts such as gleaning and harvesting. These acts are getting more difficult because the Variants, for whatever reason, have been staging more attacks against humans. Prin’s leader is a feckless man by the name of Rafe; he bows at the heels of another figure, Levi, who is the actual figurehead (and despot) of the entire region. Levi lives in a compound known as the Source, plays by his own rules, and apparently possesses a cache of goods that he exchanges with Prin’s townsfolk at exorbitant rates. Esther has one sister named Sarah, who reads and is generally a do-gooder. Finally, Esther has one friend in Joseph who lives in another remote part of town by himself with ten cats; he’s an eccentric, so his contact with anyone is pretty much limited to Esther. The novel starts moving toward its ending arc when Caleb comes into town, looking for vengeance. His wife was murdered and his child abducted by a group of variants; he believes that by tracking down the person who sold the variants a type of accelerant that he will be able to enact his own retribution. Of course, we soon discover that Levi is wrapped up in all of this chaos. He’s been pitting the Variants and the Humans against each other, to direct attention away from his true goal: finding a source of water beneath Prin. Kim and Klavan’s first book in the series is quite bleak, though they do manage to provide a conclusion that gives some of its major characters a reprieve. Yet, when Esther leaves readers with the sentiments that she is unsure how much longer anyone can stay in Prin, we realize that the sequel is already in the works.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Wasteland-Trilogy-Susan-Kim/dp/006211851X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366172293&sr=8-1&keywords=Laurence+Klavan+Susan+Kim


A Review of Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir (Spiegel and Grau, 2013)



Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir was the fourth book I read during what I am calling my 2013 plague period. I wasn’t entirely prepared for the “narrative” voice in this work, which is sort of a mix of slang and Huang’s comedic take at his own upbringing and his movement into the world of restaurant cuisine. He is the proprietor of a restaurant called Baohaus (a fun punning of those lovely Bao bun type dishes):

http://www.baohausnyc.com/menu.html

Take a gander at that menu and you can see that Huang streamlines in order to focus on the essentials. In any case, Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir does provide us with a unique comic narrative of acculturation. Eddie begins his tale with an obvious love of food and draws himself out to be a kind of anti-model minority figure, invested in African American popular culture and football. Eddie grows up primarily in a Southern state, Florida, where his father tries his luck at an American-type restaurant. He is raised alongside his two brothers, Emery and Evan, with the spirit of his mother’s desire for them to achieve economic stability. Indeed, it is his mother’s desire for financial success that is a looming presence in Eddie’s life. As the memoir continues, Eddie comes of age, which involves, among other things: taking English classes in college, selling weed, getting busted for selling weed, traveling to Taiwan on a language and culture program, attending school in Pittsburgh, getting a law degree, selling more weed for awhile, going on a reality television cooking competition, and then finally deciding to open up a restaurant. Though Huang’s memoir is humorous, the underlying impulse about what it means to be an ethnic minority in America is clear, especially as focused through his desire to find personal and professional fulfillment. This memoir is certainly one that could be paired well with a more traditional memoir, such as Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter. And I am certainly going to add this book to my teachable texts list.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Off-Boat-A-Memoir/dp/0679644881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366215680&sr=8-1&keywords=Eddie+Huang


A Review of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2013).



Of the Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni works I’ve had the chance to read, Oleander Girl, her latest, is definitely my favorite. Divakaruni is the author of numerous publications, including but not limited to Arranged Marriage: Stories (1995); The Mistress of Spices (1997), Sister of my Heart (1999). For me, Oleander Girl rises to the top based upon the surprise reveal given about two thirds of the way through. But, I am getting ahead of myself. Oleander Girl is the story of Korobi Roy, who is raised by her grandparents, Sarojini and Bimal. She is engaged to be married to a young man of affluent background name Rajat Bose. Though Korobi is herself of a more modest, upper middle-class background, Rajat falls madly in love with her and makes it clear that Korobi is the woman for him. As the date for the wedding draws close, Korobi and her grandfather get in a verbal spat over what she is wearing. Before Korobi is able to reconcile with him, he dies from an acute heart attack. Grief stricken and wracked with guilt, Korobi finds herself completely unmoored and seeking direction. It is during this period that Korobi discovers the true story behind her parentage. Her mother Anu Roy traveled to the United States to attend college and had fallen in love with an American, someone out of caste and out of class. This marriage obviously was not supported by Anu’s parents (Korobi’s grandparents) and resulted in considerable strain among the family members at large. When Anu falls pregnant, a momentary rapprochement occurs and she is allowed to visit her parents; during that period, there is a tragic accident and Anu is killed. Because she was so late into the pregnancy, doctors are able to save Korobi. Bimal—who is a lawyer—is able to stage it to make it seem as if Korobi has died, thus effectively cutting of Korobi’s father from claiming her. After Korobi learns of the truth behind what happened to her mother and her father, she realizes she cannot yet marry Rajat and embarks on a hasty trip to America, with the goal of finding her biological father. Enlisting help from new found friends—Desai and Vic—Korobi is relentless in her quest, even as her relationship to Rajat suffers under the strain of their physical separation. Rajat begins to wonder whether or not he is truly in love with Korobi and begins to entertain and to welcome the attentions of an old flame named Sonia. Complicating matters is that the Rajat’s family is facing financial crises within their business dealings. Sarojini, too, must consider what to do with the family’s limited finances and whether or not she must sell the home. There are many plot strands to cover in this novel and Divakaruni is always game to engage them and to tidy them up in the end. The novel is told from alternating first (in Korobi’s perspective) and third person perspectives (following a number of different characters, including Rajat, Mrs. Bose, Sarojini, among others). There is a Victorian courtship impulse to this novel and it ends exactly as you might expect, but Divakuni’s late stage surprise is what raises this novel to another level. Oleander Girl is as much about race relations in America as it is about the modern Indian woman who is struggling to find her independence. A truly transnational fictional work.


Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Oleander-Girl-Chitra-Banerjee-Divakaruni/dp/1451695659/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366435488&sr=8-1&keywords=oleander+girl

Asian American Literature Megapost for May 1 2013

Asian American Literature Megapost for May 1 2013

In this MYSTERY THEMED post reviews of: Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home (Minotaur Books, 2013); Tess Gerritsen’s Last to Die (Ballantine Books, 2012); .S. Lee’s, The Agency 1: A Spy in the House (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 2: The Body at the Tower (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 3: The Traitor in the Tunnel (Candlewick Press, 2012).

A Review of Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home (Minotaur Books, 2013).



Steph Cha’s debut novel Follow Her Home reveals a writer keenly aware and inspired by the subgenre of American noir fiction. With repeated references to Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, we know we are moving into a seedy underworld that is best set in a city like Los Angeles. Cha’s narrator is the indefatigable Juniper Song, a twenty-something who in her spare time can apparently moonlight as an unofficial investigator. A request from a close friend named Luke—who hails from a very upper crust background—requires Song to follow a young Korean American woman named Lori Lim, who may or may not be involved in an affair with Luke’s father, the business magnate known as William Cook. We are not surprised when we begin to discover that the mystery surrounding Lori is bigger and messier than Song could ever realize. Indeed, Song will soon be intimidated into keeping silent regarding everything she might have seen regarding Lori; a dead body found in the trunk of her car also alerts her to the fact that the shadowy figures involved in Lori’s life are not to be trifled with. Of course, Song is not about to back down; she enlists the friend of a former flame turned legal expert, Diego, and begins to find out what she can about Lori, in the hopes that she can protect herself and her family. Cha uses a very effective doubled narrative here that moves Song back into the past; we begin to see that Song’s interest in Lori is not merely related to this mystery. Indeed, Lori in some ways reminds Song of her connection to her younger sister, Iris. In that particular subplot, Song realizes that she does not know as much about her sister as she had thought and her efforts to find out more about Iris’s romantic history leads to a very climactic reveal late in the narrative that provides the main story arc more texture. As with any noir, motivations and first impressions are never directly transparent and many of the characters introduced know much more than they are willing at first to admit. As the body count begins to pile up, Song realizes that the stakes of this investigation have moved into a register where she knows she must see this mystery to its end, else she herself may be the next one to be found dead. Cha’s debut novel would fit very well into any American detective fiction course and would especially pair well with Walter Mosley, in her exploration of race, ethnicity, and the urban metropolis known as Los Angeles. The novel would also serve as a kind of effective contrast with another novel I love, Suk Kim’s Interpreter, in the exploration of the Korean American woman turned unofficial detective.

For another glowing review of this title please do see this link:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-steph-cha-20130407,0,3256154.story

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Follow-Her-Home-Steph-Cha/dp/1250009626/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365353857&sr=8-1&keywords=Steph+Cha

A Review of Tess Gerritsen’s Last to Die (Ballantine Books, 2012).



I was saving this book to read for a point where I needed something a little bit more plot-driven to consume my time and on a trip to visit some family, it provided some much needed frivolity. Last to Die is the latest installment in Tess Gerritsen’s long running and very popular Rizzoli & Isles series, which has been adapted into a television serial. The premise is spooky enough. It seems as though there are children being targeted repeatedly, so much so that any family they are connected with—first biological, then later adoptive—are killed off. Thus, the three main children in this novel have all suffered family massacres not once, but twice. Gerritsen adds yet another interesting element into the equation by uniting these three characters at a special school, The Evensong Boarding School, for children who have been subjected to major traumas. The school, located in Maine, and away from the Boston locale that grounds the series itself, is the perfect venue for this mystery plot to begin taking on other interesting textures. For those who are knowledgeable about the series, the fact that the Evensong Boarding School is run by the Mephisto Society is already potential cause for concern. Further still, once the school psychologist is found dead, having jumped from a high building and under suspicious circumstances, it becomes clear that that all is not well at the school. Gerritsen also uses enigmatic intercuts that ramp up the tension in the plotting—a narrative device I recall from Silent Girl, the last novel in the series. Readers are pushed to make sense of that narrative against the main plotting and the connections don’t become clear until late into the mystery. Gerritsen also manages to balance the detective plot against the personal trials of its two female protagonists, who are struggling still to rebuild their friendship due to past events. Rizzoli’s parents in particular are the subject of considerable romantic complications, so that subplot gives readers much needed space to breathe, especially because the body count begins to pile up. Even animals are sacrificed in ritualistic killings. Fans of the series and of the mystery genre should be more than happy with this offering.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Die-Rizzoli-Isles-Novel/dp/0345515633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367339453&sr=8-1&keywords=Tess+Gerritsen


A Review of Y.S. Lee’s, The Agency 1: A Spy in the House (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 2: The Body at the Tower (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 3: The Traitor in the Tunnel (Candlewick Press, 2012).



In Y.S. Lee’s deliciously fun The Agency series, our heroine is Mary Quinn, a young girl of a questionable background who is saved at the beginning of the novel by the mysterious Agency, who is sort of devoted to the recovery and reformulation of a women’s lives. The Agency is set in the Victorian era and the writer, Y.S. Lee, is no stranger to this period. As our faithful amazon webpage tells us: “Y. S. Lee has a PhD in Victorian literature and culture and says her research inspired her to write A SPY IN THE HOUSE, ‘a totally unrealistic, completely fictitious antidote to the fate that would otherwise swallow a girl like Mary Quinn.’ Y. S. Lee lives in Ontario, Canada.” In this respect, the “agency” enables girls like Mary Quinn a second chance because she lives on the margins of society as a petty thief. The Agency allows Mary to develop other skills, but there’s still limited options: should be become a wife, a governess, or servant; the other unsavory options being bandied about include becoming a prostitute or mistress. So, Lee creates an alternative job trajectory for Mary in this counterfactual, “totally unrealistic,” but nevertheless super fun speculative fiction wherein Mary can become a spy and report upon a particular household as a companion to the daughter of the prime suspect: a one Mr. Thorold, who may or may not be involved with the theft of priceless Indian subcontinent artifacts. At this point, it’s important to pause to say that one of the Lee’s great strengths in the strongly transnational and postcolonial tinge to her collection. Goods and services are being shipped all over the world in the novel, linking the Victorian era London to different nodal points for colonial capitalistic investments. Lee, of course, wants to make sure that even if there isn’t a tried and true marriage plot or courtship plot afloat, that there could be an alternative romance plot as Mary must deal with James Easton, a man who is researching the Thorold’s business dealings to find out whether or not they are as upstanding as they purport to be. James is a worthy counterpart to Mary insofar as he immediately notices how different she is. Her difference is, of course, another aspect that Lee plays with in one of the big surprises mid-way through the novel, which I will refuse to spoil for you. Suffice it to say that Lee’s first book in the Agency is that rare young adult work with a historical texture, a fantasy register, a detective fiction, and a courtship/romance all rolled into one.

[image error]

In the second book in the series, we found our heroine Mary Quinn, going under very deep cover, but this time as a young boy (renamed as Mark Quinn), working at a building site. She’s been dispatched to discover more details concerning the suspicious circumstances of a worker who was found dead, having fallen from the titular tower. Though Mary is game for this job, her overseers at the Agency are wary that such a duty might have psychological ramifications. You see: before Mary was saved and reformed by the Agency, she lived on the streets as a petty thief and hoodlum; she was able to survive in part, often relying upon disguises and passing as a man. Her elders wonder if such a job might trigger unsavory past experiences that could compromise her surveillance activities. Despite this warning, Mary decides that she can do the job, even requesting that she take residence at a working class type facility wherein she would not have the comforts or even the advantages of decent food. Mary’s work is at first not too difficult; she is able to get a job through Harkness, the site engineer, and begins working for the various people below him, which include the imposing and rather spiteful, Keenan, as well as his colleague, Reid. Of course, this series would not be complete with its central romance and fortunately, Lee sees fit to have James Easton, from book 1, return from his travels in India. He’s hired by Harkness to begin an independent assessment of the building site that would be conducted in order to clear him or any of his employees from wrongdoing in the death of Wick. When Mary—as Mark—accidentally bumps into him, James is one of the few to see so easily through the disguise, but he chooses not to break her cover. Indeed, this sequel sees James Easton willing to engage yet another partnership with Mary, presumably of course because of his strong feelings for her. There are of course the occasional issues related to Mary’s complicated identity background, which adds yet another wrinkle to the many dilemmas that arise in the course of the plotting. Lee’s narrative here occasionally flags as it attempts to retain tension throughout, but overall, the book is a spirited, if counterfactual look at an undercover women’s agency during the Victorian era.



In the latest installment, The Traitor in the Tunnel, Mary Quinn is actually undercover in Buckingham Palace! She is dispatched by the Agency in order to find out about a thief that may be pilfering precious items from the royal household. Of course, Lee is never intent to keep the first mystery the only one and soon other issues arise. Most importantly, the Prince of Wales is caught up in a murder scandal in which a close friend might have been killed in an opium den. Interestingly enough, the accused murdered actually may have ties to Mary herself, which ends up complicating and stretching out Mary’s own investments in her sleuthing. I am deliberately being cagey about the potential connection between Mary and the murderer precisely because I’ve attempted to keep a major plot point unspoiled that is revealed from the first book. Finally, Mary’s romance-nemesis, James Easton, returns yet again, as he is contracted to help with the building of a sewer system below London. As Mary soon discovers, the sewer and its connection to Buckingham Palace is a matter of national security. Fans of mystery and of YA historical will again be delighted by this title. Lee clearly has fun with her characters in this spirited third in the series. Fortunately, there are apparently plans for a fourth to appear sometime soon!

Buy the Books Here

http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-House-Y-S-Lee/dp/076365289X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1359052764&sr=8-2&keywords=Y.S.+Lee

http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-Body-Tower/dp/0763656437/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1361139912&sr=8-3&keywords=Y.S.+Lee

http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-Traitor-Tunnel/dp/0763663441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367416563&sr=8-1&keywords=Y.S.+Lee

Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 21, 2013

Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 21, 2013

In this post, reviews of Kashmira Sheth’s My Dadima Wears a Sari (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi) (Peachtree Publishers, 2007) and Kashmira Sheth’s Monsoon Afternoon (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi (Peachtree Publishers, 2008); Paul Yee’s What Happened This Summer (Tradewind Books, 2006); Elsie Chapman’s Dualed (Random House Books for Young Readers, 2013); and Justina Chen Headley’s Return to Me (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013).


A Review of Kashmira Sheth’s My Dadima Wears a Sari (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi) (Peachtree Publishers, 2007) and Monsoon Afternoon (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi (Peachtree Publishers, 2008).



It’s been awhile since I reviewed any children’s picture books and I recently had a chance to read the gorgeously illustrated and spirited narratives found in the collaborative publications produced by Yoshiko Jaeggi and Kashmira Sheth out of Peachtree Publishers. Sheth has already been reviewed on Asian American literature fans; please see, for instance, pylduck’s post on Sheth’s (and Pearce’s) most recent offering:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/141128.html

The picture book form is reliant upon a delicate balance between text and illustration. Jaeggi’s work in both books is absolutely exquisite; it seems as though the pictures have been produced in watercolor, giving both books a kind of dream-like quality that is perhaps perfect for the youthful reader. My Dadima Wears a Sari gives Sheth an opportunity to explore the cross-cultural and transnational dynamics of the titular piece of clothing. Here, the more Americanized young children, presumably of South Asian descent, receive a lesson from their “dadima” (a Gujarati term for grandmother) about the nature and personal history of her saris. As with other books that explore race and ethnicity, these children’s narratives are instructional in their approach, giving young readers the chance to understand what might be to them a foreign culture, but at the same time, Sheth and Jaeggi’s work will appeal to ethnically specific populations as well, who might be dealing with youth undergoing acculturation. This particular book also has a fun addition at the end, showing young readers how a sari can be worn. Whereas My Dadima Wears a Sari takes place the United States, Monsoon Afternoon is set in India. In that story, a young boy asks various members of his family to go outside and play, but everyone seems to be busy except for his grandfather, otherwise known as “dadaji.” The narrative thus reveals their bonding time on the arrival of the monsoon season. Here, the pedagogical conceit appears in the guise of the difference in weather patterns and Sheth does take time to explain the importance of the monsoon to her personal life in an author’s note the surfaces at the conclusion of this picture book.

Buy the Books Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Monsoon-Afternoon-Kashmira-Sheth/dp/1561454559/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1364148646&sr=8-4&keywords=kashmira+sheth

http://www.amazon.com/Dadima-Wears-Sari-Kashmira-Sheth/dp/1561453927/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1364148646&sr=8-7&keywords=kashmira+sheth

A Review of Paul Yee’s What Happened This Summer (Tradewind Books, 2006).



We reviewed a number of Paul Yee titles on Asian American literature fans, including some of his children’s books and a handful of his young adult titles. Plyduck’s latest review of a Paul Yee title was Ghost Train, posted here:

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/152518.html

What Happened This Summer is part of Yee’s work in the young adult genre; this publication is a curious one insofar as it is not listed as a collection of short stories or a novel per se, though it seems to be marketed as a general fictional work (set primarily in and around Vancouver, Canada). Since characters do recur across the stories, it seems best described as a story cycle or sequence. Because all of the stories are told in the first person perspective and most from the viewpoint of a Chinese Canadian youth, there is a kind of repetitive quality to the work that can detract from the important political contexts that Yee aims to convey. Indeed, the strength of What Happened This Summer is the thematic focus on generational ruptures between parents and their children, the lack of community building among immigrant youth, and the general malaise facing individuals as they struggle to acculturate to a new land and place. Yee is deft at weaving in particular historical and social contexts, including histories of Chinese migration, the continuing tensions among Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, the rise of China as a global economic power, and the ever-present lens of suspicion cast upon Asian immigrants due to emerging viruses from that region (like SARS). The strongest stories show Yee’s attentive consideration of form: one story employs the journal format and enhances the distinctiveness of its teenage narrator. In another, the narrator is studying for the TOEFL exam and finds himself struggling with the proper use of articles and Yee draws attention to the terrain of language as a kind of minefield, especially as certain words become bolded. For those looking for a grittier depiction of Chinese Canadian teenagers, Yee’s What Happened This Summer is certainly a good choice.

Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Happened-this-Summer-Paul/dp/1896580882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363157361&sr=8-1&keywords=what+happened+this+summer

A Review of Elsie Chapman’s Dualed (Random House Books for Young Readers, 2013).



Elsie Chapman’s debut novel Dualed leads us back into the young adult fiction world in the subgenre known as the paranormal urban fantasy romance. Our narrator is West Grayer, a teenage girl, who lives in a speculative fictional world, Kersh, in which each individual is born with a double living in another city. Yes, there are TWO of each individual living in the same fictional world. Once these individuals reach a certain age, the Alts must battle to the death. The one that survives is called a Complete. Of course, everything isn’t so simple with the process. There are Strikers, assassins hired to help kill off one’s Alt. Those with more money and living in better areas inevitably have higher rates of completion. West Grayer, as we might expect, is an underdog. Her parents are dead; her siblings have in one way or another either been killed by their alts or have been accidentally killed. Her closest friend, Chord, completes, but West loses her brother Luc when he gets inadvertently drawn into the combat. Chapman’s premise is first-rate for the simple fact that it is so philosophical. How does one go about killing the person that looks exactly like oneself? Will that other person hold the same values, the same motivations? The amazon page takes the issue a little bit further by asking the question about the world itself in which children and teens are pitted against each other along with the tagline that assumes that the one that survives is “more worthy.” This moniker is interesting insofar as it suggests that the individual who is more efficient and skilled at killing the other is better. What kind of society would this be? This question is never actually fully explored in the novel. We get a sense of a shadowy governing system known as the Board, but we do not know why they devised this system or if indeed they are the ones in actual power. Fortunately, Chapman has at least one more novel in this series coming out, tentatively entitled Divided. Given the rather definitive ending of this novel, it will be interesting to see what road Chapman takes. In terms of the broader subgenre that we’ve reviewed here, Dualed would pair incredibly well with Zhang’s What’s Left of Me. The cultural critic in me can’t help but think a little bit imaginatively about these two writers and their fictional worlds, both which involve characters who ultimately have to deal with a kind of split in the self. Are we not in some kind of metaphorical consideration of Asian American identity? Haha! Yea, a bit of a stretch, but Chapman leaves enough room in her physical descriptions of West to wonder if there is a racial background to be discerned. Indeed, in these speculative fictional worlds, it is the question of social difference which remains a question mark and the intellectual work we must do to yoke such worlds to our own.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dualed-Elsie-Chapman/dp/0307931544/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364621649&sr=1-1&keywords=elsie+chapman

A Review of Justina Chen Headley’s Return to Me (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013).



Though I have a great love for the young adult/ paranormal/ urban/ romance/ fantasy genre, as demonstrated by my incessant reading of authors like Melissa de la Cruz, Yvonne Woon, Malinda Lo, and others, there is something absolutely refreshing about reading a YA fiction that is not so steeped in the supernatural. To be sure, Headley, perhaps in a nod to the shift in the speculative, does give her some of these characters a kind of sixth-sense, an ability at times to see visions that will mark the future (an intuitional skill arguably). Yet, Headley’s focus has always been—in this fourth novel as in her three previous ones—to contour the quite complicated nature of adolescent maturity. In Return to Me, our protagonist and first person narrator is Rebecca Muir, an aspiring teenage architect living in Seattle, who has just been accepted to Columbia University. When her father receives a promotion in the New York City area, all seems perfectly aligned for her entire family to stay together, which also includes a devoted mother and a rambunctious younger brother (named Reid). Not all is so perfect of course. Rebecca (also nicknamed Reb, or Rebel) is in a serious relationship (with Jackson) and must consider whether or not to continue it. With counsel from her father, she decides to give it a shot, but the novel immediately shifts gears once they have arrived in New York. Reb’s Dad is away on a business trip and does not answer his phone; they soon discover that he is having an affair and that he is separating from their mother. Headley thus uses this novel to explore how one family recovers and heals from this kind of rift and the process is not entirely graceful. For instance, Reb’s mother must find a new identity to carve out in light of the fact that she may be forced to find another source of income in order to finance Reb’s schooling. Reb herself reconsiders the importance of Jackson in her life and whether or not she really wants to attend Columbia. Finally, Reb’s grandfather suggests they all retreat to Hawaii, with an opportunity to restore and rejuvenate. When the family does relocate for a period, Headley’s characters begin to see their rebirths. I always appreciate Headley’s novels because she manages that rare balance: to provide her characters with closure, while not succumbing to an excessively sentimental ending. Another engaging YA fiction.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Return-Me-Justina-Chen/dp/0316102555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364401738&sr=8-1&keywords=justina+chen

Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for April 13, 2013.

Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for April 13, 2013.

In this post, reviews of Abhishek Singh’s Krishna (Image Comics, 2012), Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance (Metropolitan Books, 2013), Indira Ganesan’s As Sweet As Honey (Knopf, 2013), and Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave (Knopf, 2013).

A Review of Abhishek Singh’s Krishna (Image Comics, 2012).



Abhishek Singh’s lushly illustrated graphic re-telling Krishna engages the story of the Hindu avatar. Singh follows the general storyline offered by important source materials. Much of the early half of the novel follows Krishna’s upbringing, which in part involves the taming of dangerous animals; later he seeks vengeance against the evil figure who tried to have him killed as an infant (due to a prophecy). Singh’s work is especially minimalist and relies upon the power of the visuals to carry the story. This aesthetic also encourages more interpretive work on the part of the reader, connecting panel sequences against each other. A definite must-read for those interested in the graphic narrative form, especially in its unique reconsideration and recreation of spiritual texts. I’ve included extra pictures in this review so you can get a sense of the epic tapestry that Singh creates in this work.





Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/KRISHNA-Journey-Within-Abhishek-Singh/dp/160706653X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365708568&sr=8-1&keywords=abhishek+singh


A Review of Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance (Metropolitan Books, 2013).



I was pleasantly surprised to see the listing for Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance appear so soon after his luminous debut novel, Partitions. Majmudar is also the author of two poetry collections. The Abundance shows Majmudar’s range as a fiction writer, as he moves from the historical foundations of his first novel to the immigrant setting of his second. Set in the Midwest, the unnamed narrator is an aged grandmother of Indian descent who is dying of cancer. The novel is far more about family dynamics than anything else and Majmudar takes some time carving out some of the intricacies that emerge here. The narrator’s husband, Abhi, is a successful medical doctor, while her two children, Mala and Ronak, take divergent routes to their Americanization. Ronak ends up marrying out of class and caste, a Caucasian American named Amber and working first in finance, while Mala dutifully follows Indian customs, getting an arranged marriage, while also following in her parents’ footsteps by becoming a medical doctor (an ENT specialist). With the focus so often on sons in Asian cultures, you can expect that Ronak, despite his more rebellious ways, is still perceived as the favored child. Mala, looking to get closer to her mother in the little time that is left, makes concrete efforts to connect, especially by learning the cooking recipes that have been a part of the family life (from whence the hardcover’s bright book jacket filled with spices takes its inspiration). One important backstory becomes the realization that the narrator did ultimately place her own career as a medical doctor on the backburner to raise Mala and Ronak, so Majmudar takes on the question of balancing a professional career and the work of motherhood. As the novel moves toward the conclusion, Majmudar includes two intriguing developments, a kind of metafictional nod to the book’s construct. First, Ronak finds out that Mala is documenting their mother’s recipes and thinks it would be a good idea to get it published as a book. Of course, the problem becomes the commercialization and sentimentalization of the whole experience of the narrator’s dying, and this event places a serious wedge among family members. Second, we discover that Mala has a keen interest in English, a topic that she perhaps eschewed in order to follow her parents’ professional trajectories. At some point, Mala and her mother discuss a kind of autobiographical conceit where the writer might take on the first person perspective of their biographical subject. These two events allow Majmudar’s book to rise above its more traditional immigrant family saga in that it gestures to the narrative not only as a deeply moving story concerning disease and disintegration and the aging process, but also one that delves into the craft and aesthetic implications behind that narrative.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Abundance-Novel-Amit-Majmudar/dp/0805096582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363879361&sr=8-1&keywords=amit+majmudar

A Review of Indira Ganesan’s As Sweet As Honey (Knopf, 2013)



With the imprint of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse all over these pages, it was clear to see the inspiration for Indira Ganesan’s third novel, As Sweet as Honey. As Sweet as Honey takes place on a fictional island called Pi (apparently the settings for Ganesan’s other novels which I admit I have not yet had a chance to read! EEEK!). Fortunately, Woolf’s novel is not replicated too directly and Ganesan takes her own approach to the theme of loss as it moves into the transnational and immigrant context. Woolf’s novel is so much about the connections among individual characters and how they all cannot or do not necessarily articulate their direct thoughts and feelings to each other. The modernist aesthetic works insofar as readers are still provided tremendous access to the patchwork of thoughts and feelings of each character through Woolf’s use of the stream-of-consciousness style. Thus, characters, as much as they are alienated from one another, nevertheless find cohesion through the stylistic. In this sense, Woolf has always been the quintessential modernist writer. But I digress. Ganesan looks to focus more broadly on the theme of the lighthouse as perhaps a kind of allegory for transnational movement. The Mrs. Ramsay analogue is Meterling, a very tall woman who embarks on a very non-tradition marriage with Archer, an Outlander from the UK. Meterling is soon pregnant. Love marriages are a big no-no, as we have seen in various books, so Meterling and Archer’s union creates a little bit of a scandal, but tragedy strikes when Archer dies due to a heart condition. In the wake of the romance’s abrupt conclusion, Meterling begins to eventually develop relations with Archer’s side of the family; one individual in particular, Simon, Archer’s younger brother, takes great pains to get to know Meterling and wouldn’t you know it: Simon and Meterling fall in love. There are of course many complications: Meterling’s extended family find the mourning period too brief and worry that yet another marriage to someone outside caste and class would result in residual fallout for other women of marriageable age within their kinship system. Further still, once Simon and Meterling decide to bring up the child in the UK, they begin to realize that there is a spectral presence following them. And of course I haven’t even spoken about Ganesan’s interesting narrative perspective, which primarily invokes a vague “we” standpoint of three young children brought up on Pi (mostly it’s from Mina’s perspective, but we also get shades of her siblings Rasi and Sanjay), who are our primary focalizers. The second portion is the most fascinating from the storytelling perspective, because it’s unclear how this information comes to be known and who is directing our vision of the fictional world. The final arc brings us back to Pi, where a reunion of sorts occurs. Ganesan brings us back to the lighthouse motif, but we don’t even need it: we already have that sense that return never means reclamation, that time passes and all we can do is live with our choices.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/As-Sweet-Honey-Indira-Ganesan/dp/0307960447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363107183&sr=8-1&keywords=indira+ganesan

A Review of Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave (Knopf, 2013).



Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave is a brutal and astonishing memoir, written as a chronicle of one woman’s life following her experiences during and subsequent to the Indian tsunami of 2004. She, along with her family, (her two children Vik and Malli, her husband Steve, and her parents) are in a seaside Sri Lankan community known as Yala when the wave hits. She has little time before realizing what is happening and in a split second decision: she takes her children, her husband, gets into the car of a jeep, but they are still eventually overtaken by the rushing water. Indeed, she does not pause to warn her parents who had been staying in the next room. Moments like this are ones that haunt her in the difficult years that will follow. Deraniyagala is separated from her family at that point and their fates at first are unclear and the memoir from this point takes the perspective of a woman coming to terms with various forms and manifestations of loss. The struggle of mourning is depicted with devastating clarity and this memoir is not for the light of heart. Deraniyagala does not shy away from some of the deepest and conflicted feelings and events that arise during this period: suicidal ideation, obsessional tendencies, and the desire to self-destruct. Of course, there is an arc and trajectory to this work and the conclusion sees Deraniyagala find new ways to cope and to find the will to survive.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Sonali-Deraniyagala/dp/0307962695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363458173&sr=8-1&keywords=sonali+deraniyagala