AAWW Radio: New Asian American Writers & Literature

We have a special interview with author Matthew Salesses, conducted by writer and anthropologist May Ngo back in February. Together, they dissect Matthew’s book Craft in the Real World, and have deep conversations about making writing workshops more equally accessible and how to think about one’s audience. They question the concept of agency, and how stories of lack of agency can actually feel more grounding, as well as dig into difficult questions of responsibility to our communities as writers of color and people from marginalized communities, and the complexity of wanting to represent a community but also be free from expectation. This is also the last episode produced by AAWW AV Producer Robert Ouyang Rusli.

AAWW and indie bookstore Books Are Magic partned together to celebrate musician Michelle Zauner’s debut memoir, Crying In H Mart. Best known for her work as the musician Japanese Breakfast, Zauner’s memoir is an astonishing debut: a rich, intimate, and lyrical story about finding yourself, and the enduring power of food and family. Zauner is joined in conversation at this event by Hrishikesh Hirway, musician and host/producer of the podcasts Song Exploder, Home Cooking, and more.

AAWW celebrates the paperback launch of C Pam Zhang’s debut novel How Much of These Hills is Gold, which was longlisted for The Booker Prize, among other accolades. Since its publication last spring, this haunting, spare, and achingly beautiful novel has been widely praised for turning its unflinching gaze on the people and legends of the American West, illuminating the voices of those who are often forgotten in the margins of history. Joining Pam in conversation to celebrate her book is writer and comedian Karen Chee. 

We're featuring audio from our recent event Anti-Asian Violence and Black-Asian Solidarity Today presented by Tamara K. Nopper. This lecture examines the merging of fighting “anti-Asian violence” with the promotion of “Black-Asian solidarity” in the context of COVID-19, and considers the work these narratives are doing and if they challenge or promote carceral logic. What might these narratives reveal or conceal about Asian Americans and racial politics?How does the legacy of the 1992 LA Rebellion influence what's happening today? Tamara's lecture ultimately calls for defunding the police and for abolition. The original livestream was accompanied by images and educational slides, you can view these on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/l7MNPXHT0wM

In time for the Association of Asian American Studies Conference that kicks off this week, we’re reposting an episode from the newly launched Journal of Asian American Studies podcast! We discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and Memoir, that seeks to answer the question, “What does sexual violence look like in the lives of those hailed as “model minority?” Intended as a reader for the college classroom, the #WeToo special issue contains works that make academic language and theories of sexual violence relevant and workable for our students’ understanding of their own lives and experiences. This episode is hosted by Chris Patterson and features interviews with the issue editors, erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan, as well as with two contributors, James McMaster, and Mashuq Mushtaq Deen. This special issue of the Journal of Asian American Studies was published in partnership with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and our digital magazine The Margins. Read a selection of pieces from #WeToo online at https://aaww.org/we-too-introduction-ninh-roshanravan/ Forthcoming episodes of the JAAS X New Books Network Podcast can be found here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/erin-khu%C3%AA-ninh-wetoo-reader-jaas-2021

We're celebrating Priyanka Champaneri’s debut novel, The City of Good Death. Priyanka will be in conversation with special guest Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop. Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, The City of Good Death is an immersive family saga exploring death, rebirth, and redemption set in India’s holy city of Banaras.

Acclaimed poet, novelist, and essayist Kazim Ali joins the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Milkweed Editions to launch his new memoir, Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water. Northern Light, a sensitive and elegantly structured exploration of land and power, is told through Ali’s recollections of his childhood in Manitoba, and the relationships he built with the indigenous Pimicikamak community, his former neighbors and fierce environmental activists. Ali is joined in conversation by poet and scholar Billy-Ray Belcourt.

Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop as we celebrate award-winning writer Chang-rae Lee’s electrifying new novel, My Year Abroad. A surprising, tender, and humorous work, My Year Abroad is a story unique to Chang-rae Lee’s immense talents as a writer, and explores the division between East and West, capitalism, mental health, mentorship, and much more. Chang-rae will be joined in conversation by Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Lot and Memorial.

AAWW is delighted to celebrate the launch of writer Nikesh Shukla’s new memoir, Brown Baby: A Memoir of Race, Family, and Home. An intimate look at love, grief, and fatherhood, Shukla’s memoir “bears witness to our turbulent times” (Bernardine Evaristo) with humor, honesty, and hope. Shukla is joined in conversation by Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk.

In the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism!, Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman have collected a bold group of emerging writers whose prescient and intimate writing paints an expansive portrait of the experience of being women and femmes of color. The first edition of the anthology became an instant classic in 2002, and this updated 2019 edition was a protest to the political Trump regime in our country. The experiences and intellectual insights in Colonize This! help sharpen our analysis for the struggles ahead, regardless of who is in the White House. This audio is from the launch party of Colonize This!, from August 16, 2019.

Our series Radical Thinkers places radical academics directly in conversation with trailblazing writers, poets, and artists, creating and nurturing two-way dialogues that will interrogate some of the most pressing issues facing Asian and Asian diasporic communities today. Featuring an interdisciplinary lineup of scholars and creatives, these unexpected pairings will center revolutionary discourse and scholarship in an effort to demystify intellectual debates, collapse the divide between the ‘ivory tower’ and the public sphere, and ultimately envision a radical new future. The first installment of this series in 2021 features novelist Simon Han (Nights When Nothing Happened) and scholar Tahseen Shams (Here, There, and Elsewhere) in conversation on their creative and scholarly processes, and immigrant relationships to time and place. Watch the video version on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/QvhON7QvuyY

We're celebrating the release of Lee Isaac Chung's critically acclaimed film Minari, a tender portrait of a Korean-American family that moves to an Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. Today’s podcast features audio from our pre-release screening talkback with director Lee Isaac Chung and novelist Min Jin Lee.

Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for the official launch of Te-Ping Chen’s extraordinary debut short story collection, Land of Big Numbers. Assured and immersive, the stories in Land of Big Numbers move confidently between the United States and China, shifting from realism to magical realism, and forming intimate portraits that draw from Chen’s years of working as a journalist in China. For this launch event, Chen will be joined in conversation by Charles Yu, author of the National Book Award-winning Interior Chinatown.

What are the radical possibilities of catalyzing cross-racial feminist solidarities, imaginations, and substantive realities? What revolutions must we create within ourselves to dismantle our prejudices, discrimination, and silences to create the world we want to see? Today’s podcast features audio from our recent event Siblings in Liberation, Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities, which celebrated the editorial collaboration between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective that found a home in AAWW’s digital magazine The Margins. Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities is an ongoing monthly series of critical essays, conversations, poetry, fiction, and more. The series looks to Black and Asian American feminist histories, practices, and frameworks on care, community, and survival as the tools and strategies to build towards collective liberation. This episode features remarks and discussion with Jaimee Swift of Black Women Radicals and Tiffany Diane Tso, Senti Sojwal, Salonee Bhaman, and Rachel Kuo of the Asian American Feminist Collective; a poetry reading by Cecile Afable and Zuri Gordon; a conversation between sex work activists Kate Zen and SX Noir; and ending reflections with Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey (aka DJ MOR Love & Joy). Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities was originally live streamed on our YouTube channel last week on Thursday, January 28th.  Read more about the collaboration on The Margins.

AAWW and London-based writer April Yee present a reading with two of the UK’s leading poets: Will Harris (RENDANG) and Romalyn Ante (Antiemetic for Homesickness). Following their reading, Will and Romalyn examine how Asian identity is constructed outside of the United States and discuss the ways British colonialism and capitalism continue to shape ideas of what and who belongs. Moderated by April Yee.

Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for our first event of the new year: a joint paperback launch of Gish Jen’s The Resisters and Meng Jin’s Little Gods. These two novels, released in early 2020, sketch out a dystopian near future that takes aim at several current catastrophes, and examine history, absence, and the passage of time as filtered through the individual immigrant experience. Together, these works break new ground for the dystopian and immigrant novels, and we hope you will join us as Gish and Meng discuss their work and craft.   Live Transcript: Hi, everyone. Happy new year and thank you for joining us online for this conversation with Meng Jin and Gish Jen. My name is Lily Philpott. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our virtual space. For those that are new we are a nonprofit organization dedicated to uplifting Asian literature and story telling. You can visit aaw.org and follow us on twitter, I object Saturday gram and YouTube. The recording of this event will be posted. During the event we ask that all audience members practice nonviolence in the chat. Comments will be flagged and the person will be removed from this event. We will have time for audience Q&A at the end of the night. You can ask questions by the Q &A function at the bottom of your screen. Books are for sale. You can find a link to purchase in the chat. You can support our authorize and independent book stores in doing so. I am going briefly introduce Meng and Gish. Gish Jen is the author of 4 previous novels. Her honors cloud the literary award for fiction and the American academy of arts and sciences. She delivered the William E Macy lecture at Harvard universitity. She teaches from time to time in China and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Harvard and hunter college. "Little Gods" is her first novel. We are delighted to celebrate " Little Gods" and "The Resisters" back in paper back. Pick up those books, support our authorize and enjoy the evening. Welcome Meng Jin to read. » Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you Lily for that lovely introduction. Thank to AAWW for inviting Meng Jin to do this event. I couldn't think of a more wonderful way to celebrate the paper back launch of those books. I am so honored to be here with Gish Jen who many of you might know was one of the first Chinese American authorize that I read when I started thinking about becoming a writer. Yeah, it's just kind of mind blowing that we get to be here tonight together. I am actually going to read from a photo essay that is published in the end section of the paper back. I thought about reading this because I took these photographs in 2016 in the summer of 2016 when actually I saw Gish in person for the first time. I don't know if we actually met. But Gish was doing an event with some local writers and a friend of mine invited me. So yeah, here are the -- here is the photo essay . I am going to share my screen. Images of Shanghai I spent 6 weeks in my birth city Shanghai. I was there to finish my novel "Little Gods". I left when I was a child. My memories of the city are the memories of a child fleeting, flashes of sensory knowledge, closer to the knowledge of a dream than that of a photograph. Inside these memories were images so intense and vivid I felt I could reach out and touch them. But when I did reach for them they disintegrated immediately. I hope to stabilize my memory with images of the real city outside my window the Shanghai of post cards was laid before me sharp and glittering. This was a Shanghai that had been built after my departure when the sky line was farmland . Time changed me too. We faced each other as strangers. Some days the city felt dense. It awed me with its layers of complexity. Each time you peeled one another, you found another just as teaming. The inner most layer was the one I sought between the cracks of the buildings crowding the feet of the sky line. We'ved weaved through the sit. I knew I would never find the exact Shanghai I was looking for. My childhood had been demolished. On previous visits I had searched for its remnants in vein. The closest I had gotten was confirmation of its non-existence. In a translated directory I found the name of my neighborhood with a single asterisk beside it. According to the note note it meant has been obliterated. Still I walk the streets where it should have been searching for glimmers glimmers that might bring my childhood home back to me in one unbroken piece. Some remain. In thosalies you can these allies you can see the disruption of empire, technology and nature. The architecture was pleasantly modeled colonel history the narrow allies are made narrower by frequent stacks of junk. Not a centimeter of space goes unused. Everywhere life is spilling out of the doors. Most of the time, however , the impossibility of my search was reflected back at me. Since 2005 the Shanghai municipal government has been modernizing the city through the demolition of the neighborhoods. Select areas have been preserved for historic value or rebuilt as tourist destinations. But most are marked with. Sometimes instead of Ti, I found buildings meaning they were empty. A paradox in a city that is continually over filling. I found myself photographing tis. I did not actively search. It is not photo again I can or beautiful. I continued to photograph with a vague imperative of duty to whom or what I didn't know. I still don't understand what good these images are for. They can't preserve anything. Not really . And besides most of the residents would prefer to collect their relocation checks and go. They certainly can't bring back anybody's lost home. But there is something about looking at a site you know will soon disappear that compels to you keep looking. One day I unearthed a lost photograph of my town taken in 2008 during the last visit to the neighborhood before its demolition. I noticed an unusual looking building in the background. Using street view I was able to locate the exact spot where my town would have been if it still stood. I went there. I saw that the unusual building still stood. What's being built here I asked some construction workers. A shopping mall they replied cheerfully. Now when I imagine Shanghai I long for no fixed image. Instead I see a city racing to an unknown future at near light speed in whose wake I can only blink. Thank you. » Hi. Am I on screen now? First let me say Meng that was beautiful. Just hearing your voice and images I can't even tell you how much they meant to me. My family is also from Shanghai an I also spent a lot of time looking for remnants of the past. It's so interesting that even throw my new book is very much concerned with the future, just listen to go you and that Shanghai, I am aware how much even this book is a loss. We'll be talking about that. Let me just read a few minutes from my book. My book as you know is called "The Resisters". It is a post automation state baseball testimony enist dystopia. I am going to read to you 2 sections. One is longer than the other. And then we' ll talk. So this is from the beginning of the bosk. The book is narrated by the father in this family named grant. He is talking about his daughter a gifted picture for a daughter daughter. As her parents should have known earlier, but Gwen was a preemie. That meant oxygen at first and special checkups and her early months were bumpy. She had jaun cidie. A heart murmur things that distracted us. We were focused on her health to the exclusion of all else. For us surplus the limit was one pregnancy per couple and Eleanor was just out of jail. Outside of the house she had a drone tracking her every move. The message was clear she was not getting away with anything . And we loved Gwen would never have wanted to replace her. She was delicate that she might not consume the way she needed to the way we all needed to. Charges of under consumption couldn't be fought in the courts. This was auto America after all for all the changes brought by AI and automation now rolled up with the internet into the eye burrito we called aunt Netty we still did have a constitution. If anyone could defend what was left of our rights it was Eleanor even the goose patrolled the neighborhood. The pit bulls one might say were afraid. But as Eleanor's incarceration brought home these battles had a price. In the meanwhile worrying an weighing the options distracted us from realizing other things things we might have noticed earlier had Gwen had a sibling. It is so hard for a new parent to imagine a child any different from the one he or she has. Children do have their own gravity. They are their own normal. And so it is only now we can see that there are signs. All children take what 's in their crib and throw it for example. It is universal. But Gwen through her stuffed animal straight through her bedroom doorway. They shot out never grazing the door frame and they always hit the wall or staircase at a certain spot with a force they need today bounce forward and drop clean down to the bottom of the stairwell. Was she 2 when she did this? Not even. She was already a southpaw and she seemed to have unusually long arms and long fingers or so I remember remarking one day not that he will nor and I had so many babies on which to base our comparison. Ours was just an impression. But it was a strong impression. Her fingers were long. I remember too having to round up own the landing before starting up the stairs. The stuffed hippo and tiger the stuffed turtle. I gathered them all into my arm like the story book zoo Cooper of some kingdom. It was as if I too by all rights be made plush. Of course our house was automated as all surplus houses were required to be by law. The animals could easily have been clear floated. All I had to do is say the wall they would immerse from the closet. Clear float now, aren't those animals in your way and we can roll an clear if you prefer. You have a choice. You always have a choice. The choice the new feature of the program. To balance its more cyber intimidation. If you shift it will be your own fault. Do note that your choice is on the record. Nothing is being hidden from you. Your choice is on the record. Meaning that I was losing living points every time. Living points being something like what we used to call brownie points growing up. They are more critical than money from goating a loan to getting Gwen into net u should we dream of doing that a goal that involved tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of points. But I picked the animals up myself any way as did Eleanor when it was she who came upon them her silver hair and black eyes shining all because we wanted to dump the animals into the crib and hear her laughter as she set about hurling them. Everything was a game to her a most wonderful loving endless game. Her spy eyes let up with mischief. Her cheeks the pink on the under clouds. She laughed so hard she fell grabbing the crib rails as she scam peopled back up that the whole crib shook. Was this delicate newborn we delicately tended. She wore a soft yellow blanket sleeper with hand knit extra version of a suit Eleanor remembered from her own childhood. None of the baby over Gwen's Crib. She learned to blow on her hands if she was cold and cuddle for us if she needed warmth. We all wore sweaters to avoid turning on the zone heat for which we were house scowled. Don't you find it chilly? Why not turn on the zone heat you will be more comfortable Eleanor especially. Don't you find it a bit chilly? We ignored it. This is how the auto house started with thermostats that sent to aunt Netty and videos then drone deliverers and fruit stockers and global sitters. Elder helpers and yard bots all of which report today ought netty as any spy network recording our steps, our pictures, you are relationships and when surplus had them. She in turn took what she knew and applied it prover ago long the way so will is and advice. Indeed in the earlyize day automation I myself brought up ask aunt Netty and can still remember her voice as she volunteered I 'm here and insisted I want to hear everything and reassured me of course you feel that way , how could you not. You are only human. I did laugh at you are only human. Now I am going to read a short section from later on the book. Gwen has gone on and now she and her teammates are getting ready to play in the olympics against the Russia team. The Russia team is terrifying partly because they have all been bio engineered. That mean we are all switch hitters. Perhaps all of this was fear pure and simple on the part of Gwen's teammate feeding their obsession was the sense that baseball was more than a sport. That it was a crown jewel. There were people that said it wasn't even invented in America. There were people who pointed out it was mentioned by Jane Austin long before it was ever mentioned here. But if baseball took on a hallowed meaning, it took on that meaning in our American dreams. For was this not the level playing field we envisioned, the field on which people could show what they were made of? And didn't we Americans believe above all that everyone should have a real chance at bat? Didn't we believe with the good of the team at heart something in us might just hit a ball off our shoe tops? If Gwen's teammates were playing Russia for something it was for this, for a chance to show my mother would have said that even if we all returned to the dirt and the wind and the rain like the plants and the animals, we had a bigness in us, something beyond algorithm and beyond upgrades. Something we were proud to call human or so it seemed to me. Thank you. Did I say thank you loud enough? Meng, great. So Meng, it is really a great, great pleasure to share the event of you. I was a big fan as you could tell by my review. It was a stunning debut. I am hoping that a year later the joy is still with you. How does it feel now that you have done it in hard cover but the paper back? It is quite a moment for you. Are you still aglow? » Well, it's been quite a year in between. Yeah, I think I have got a little bit of distance and perspective this year because of how nuts the world has been. I was reflecting on when the hard cover came out in January of last year and the president was getting impeached and it was very -- it was apparent because one of my interviews was -- one of my radio interviews was canceled because they were covering impeachment all day. Oh, gray great. It is almost like no time and all of the time in the year. » I have had friends come out and publish books on 9/11. » Yeah. » You will soon discover something is almost always happening in a funny kind of way it matters so much to you but the rest of the world barely notices. Since this is the writers workshop and people are so interested in process we should talk about our books. I think we should maybe -- maybe you could talk about your journey. I think a lot of people in the audience would like to be you. They are working on their first book and they are working on their first book and they have roots maybe in Asia as you and I do. Not everybody is from Shanghai, of course. But they have all made -- as you know, they are making 2 journeys. Often they are making one journey which is just from wow , I have a blank page to like wow, how do these books get written that is really long. In the beginning people go on to write like 7 books? It seems to I am probable. That is one journey which is just -- I bearly know what point of view is to a finished book. For people like you and me we have another journey. We have roots in another culture where the whole narrative thing, the whole novel tradition is not native. And we frequently -- there are probably 3 journeys. The journey often we have parents who often do not get this thing at all. Who really see this whole enterprise as May more individualistic than anything they would happen to them and their family. So this kind of has 3 things going on. Your journey was my journey at one point. I think interestingly I don't know how many years out my first book came out in '91. I have been at this for quite a while. I sat down to write in 1986 when Asian American novel did not exist. I can still remember my agent saying it is about people coming to America. It' s about -- the term immigrant novelist did not hope to mind. I wrote that book at a time when people believed Asian Americans could not write novels. Max even had meant the warrior to be a novel and forced to force it as a memoir . Asian Americans did not write novels. I wrote it at the bunting institute at Radcliff. I was asked every day aren't you writing immigrant auto biography. This was by educated people. Every day I had to say no, actually I am writing a novel. Actually I'm producing not artifact. It was another -- all of these things today happily people presumably don't say those things to you anymore. Today presumably people can accept that you are writing a novel. If you can talk about what it is like to enter this tradition or getting up the nerve to tell your parents that you were going to be a novelist, where you got this idea. We both went to Harvard, am I right? » I guess so, yes. I was actually her fighted of the English department at Harvard. It was in the most intimidating building with all of these deer heads on the wall. I don't know if you remember that. And I took like 2 English classes that were in the requirements. I studied basically everything else. I studied social studies and I did pre--med because I told my parents I have my plan B don't worry. I can always go back on my pre-med requirements » You will not be surprised to hear that I was also pre-med and pre-law. I dropped out of Stanford business school. This is very familiar too. This is part of the story. 3 of us from Harvard we were all about '77, '78. The 3 of us stood there and it was like a trifecta. I had dropped out of business school. the other one dropped out of law school and the other one dropped out of med school. And there we were. But anyway, this is a very familiar part of the story. Please say about what did it mean at the time that you were doing it. We're like the old school. » No, I think honestly everything I have said sounds familiar to me. I remember because I didn't really have a big humanities education or background I wasn't really encouraged to read when I was a kid, I remember when I decided after college I am really going to try to do this and went abou methodically making reading lists for myself Asian American reading lists. I remember discovering your work and the best short stories of the century and reading it and being like oh, my God this is not just like we are Chinese people drinking tea or we have so much tender immigrant feelings. It's funny. It's ambitious. It looks outside of just the Chinese American experience or the experience of immigration. You were really one of the writers that made me feel like okay, I don't necessarily have to, you know, produce the kind of work that people are expecting me to produce. I think I teach a little bit now . It feels like my students are not going through as much just as I am not going through as much of the you might be writing your own story. Surely you can only be expressing yourself not creating art. Surely you must be like creating testimony and not a work of art. I feel, yeah, when I started writing I felt like I did get a lot of feedback. It took me a long time in my writing workshops to get over the fact that all of my professors and most of my peers were white and that they were -- the parts of my writing that they liked were the more exotic Chinese parts. I literally had a teacher, I literally had a teacher who gave me feedback that was like do more of the Chinese stuff. It took me a while to understand how to sort of push back against that and to ignore it and to come to my own sense of what I wanted my writing to be. Because I think especially someone that doesn't come from a literary background, please, tell me what is good. A lot of writing, this book was learning to ignore what other people thought and learning to really listen to what it was inside me that wanted to create and wanted to write. » It is so interesting, I of course have the letter from the Paris review that literally the rejection letter says we prefer more exotic work. » Oh, wow. » It is right out there. Today they might hesitate to say that. But I think what you are describing and many people in the audience can also relate. I think they can see that there is a kind of salable commodity that everybody sees in you and you have to really resist. For me a lot of that meant I defined myself early as an American writer. Everybody wanted to be right about China China. I didn't want to -- I didn't want to become abdomen ambassador. There were a couple of roles for you. One is exotic. Being an ambassador of some sort. Another as things got more political and being a professional victim. I don't want to be a professional victim. I actually want to be a writer. And it is kind of this mine field when you are negotiating , negotiating. The very happy situation with you is that you made it through. I think that maybe one of the things that people might be interested to hear sounds like look you could hear I also heard myself in the end. I ignored all of those things just like you. I literally had a little ritual that I would enact before I started working where I would make a little icon of various people and various opinions in my mind a little icon. I would literally pick it up and put it in the trash. Or out in the hall. But I would basically -- there were a lot of these. They weren't all -- in other words some people who wrote opinions were not bad people. I removed the people with good opinions. John Updyke had a good opinion of me. No sooner did I realize what a good opinion he had of me did I have to put him in the hall. It was a happy thing but I am not here to write for John Updyke. I write for myself. If you are from an Asian background the business of writing for yourself this is a radical act . It doesn't come naturally to us for many, many reasons that we can discuss. As you know I have written a lot about that. It doesn't come naturally to us. So it is a fight the whole way. I have had this little ritual. I am wondering whether you had anything like that that you would be able to share with the audience? How did you find your way? This book is very striking. Very unlike any other Asian American novel. It doesn't feel like oh, she has been reading a lot Maxine Hunt Kingston. You kill the writers ahead of you. She said I heard that you wanted to kill me. Maxine is so sweet. But at some level what I really -- what really was I had to put her out in the hall. I am sure you had to put me out in the hall. You have to put everybody out in the hall.. I wonder how you did that whether you had rituals that you used, how you cleared the space for yourself so you could hear yourself so you could write this very singular book that is on one level very identifiablely Asian American around another way unlike any other Asian American or American novel. Where did you find that? How did you do that? >> I love what you said earlier. I loved hearing about you talking about you identified yourself as an American writer. I think I had a similar sorts of things that I would insist upon. One thing was always that if anyone ever said that I was writing about identity I would correct them and say I am writing about " the self". Because I felt that identity was something superficial that society imposed upon you and it is the self's way of responding to others view of us. I wanted - - I think I wanted from the start when I started writing I knew that I wanted to be able to write with the sort of freedom that I saw white guys writing with where I wasn't sort of bound to write about anything basically except for the things I wanted to write about. And I didn't -- I love your ritual. I wish I had something as cute to share. But I think mostly I just -- at a certain point my work I think started really growing and becoming itself when I realized that I hadn't read a book like the one I wanted to write and that was a good thing. And that I should be writing the book I wanted to read. So in my head I sort of -- I think there was a point in which I shifted my imaginary audience from whatever you imagine American readers or the general readership to be. I shifted that and I started writing for myself when I was younger basically. I started writing for the person who was reading and reading and trying to find the book that I craved to read and then realizing that that book didn't exist yet and I had to write it. So I think that was one of the sort of Montras that I had that you are writing the book that you want to read. That a version of yourself who basically has had the same experiences and has the same - - is interested in the same things, is delighted by the same things. Is moved by the same things, hasn't had the exact same ideas you have had. That really changed -- I think that really helped me and changed my work because I was no longer explaining myself as much as I was in my earlier work. » It's interesting. Another thing I don't know that will resonate with you. There are also books that talk about the freedom of the white male writer. There are books that are still in territory that is not out. That is not only because we are Asian America but also because we are women. So this business first of all my first book is called " typical American". How can those people be typical American. How can you be claiming to be the great American novel. How can you be doing that. Even now so many books in there is still territory that is not okay. In in case the baseball novel. Coincidentally I am not the only women. Emily did it at the same time. It is interesting. What you can sort of see is a journey I have been on, whatever, a generation and a half later you will go on the same journey. People will fill the same box. Why can't women write about baseball? With baseball being extremely important because it is the American sport. When women can't write about baseball you are there is a whole portion of America that is fenced off in some ways that is not yours. So it was kind of interesting that Emily Neamans felt this kind of restriction and also chose to write against it. Also did it as I did with the sense that boy territory and we knew -- we both had the sense you cannot get one detail wrong. It is dangerous. You understand that the audience is looking -- they are looking to find fault. They are looking to question your authority. This is a question for you. I don' t know if there is a point at which you realize that you have kind of -- there was something in the -- there was something out there that we need to get you. You realize they didn't get me. I know for me it was when I passed muster of any number of baseball biographers. When I passed muster with Jane Nolan and James Levy. They wrote and also with baseball fans. I put my book through the biggest baseball fans I could find. I know the moment -- and I passed. It almost didn' t matter what the reviews said . I knew that I had gotten in there and I actually don't know that much about baseball. I knew -- I learned a lot obviously. I did a lot of studying. I did a lot of research. Nobody said to me that's not how pictures feel or that is not how pitchers -- that's not how they act or that's not how the game goes, any of those things, nobody said any of that. Everybody said you must be a pitcher. I can't throw a ball from here across the room. » Neither can I. But I found all of the baseball so delightful. I learned so much about it. I was curious. I thought that surely you must have a deep love for baseball and that's why you wanted to write a baseball novel. But was there another reason? » I do have a -- funny, I don' t play baseball myself. I don 't know it. Neither of my children. Is Gwen your daughter? Neither of my children can catch or hit or any of those things. They don't throw. They read philosophy. They don't do any of those things. But it is true that my mother was an avid, avid Yankee fan as many immigrants are. When she first came to America this was one of the first ways she performed to be an American and learned what America was. This whole idea of the level playing field being from Shan ghai that is not an idea you grow up on. She became such an avid fan. She did die of COVID this spring. I know. » I'm so sorry. we did bury her with a Yankee's cap. She was really a fan. My brother could really pitch. Most of my siblings don't. But my brother could really throw. It was something he would not have discovered he could do. My father found a boy's club for him and turned out he had quite a little childhood formed by baseball. So I had some familiarity with it. Really it was more it was something I wanted to write about, about what I thought was happening to America as I was trying to think about how to drama ties dramatise what we could be losing and the danger to democracy and conveying that dramatically. I said of course baseball. So I have an emotional feeling about it but truly I hadn't thought about baseball in many, many years. My family are still Yankee fans. From Boston we are definitely not Yankee fans. I don't have the patience to watch all of those games and they are watching that every pitch. You know what I mean. I don't have the patience for any of that. So it really was -- » I am more interested in baseball now than when I started my book. Now that I know a little bit it it is really interesting. » You could really feel the tenderness in the way that you wrote about it. I was especially drawn to how you described the relationship between the catcher and the pitcher which I had no idea because I have not watched baseball. I am not really a baseball fan and how you use that in this brilliant character dynamic between 2 best friends. It was one of those things that made me think that you must know the sport deeply. It also made me realize that Andey was as exciting a character as Gwen » It is a little bit like the relationship between Ju wun. She is like the person that -- they are kind of related because each one is the person that wun hoped she could be. The other is the person she fears she could be. We could probably go on. I warned you, Lily, that we had a lot to talk about. We can go on very easily. We haven't scratched the surface. I can see you are here and it is time to take questions from the audience. I think the fact that -- I think honestly for somebody out there that is looking for a little paper to write there is a paper there. » Another thing that I noticed was reading your book that felt like a symbolotic relationship it is narrated from the perspective of a par parent about the child. I can 't think of another book that' s told from that point of view. That point of vow is just unbearable for me to read. Unbearably heartbreaking. I think a lot of times like my book obviously has a child looking at a parent. That's a more typical sort of gaze especially when we are talking about immigrants and the child looking backwards looking at the past and I guess it makes sense that your November Dystopian novel is looking into the future. The way a parent must feel growing up in a horrible world and want ing that child to have a bright future and wanting them to have freedom and wanting to protect them. » Well you got it. Lily is here and she is here to tell us to take questions. I will say that here you are. Your first book obviously many things -- many things to pioneer and very exciting and many new things to write. I will say that of course just the same way you write against things I write against the older writer. There is a sense you must be done because you wrote about the story being young growing up. Actually there are many, many other stories to be written. I feel so privileged to be an older writer who still has a few things to say and a few of view that is different. A point of view on the same experience. It is so familiar but oddly enough from where I sit it looks different. Anyway, Lily, I warned you we would have a lot to say. » I know. I feel like we could go on forever. I am so grateful. There is lot in the chat. I am grateful for the conversation. It is so vibrant and I am so glad to hear you speak. I think we have time for a few audience questions which I will read. If you have any questions you can put them in the Q&A box in Zoom and we will do our best. The first is from Rachel who writes Shanghai is an ever changing city. In what ways does it still feel like home? » It's funny, I think one point in your book it is all so Chinese. University like Meng I was born in America. I evenly knew about Shanghai from my mother. It really did feel like home. The things that people are pre-occupied with. I could really sense the difference between Shanghai and Beijing. Meng you have much more to say. There is a whole Shanghai way of thinking. » There definitely is. » Including what they think of other Chinese. » My family isn't old school Shanghai where my parents are migrated to Shanghai from the provinces. So Shanghai is not in our blood but maybe that means I can see it a little more. I have definitely been on the hardened of that Shanghai before on the receiving end. I haven't been back -- I haven 't been back in a really long time. I do think that there is just -- whenever I go back to Shanghai or any part of China that my family lives in, it just opens up a part of me that, you know, perhaps lives in my memory and doesn't really exhibit itself in American context. It makes me remember the language the smiles, everything that's coming in from the environment of a place that's just irreplaceable. It reminds me of a part of something that has made me. I think that's so much why I write, too, is just to capture those intangible and sort of inexpressible feelings that I always feel like I am on the verge of losing because a place is changing so quickly or because I am changing or because I am running away from it or going to a new place. Sny but Shanghai I will say that one small antidote. Back in the days in the very early days of development, many places in China if they took your credit card or they had just gotten credit card. They lanted your credit card always handed your credit card back with 2 hand. Shanghai, they were like here is your card. The shanghai attitude is back. » We're Shanghai. That's true. » They are not going to bow to you because you are an American. Excuse me. » In an apologetic way they look and appraise. Don't look I am looking at your entire outfit and I see you and I have judged you. » What is the matter with Americans ? Why do you dress like that? I mean they can't believe how we dress. If you have ever showed up in Birkenstocks in a Shanghai hotel you will know how broken we have from a fashion point of view. » Thank you both. I have a couple more questions. The next one it is which books do you consider the grandparents of your books? In other words what are the two or 3 books without which your books would not exist? » » Do you want to go first? » That is such a hard question. For me it is not 2 or 3 books. I want to say it does not have a narrative tradition that I'm sure that I would not be able to master the novel without Shakespeare. King Lear, 5 acts was foundational. I think Meng was talking about this freedom to say whatever it is you want to say. I have to say that I think I was very , very influenced by the Jewish writers and I will say that would include all of them . But especially maybe grace Paley. I think in terms of work that was both actually art but actually engaged. For me she was the mold. You could actually write stuff that was about society, very engaged and yet it ain't journalism. That is leaving out 100,000 books. » I love that. Yeah, if we had more time I would ask you about your humor and that sort of answers it a little bit. I love that and I love grace Paley too. For "Little Gods" in particular I would say there are I think 3ish books that really come to mind that very directly helped me. One of them was the neopolitan novel. I was very thrilled when you mentioned her in your review. Thank you, Gish. The way that she writes about social mobility and I think really there is not another writer who can see the nuisances of people who leave with more -- with more aquity. There is a book called "in the height of what we know" which is modeled. It is about a mathematician. Road ing that book gave me permission to 1, write in long paragraphs. And 2, write about science in a way that felt -- it gave me a model how to write about science in a way that felt beautiful not just sort of sort Bill Nye the science guy , science. The last book that influenced me was "a gesture life". The narrator in that book has such a circular way of thinking and such a sort of deflective way of thinking that I really used when I was writing the section in this book. » Thank you. I love those book recommendations. We have time for only one more unfortunately. There are so many good questions. We do need to wrap up in a moment. One last question from M who writes I would love to hear about what you are both working on next. Meng does " write the book you want to read" hold for your second book and does what you want to read change as you grow as a writer and reader? » Sure. Since there is a direct question for me I will go first. I think so. Yes, definitely what I want to read changes as I grow as a writer and a reader. I feel like I got out a lot out of my system with "Little Gods". I also feel that I put a lot into " Little Gods". Sort of what we were talking about earlier, Gish. There wasn't the expectation that I would be able to do it again. I sort of felt like it was my one shot and now I feel like it has -- because I have gotten this out of my system, I feel like I can play, I can have more fun. I am really interested in playing now more with style and with humor and with provication, with writing that is a little more out there stylisically and yeah. The next -- I'm working on a novel called "mothers and girls" which I am calling a fake memoir sort of as a tongue in cheek nod to our dear Maxine and her fake memoir and it's a book that is about building methodologies and tearing them down. » Sounds wonderful. I can't wait. So I just placed a new book so it will be out next year just about this time next February. I haven't talked about it very much. Now that is in editorial I can talk about it. It is a collection of linked stories. I am out having a great time. It is a little bit of a return. So this is a story -- it is linked as a collection of linked stories through which you can see the 50 years since the opening of China refacted through the various stories and various characters. It is called " thank you Mr. Nixon". Next February. » That's so exciting will. I hope we can celebrate both of these books. Gish, I hope we can celebrate that book in person next year. I want to thank you both for taking the time for joining us this evening.    

In November 2020 we co-hosted a screening with Film Forum of the documentary AGGIE, on the life of philanthropist Agnes Gund, founder of the Art For Justice Fund. Following the screening, we co-hosted a talkback with activists and Art For Justice grantees Adnan Khan and Mahogany Browne, and producer Tanya Selvaratnam, moderated by Rachel Kuo. Today, we're thrilled to share audio of that conversation with you. This recording was originally shared on Film Forum's podcast 'Film Forum Presents' at https://filmforum.org/podcast.

Author Kavita Das joins Jafreen Uddin, Executive Director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in conversation about her book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar. Shankar, who was Grammy-nominated, was the most prominent Indian female musician in the movement that brought Indian music to the West in the late 1960’s. This event, co-presented by Asian American Writers’ Workshop and the South Asia Institute in Chicago, explores Shankar’s musical evolution and more-than-seventy-year career creating within both South and North Indian musical traditions, as well as pop and fusion, and celebrate her life, legacy, and impact on South Asian diasporic communities.

We're launching a new virtual event series at AAWW. Presented quarterly, these virtual “fireside chats” will feature a renowned Asian diasporic author in conversation with our Executive Director Jafreen Uddin, sharing updates from AAWW, and discussing AAWW from a writer’s perspective. This series will kick off with a conversation led by R. O. Kwon, activist, NEA Fellow, and bestselling author of The Incendiaries.

This fall, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop is celebrating the art of the essay. Featuring longtime poets and fiction writers with debut essay collections out this year, this conversation will take an intersectional look at Asian American identity, genre, gender, race, publishing, and the way the essay form allows writers to dance, dodge, spar, and move through time and nature to tell important stories. Featuring Cathy Park Hong, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Sejal Shah, and moderated by Piyali Bhattacharya. Buy the writers' books via our local independent bookstore partner Books Are Magic: https://booksaremagic.net/racing

AAWW, Kundiman, & Kaya Press combine to bring acclaimed novelist Ed Lin together with pioneering YA author of FINDING MY VOICE and co-founder of AAWW Marie Myung-Ok Lee, in conversation to celebrate the release of Ed Lin’s YA debut, DAVID TUNG CAN’T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND UNTIL HE GETS INTO AN IVY LEAGUE COLLEGE (Kaya Press, October 2020). Moderated by Ruth Minah Buchwald, Ed Lin and Marie Lee’s dialogue will orbit themes, such as: Asian American study culture; the pitfalls of the “model minority” myth and how to challenge it; multiple standards and (mis)representations of Asian Americans in literature and the media; and coming-of-age in the Asian American diaspora while navigating relationships through race, class, young love, not to mention the confusing expectations of immigrant parental pressure.   https://sohopress.com/books/finding-my-voice/  

We're celebrating the launch of Kazim Ali’s newest poetry collection, The Voice of Sheila Chandra. Following a reading from Ali’s innovative and musical new collection, he will be joined in conversation by Sheila Chandra and Rajiv Mohabir to discuss sound, silence, and embodied art-making practice, as they reflect on Ali’s poetry, Chandra’s music, and Mohabir’s poetry and translation.  Support the writers!

We’re very excited to bring you an audio long read of “Shithole Country Clubs” an essay by Nina Sharma, recently published in The Margins. Named an Editor’s Pick at Longreads, “Shithole Country Clubs” is a hilarious and critical essay about Trump's New Jersey country club — the very golf club where he recently infected everyone with Covid-19 — and Indian weddings.  READ the original essay here in The Margins:  https://aaww.org/shithole-country-clubs/

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is thrilled to celebrate the launch of Akwaeke Emezi’s new book THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI and the recent release of Elizabeth Acevedo’s CLAP WHEN YOU LAND and WRITE YOURSELF A LANTERN: A JOURNAL INSPIRED BY THE POET X. The two authors read from their new works and have a moderated conversation with writer and Berkeley Center for New Media Events Coordinator Sophia Hussain.

Tina Chang and Mira Jacob join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to celebrate the paperback releases of their books Hybrida and Good Talk. Following a reading from their work, they will speak to the intersections of their experiences and creative practices, discussing race, motherhood, and hybrid storytelling structures.

On this episode we are excited to repost a recent episode of Asian Americana, a podcast about Asian American culture and history hosted and produced by Quincy Surasmith.  Letters for Black Lives is an ongoing crowdsourced effort to create and translate multilingual and culturally-aware resources that open a space for families and communities to have honest discussion about racial justice, police violence, and anti-Blackness. Quincy took part in a series for publication on AAWW's online magazine The Margins that collected process notes from several translator-contributors to the Letters for Black Lives to make visible some of the complexity of this project. You can check out these translator notes now at aaww.org. In this episode of Asian Americana, Quincy follows a similar drive to explore the layers of linguistic and cultural nuance involved in this effort. Through interviews with some of the initial Letters for Black Lives organizers and translators, his conversations bring out the collective process and questions involved in navigating the urgency and sensitivity of the Letters for Black Lives. 

AAWW hosted the launch for K-Ming Chang’s debut novel, Bestiary, with a reading and conversation with K-Ming and Franny Choi. Exploring the ways writing about girlhood can reinvent our definitions of community and lineage, and the ways we can grapple with and imagine beyond threats of violence that often shape daughterhood, this conversation delves into family and queer girlhood as a generative space of resistance and reinvention, monstrousness and memory.

Welcome to our Love Letter to Chinatown Episode! We’re happy to feature Mei Lum, Diane Wong, and Huiying B. Chan, the curators of Homeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns, hosted at the Pao Arts Center in Boston. The exhibit tells the stories of displacement, migration, resilience and grassroots organizing in Chinatowns around the world through photography, found objects, oral histories, and poetry.  Writer and organizer Huiying B. Chan travelled to Chinatowns in eight different countries, as well as their ancestors’ village, documenting global stories of migration and resilience across the diaspora. That same year, artist and scholar Diane Wong and Mei Lum, the fifth generation owner of Wing on Wo and the director of the Chinatown community arts org the WOW Project, went on a West Coast Solidarity tour to connect with tenants, organizers, workers, and artists in Chinatowns in San Francisco, LA, Vancouver, and Seattle.  We talk about how the formation of Chinatowns across the world, how the pandemic is affecting Chinatowns, and make important connections between gentrification in immigrant communities across the US. Visit the exhibit virtually here: hhttps://bcnc.net/events/homeward-bound-exhibition

Today is the legendary activist Yuri Kochiyama’s birthday! We’re celebrating by revisiting one of our favorite episodes of AAWW Radio, You Don’t Say No to Yuri Kochiyama.    In 2005, scholar and activist Diane C. Fujino released the biography Heartbeat of Struggle: the Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama. An in-depth examination of Kochiyama's life, the book follows her early years in a concentration camp in Arkansas during World War II, to her friendship with Malcolm X in New York City, and her years of radical political activism.    We hosted an event celebrating the release of this text in November 2005. Co-sponsored by the NYU A/P/A Institute, the event was curated by activist and musician Fred Ho. Fred Ho invited activists and political organizers Baba Herman Ferguson, Esperanza Martell, and Laura Whitehorn, all of whom had known and worked with Yuri over the years years, to discuss and celebrate her legacy. You’ll hear about how Yuri’s Harlem apartment was a social hub for activists in the 60s, the tireless work she did with the Jericho Movement to liberate political prisoners, fight for Puerto Rican independence, her prolific note taking, and more. Finally, Diane. C. Fujino will share the story of Yuri’s political awakening, and how she transformed from a budding activist to a symbol of revolutionary change.

One of our favorite episodes of AAWW Radio was from 2018 featuring Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice author Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in conversation with poet Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, author of SLINGSHOT. Leah reads from her work and together they discuss meaningful inclusion of disability justice, Intersectional disability, and the nuances and multitudes of the disability experiences. Watch the full event on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UpQVlT2wCQ

We’re bringing back one of our favorite events from 2018 called Breaking Caste, featuring Sujatha Gidla, Neel Mukherjee, and Gaiutra Bahadur. The episode features a wonderful conversation at the end about Dalit exclusion in the publishing industry, the connection between caste and women’s oppression, Dalit solidarity with Black Americans, and much more. Neel Mukherjee's novel A State of Freedom follows the lives of five characters born to different circumstances in India navigating deeply entrenched class and caste divisions. Dalit-author Sujatha Gidla wrote the debut memoir Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India. Link to the video of this event on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIgKFl8Dpf8 This event was cosponsored by Equality Labs.

One of our favorite episodes is this reading and conversation from 2018 with brilliant experimental Asian American writers Anelise Chen, Patty Yumi Cottrell, and Eugene Lim. They read passages from their novels So Many Olympic Exertions, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, and Dear Cyborgs, all of which have unique perceptions on living and surviving in this difficult world. Following their readings they have an insightful and honest conversation with poet Lisa Chen about protest, immigrant narratives, and writing voice in fiction. Watch the reading on our YouTube channel

Now that we’ve published over 50 episodes of AAWW Radio, we’re selecting a few of our favorites to republish for our new listeners. One of our earliest episodes is Migrant Father Fragment from 2017 featuring authors lê thị diễm thúy, Q.M. Zhang, and moderated by Hua Hsu. It features wonderful readings of their books The Gangster We Are All Looking For and Accomplice to Memory and an incisive conversation about their writing process and putting memories to paper. Q.M. Zhang and lê thị diễm thúy, writers of fragmented, hybridic, family narratives explore themes of immigration, grief, and the father with The New Yorker’s Hua Hsu. A hybrid memoir/novel that’s part espionage, part historical documentary, Q.M. Zhang’s Accomplice to Memory tells the story of her father’s mysterious exodus from China during the country’s Civil War and WWII: all the silence and love that you’ve come to know from your Asian immigrant family, but with added subterfuge and geopolitics. Guggenheim Fellow lê thị diễm thúy, whose recent Asian American classic, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, tells the collage-like, semi-autobiographical story of a refugee family that immigrates to San Diego, leaving behind a stark past of war and liberation in Vietnam. Watch the video for Migrant Father Fragment here. 

This episode is the third episode of our podcast series diving back into our 2016 Publishing Conference, which we held at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The panel we’re sharing this week is titled “Finding Your Community”, featuring Jenny Zhang, Alice Sola Kim, Tony Tulathimutte,  and moderated by Jarry Lee. Jenny Zhang is the author of Sour Heart and the recently published My Baby First Birthday-- Alice Sola Kim was a 2016 Whiting award winner and has published in Tin House, The Village Voice, and McSweeney’s among others. Tony Tulathimutte is the author of the novel Private Citizens, and runs a really great writing workshop called Crit, which we’ll link to in the episode notes. Jarry Lee is a model and actor, and former deputy editor at Buzzfeed. Keep in mind this audio is from 2016, but we think it still has lots of relevant and helpful advice for writers looking for a writing community. Tony Tulathimutte's writing workshop in Brooklyn: https://crit.works/ 

This episode is the second episode of our podcast series diving back into our 2016 Publishing Conference, which we held at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The panel we’re sharing this week is titled “Breaking into Speculative Fiction”, featuring Jennifer Marie Brissett, author of the novel Elysium, and the upcoming 2020 novel Destroyer of Light, and Malka Older, author of the Centenal Cycle trilogy, which includes the novels Infomacracy, Null States, and State Tectonics. And last year Malka Older published the serial story Ninth Step Station. Their conversation on speculative fiction will be moderated by speculative fiction editor Tim O'Connell.  Remember this audio is from 2016, so some parts of the conversation are interesting to hear in retrospect, like when they talk about the “upcoming 2016 election” !  

In this episode of AAWW Radio, we’re time traveling through our archive, bringing you panel discussions from our 2016 Publishing Conference, which we held at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The first panel we’re sharing this week is titled “What I Wish I Knew Before I Got My MFA”, featuring Naomi Jackson, author of The Star Side of Bird Hill and who received her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop-- Karim Dimechkie, author of Lifted by the Great Nothing and who received his MFA at the Michener Center, and Kaitlyn Greenidge, who received her MFA from Hunter College and is the author of the novel We Love You Charlie Freeman. Together they speak on their MFA experiences in a conversation moderated by Brooklyn Rail Editor Joseph Salvatore, who is the author of the short story collection To Assume a Pleasing Shape. Keep in mind this audio is from 2016, but we find the conversation is still very relevant, and hopefully people on their MFA journey can find this helpful!

Since our last episode from October on poetry and disappearance in occupied Kashmir, a lot has happened. We've gotten through a long leadership transition and turned our focus inward, to care for AAWW. And earlier this year, we joyfully welcomed our new executive director, Jafreen Uddin. Our staff is currently working from home. We know that it is the strength of our communities that keeps us resilient to help weather the COVID-19 pandemic and confront this difficult time. We also understand that the backbone of AAWW’s work is creating community through our in-person events. And so we're back on AAWW Radio, ready to beam you our audio events at this surreal moment. We know it’s not the same, but we’re hoping it’ll help you through this time of isolation. Starting next week, we'll kick things off by reaching back into our archive, bringing you panel discussions from our 2016 Publishing Conference. We’ll hear from Kaitlin Greenidge, Jenny Zhang, Alice Sola Kim and a bunch of other established writers as they discuss topics like deciding on whether to do an MFA, finding your writing community, breaking into Speculative Fiction, and working in the publishing world.  Then, for those of you who are new to our podcast and haven’t listened through our past 50 episodes, we’ll be picking a few of our personal favorites to republish for listening. And beyond that, we’re brainstorming ideas for new original formats for future episodes! If you have any suggestions for us or have any feedback, feel free to reach out and email us at radio@aaww.org . We hope everyone is staying safe, social distancing to protect those at risk, and helping each other out. See you next week.

How do you simultaneously disappear people and their hope? Can you keep that hope alive through writing? On this episode of AAWW Radio, we dive into the current blackout of Indian-occupied Kashmir, the history of enforced disappearances that haunts Kashmiris, and how political writing and poetry, like the work of poet Agha Shahid Ali, connects the Kashmiri diaspora to their home. We hear from several people at the forefront of Kashmiri diasporic literature and activism: Ather Zia, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at University of Northern Colorado Greeley and author of Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir, as well as Hafsa Kanjwal, Professor of South Asian History at Lafayette College and an organizer with Stand With Kashmir. We also hear beautiful readings of Agha Shahid Ali's poetry by his sister Sameetah Agha, Professor of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute.   Learn more about Kashmir's history and why the ongoing struggle for self-determination and liberation is just as critical today as it was more than 70 years ago. Stand With Kashmir has compiled resources on their website. Here's a snapshot of where to begin: Ten non-fiction and fiction books to read about Kashmir  13 films to watch on Kashmir The Kashmir Syllabus: this list of material for teaching and learning about Kashmir foregrounds voices, histories, and aspirations of people from and within Kashmir. Wande Magazine, an online magazine of longform writing run by young Kashmiris:  Ather Zia’s ethnography Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women's Activism in Kashmir (2019) which was discussed in the podcast and follows mothers and "half-widows" as they step boldly into courts, military camps, and morgues in search of their disappeared kin. Ather Zia’s and Javaid Iqbal Bhat’s A Desolation Called Peace: Voices from Kashmir (2019) about the political aspirations of the people of Kashmir and the change in their perceptions since Independence. Kashmir Lit, an online journal of Kashmiri & Diasporic Writing   For more of Agha Shahid Ali's poetry: Agha Shahid Ali’s collection Rooms are Never Finished (2001), a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, excavates the devastation wrought upon Kashmir and the personal devastation of losing his mother Agha Shahid Ali’s The Country without a Post office, which takes its impetus from the 1990 Kashmiri uprising against India, which led to political violence and closed all the country’s post offices for seven months    How can you help? Here is how you can help stand in solidarity with Kashmiris at this critical juncture:  https://www.standwithkashmir.org/stand-in-solidarity  

Today marks the 18th anniversary of 9/11. We're bringing back our episode from April 9th, 2018 called Remixing Guantanamo Bay where former AAWW Executive Director Ken Chen interviews experimental poet Philip Metres. Philip Metres is the author of Sand Opera, the poetry collection that uses redacted texts from Department of Defense manuals for torture sites like Guantanamo Bay to create an aria for the victims of the War on Terror. Solmaz Sharif writes, “Philip Metres’s poetry collection Sand Opera is complex, an untamable polyvocal array of clipped narratives in post-9/11 (if we are to believe such historical markers) America.”  It’s a great conversation diving deep into Metres’ research of the confined and tortured people at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and the influence of these documents in response to violence as a poet.   Also: Sorry for the delay on regular episodes, we're working on a couple of other things at the moment (including an original podcast episode!) Hope you are all well and thank you for listening. - R.O.R., AAWW AV Producer

Listen to writers Sahar Muradi, T Kira Madden, and Tina Chang  read works about mothers and motherhood. Sahar Muradi shares poems about mental health during pregnancy, T Kira Madden reads a scene from her memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, in which her mother tends to her daughter’s lice-infested head, and Tina Chang read from her latest collection Hybrida. AAWW Margins Fellows Pik-Shuen Fung and Jen Lue moderate a Q&A with the writers, who speak about their literary mothers, motherhood and multiplicity, and intergenerational healing. This reading is in collaboration with the W.O.W. Project at Wing on Wo, where Pik-Shuen and Jen curate and host their Womxn Writers Series. Learn more about Wing on Wo's W.O.W. Project here.

AAWW’s online magazine Open City documents metropolitan Asian America on the streets of New York City. Every year we grant two fellowships, the Neighborhoods fellowship and the Muslim Communities fellowship, to six writers to cover Asian American & Muslim American communities in New York City. We celebrated the end of our last cohort of Open City Fellows last month with a reading.  Writers Mohamad Saleh, Maryam Mir, Syma Mohammed, Hannah Bae, Astha Rajvanshi, and Nora Salem read from pieces that you can find on Open City: on racial tensions in Bay Ridge, a Syrian baker in Brooklyn passionate for baking Baklava; a personal essay on childhood trauma and foster care as an Asian American, and much more. Afterwards, former Open City fellow Humera Afridi held a Q&A with the fellows on translation in reporting, how writing about immigrant communities has shaped their ideas of home, and how sharing your work in community with others improves your writing craft. Sweet Refuge Video: https://youtu.be/6YKiwx6U2HU

Is language adequate to describe the harsh reality of incarceration? Which words are used too often, too lazily, not often enough? We’ll hear from four people who are writers, journalists, and professors, approaching these subjects surrounding incarceration from different angles; Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza. They read and talk with AAWW's Prisons Editor Daniel A. Gross about the evolving language of 2019 and the way it shapes lives, going in-depth on subjects such as how bureaucratic prison language invalidates and harms trans people, the stigma of a murder conviction, how to use alternative language to subvert carceral language, and much more. Watch the whole event (especially if you're curious about Nicole Fleetwood's slideshow) on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9IhmEa46TQ

We hosted a reading and conversation with novelist Esmé Weijun Wang, author of the New York Times-bestselling new essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias. She was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and has won a Whiting Award. The Collected Schizophrenias, which won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, is, as NPR writes, “riveting, honest, and courageously allows for complexities in the reality of what living with illness is like.” After reading from her work, Esmé has a conversation with Larissa Pham, writer and author of the novella Fantasian. Together they discuss how to write vulnerably while maintaining boundaries, little things we can do for each other when our friends and family are going through difficult times, and much more.

For Asian American poets, what is the relationship between bearing witness to history and giving voice to marginalized communities? At the 2019 AWP Conference and Bookfair held in Portland in March, AAWW hosted a panel titled Poets vs. Community vs. History, moderated by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello with E.J. Koh, Yanyi, Emily Jungmin Yoon, & Monica Sok. These multidisciplinary writers talk about how their work as poets, editors, translators, and scholars allows them to uncover intimacies among seemingly disparate colonial histories, and contextualize narratives of intergenerational trauma. They draw on their varied practices to explore how the individual pursuits of poets can build empathy and community.   E.J. Koh is the author of A Lesser Love, awarded the Pleiades Editors Prize, and her memoir The Magical Language of Others. Koh has accepted fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, MacDowell Colony, and elsewhere. Yanyi is a poet and critic. The recipient of fellowships from Poets House and Asian American Writers' Workshop, his debut collection The Year of Blue Water was recently released in March. He serves as associate editor at Foundry. Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species and Ordinary Misfortunes, winner of the Sunken Garden Chapbook Prize. A PhD student at the University of Chicago, she is the poetry editor for the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Monica Sok is the author of Year Zero. Her work has been recognized with a 2018 "Discovery"/Boston Review Poetry Prize. She has been awarded fellowships from Hedgebrook, Jerome Foundation, Kundiman, and NEA among others. She is a 2018–2020 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox, winner of the Donald Hall Poetry Prize and a Florida Book Award Bronze Medal. She has received fellowships from Kundiman and the American Literary Translators Association, and serves as a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair.

In March, we co-presented a series of conversations with DVAN, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. For this podcast we’ll be listening to an introduction by DVAN founder and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer Viet Than Nguyen. Following this is a conversation around the concept of Vietnamese ghost stories moderated by Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis and featuring authors Violet Kupersmith, Thanhha Lai, & Vu Tran. The order they’re listed here is the same order they answer the first question. Together, they dissect the concept of the ghost story, as a metaphor for the immigrant, a reflection of the self and one’s deepest fears and insecurities, and then broaden the conversation to talk about community and what a Vietnamese diasporic literary community looks like to them. Violet Kupersmith is the author of The Frangipani Hotel, a collection of supernatural short stories about the legacy of the Vietnam War. She is writing a forthcoming novel about ghosts and American expats in modern-day Saigon. Thanhha Lai is the author of the National Book Award-winning novel Inside Out & Back Again and the novel Listen, Slowly.  Her third novel, Butterfly Yellow, will be published this fall. Vu Tran is the author of Dragonfish, which was a NY Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and an NEA Fellowship. Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis is curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. He is also founding Director of the Washington, DC-based arts nonprofit The Asian American Literary Review. Co-sponsored by the APA Institute at NYU.

We're featuring audio from a 2017 event collaboration with the Tenement Museum. We celebrated the launch of author Min Jin Lee’s second novel Pachinko, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2017 and National Book Award Finalist. Pachinko follows one Korean family through generations. The story begins in Korea in the early 1900s and then moves to Japan. The family endures harsh discrimination, catastrophe, and poverty. They also encounter joy as they rise to meet the challenges their new home presents. Through desperate struggle and hard-won triumph, they are bound together by deep roots that are set as their family faces enduring questions of faith, family, and identity. Min Jin Lee reads from her novel and then is interviewed by Ken Chen, the executive director of the Asian American Writers Workshop. They discuss her extensive research and interview process, how growing up in Queens, New York helped her write Pachinko, and much more. Watch the full event on our YouTube channel, as well as our other past events.

Gina Apostol’s latest work of fiction, Insurrecto, is a tour de force about about the Philippines’ past and present told through rivaling scripts from an American filmmaker and her Filipino translator. The book was one of the New York Times’ Editor’s Choices for 2018 and won comparisons to Nabokov and Borges for its kaleidoscopic structure. With her trademark wit, uncommon humor, layering of forgotten histories and dueling narratives, Gina tells the story of the atrocities that faced Filipinos who rose up against their colonizers during the Philippine-American war at the turn of the 20th century. Gina Apostol reads from Insurrecto and then is joined by Filipina-Australian writer Sabina Murray, author of the novel Valiant Gentlemen. Together they discuss weaving together nonlinear narratives, the uselessness of white guilt, Duterte reprising the role of the American colonizer in the Philippines through violence, and much more. Featuring the songs Ang Lupa ang Dahilan & Agit Speech by Material Support, a Filipina-fronted agit punk band from New York City, agitated by state repression, government corruption, and patriarchy. Watch the event on our YouTube Channel!

In 2017, we hosted novelists Kamila Shamsie and Hirsh Sawhney, both writers who released new novels about South Asian families fractured in the diaspora. Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire takes Sophocles’s classic tragedy Antigone as the starting point for her novel about political tensions in the War on Terror and the way it impacts Muslim families in the West. Hirsh Sawhney’s debut novel South Haven illustrates how grief complicates and splinters intimacy in an Indian-American family. The two authors read from their work, and talk with journalist Rozina Ali about power structures, American Empire in literature, the collective grief following Partition in 1947, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism, as well as speak to America’s complicity in the formation of ISIS, and debunk myths on the War on Terror. The authors also do a deep dive on craft, and discuss authenticity and the responsible imagination; as well as how to control (and not control) when your audience misreads your writing.

We're featuring writers Rahul Mehta and SJ Sindu who read from debut novels No Other World and Marriage of a Thousand Lies featuring complex queer South Asian characters. They have a conversation with writer and Shoreline Review editor Sreshtha Sen about writing transnational narratives, how cultural trauma affects what we write, and resisting the common coming out story. How do you come out to family members whose language you don’t speak?

We’re reaching back over a decade into our archives to 2005, when Diane C. Fujino released Yuri Kochiyama's biography Heartbeat of Struggle. To celebrate the book's release, activist and saxophonist Fred Ho invited Yuri's friends & contemporaries Baba Herman Ferguson, Esperanza Martell, & Laura Whitehorn to our space to speak on Yuri Kochiyama's legacy as a radical Asian American political activist. Afterwards Diane C. Fujino talks about Yuri Kochiyama's political awakening from her early years in a concentration camp in Arkansas during World War II, to her friendship with Malcolm X in New York City, and her years after as a tireless advocate for political prisoners and countless struggles around the world. Cosponsored by the NYU A/P/A/ Institute

How is resistance possible when reality itself is obscured? In an era of "fake news" and more facts than anyone could hope to grasp, authoritarians rely on this uncertainty to consolidate their hold on power. This episode we're featuring audio from our 2017 event Speaking Truth to Power. Legendary journalist Raissa Robles joins us from the Philippines to share her work, Marcos Martial Law: Never Again, which reappraises the era of Marcos and applies it lessons to what is unfolding today. Former AAWW Open City Fellow and journalist Raad Rahman will share her research on state repression in Bangladesh, from the Rohingya refugees fleeing attacks in Myanmar to the persecution of LGBTQ Bangladeshis, and writer and translator Tenzin Dickie will discuss writing and translating work about Tibetans navigating the ongoing Chinese occupation. Following the readings will be a Q&A moderated by Jeremy Tiang, acclaimed translator and author of State of Emergency, the award winning novel that traces leftist movements throughout Singapore’s history. Together they discuss the rise in authoritarianism as a symmetrical reaction to colonialism, and the importance of remembering the past -- with help from a few key books and resources.