Author: karenanhweilee
Poet, novelist, literary critic, prayer warrior, and novice harpist.
in * divisible
Another Los Angeles adventure is added to my list of outings: I will share my work at the Japanese American National Museum in January 2011, a couple weeks after the MLA Convention where I’m chairing a session on Transnational Feminist Spaces.
Pireeni Sundaralingam, who is curating the museum event, invited me & several other poets. She is a co-editor of Indivisible: Anthology of South Asian American Contemporary Poetry (University of Arkansas, 2010), the first anthology of its kind.
cynthia * arrieu-king
I had the pleasure of reading with Cynthia Arrieu-King at AWP Chicago. As trumpeted by Kundiman, she has a new book coming out from Octopus!
Here’s an interview with Cynthia: “My poetry asks what happens when the other speaks rather than merely being named.”
Neat biographical fact I learned about Cynthia when I first met her in Chicago: She once worked as an echocardiographer… pretty neat, eh?
A poetic expert on the human heart.
*
muchas * gracias
Appreciations: To the textured passion of Cyrus, the stunning reflections on fanaticism by Dorothy, the lyric intricacies of sea creatures by Kelli, to the generosity of Ira who came all the way from Tampa, to the cupcake-loving wordslingers from Moorpark College, to a smiling woman with a paper parasol who mentioned she heard me read in Denver this past year, and especially to dear Elena Karina for sharing her love of poetry & community by bringing us together this Sunday.
Muchas gracias to you all & congratulations on surviving a 97-degree heat wave in Hollywood! Whew.
*
Whenever you cool down, here is a recipe for Spanish hot chocolate con churros. You make the churros yourself, then dunk ’em in a hot chocolate dip (which you could also sip like thick cocoa, if you wish).
poetry * hollywood
This weekend, in the first of a series of Los Angeles outings over the next year, I’m appearing at the West Hollywood Book Fair with Cyrus Cassells, Dorothy Barresi, Kelli Ann Noftle, and Elena Karina Byrne.
Yes, in California, “poetry” and “Hollywood” may appear together in the same sentence, though some would argue Hollywood is actually in Burbank, but that’s a whole other topic.
*
la * isla
In case you have lots of time (& cash-ola) on your hands, perhaps consider buying your very own private island. Just imagine! Your own halcyon paradise – la isla – for writing poems & essays… “a room of one’s own.”
Here’s one:
Where: Near Marathon, in the Florida Keys
Asking Price: $995,000
Acreage: 0.32
praying * mantis
Livng things I saw on my prayer walk this Sunday morning…
*
Five-petaled star jasmine – blooming cream, blooming white moonlight out of the corner of my eye – near the mailboxes, and one shrub already in full fruit.
*
Jasmine fruit starts out green & hard like a tiny apple, then ripens to into a soft plushy fuchsia-colored plum.
*
Perched on a jasmine blossom, a green praying mantis curled its abdomen up, up, up like a leaf fragment. Enormous eyes and legs like two hack-saws. What a funny insect you are, I thought… and fierce… perching still as hewn jade, its face turned into the distance.
*
You look like a staid green violinist, I thought. Who stole your music? Now you have two fiddle strings for antennae moving quietly in the silence, lifting traces of jasmine perfume… or not.
*
Out by the mailboxes, someone left books for others to take. I took a cloth-bound copy of Angela’s Ashes, dust jacket missing, but overall in good shape. When everyone was talking about this memoir a decade ago, I didn’t read it. I don’t why. What was I reading then?
*
I was still living in New England, no idea what I wished to do except write. No idea I’d spend the next decade teaching & writing in California, hearing curious statements like: Your velvet hat looks very East Coast.
*
This afternoon, I will read Angela’s Ashes after church.
*
Thank goodness for peace of mind to open a book & read.
*
Prayer: Blessings for the person who placed books out by the mailboxes to share with others.
not * earthly
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
~ Colossians 3:2
cilantro * pesto
Ah, suddenly, there is more cilantro in the house than I know what to do with… I already used it in tomato salsa and chicken curry, so I looked up cilantro recipes on “All Recipes.” Here’s one I will try today:
*Cilantro Pesto*
1 (16 oz.) package farfalle pasta
1 bunch fresh cilantro
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans salt to taste
1/2 cup olive oil
Directions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta, and return water to a boil. Cook pasta for 8 to 10 minutes, or until al dente; drain well.
- In an electric food processor or blender, blend cilantro, garlic, vinegar, Parmesan cheese, cayenne pepper, nuts, and salt. Add 1/4 cup of the olive oil, and blend the pesto. Add more olive oil until the pesto reaches your desired consistency.
- Pour pesto in a small saucepan and warm over low heat, stirring constantly, until pesto begins to simmer. Pour over cooked pasta and toss.
Recipe by Gena Urias
erin * ninh
Omoiyari Interview with Dr. erin Khuê Ninh
Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
*
erin Khuê Ninh: A Biography (As Written by Herself)
erin grew up in L.A., borrowing copious stacks of books from the Hawthorne and then Culver City libraries. By the end of her undergraduate years at Berkeley, though, she’d come to the clear-eyed if sad conclusion that she’d make a terrible writer of fiction. Turning her sights to interpreting it instead, she spends her days teaching literature, and her nights editing and managing the blog at Hyphen magazine.
*
KL: You are currently on faculty in the Asian American Studies Department at University of California, Santa Barbara. What are some courses you enjoy teaching, and what new courses are you developing or would like to teach one day?
erin Khuê Ninh: At the moment, Karen, the specter of the over 200-person lecture I’m slated to teach again this fall is hanging over me, and the horridness of being hated by that many people at once rather blots out the sky. So I’m hard-pressed to think of what I actually like teaching.
But in other quarters I have a much brighter perspective, because I actually like all the other classes I teach. I’m obsessed with teaching students how to close-read, because tracing meaning to its ‘source’ is a necessary and exciting thing. So my AsAm Fiction class, for instance, is organized around mysteries, quasi-detective fiction, which makes searching for meaning and truth both meta and content. My AsAm Women’s Writing is a little depressing in theme, but always rewarding to teach; I take students through a series of novels and theoretical readings on wartime rape, moving them from the comfort women camps to rape as part of our “peacetime” lives. A course that I haven’t been able to locate the resources to teach yet, but still hope to, is one merging the practice of martial arts, Chinese dance, and readings on discipline and feminine embodiment.
KL: Would you share about your involvement with the cutting-edge Asian American publication, Hyphen magazine?
erin Khuê Ninh: I started on the publishing (business) side of the magazine when I first joined it, actually. Not that I had any business qualifications, but the editorial side has always been well staffed with experienced and professionally trained reporters, with real journalistic chops, so they had no need of an English grad student! Eventually I became publisher, a post I left when I took the job at UCSB and had to leave the Bay Area (where the magazine is based). (I’d like to point out here that the magazine is not only nonprofit and politically progressive, but all volunteer-run! This explains a great deal about how I became the boss.) Now I run the blog with my coeditor, something I can do from remote—and that a lit Ph.D. will just about qualify me to do.
KL: Congratulations on your book publication, Ingratitude: the debt-bound daughter in Asian American literature, now forthcoming from New York University Press. Are you working on any current projects?
erin Khuê Ninh: Thanks, Karen. Well, I’m working with an artist to design the cover image right now, which is pretty exciting! Aside from that, some new pieces for a new project on femininity and agency—physical beauty and social dance (i.e., the “follower’s” role) are some of its components.
KL: Last but not least, what’s the story behind the intentionally lowercase “e” in your first name?
erin Khuê Ninh: Well, “erin” is not the name my parents chose for me when I was born in Viet Nam (surprise surprise), but “Khuê”—“Is Cue here? Cueey?”—had become wince-worthy by the time I’d hit college. So erin is just easier, but it’s also… just a name.
*
KAREN AN-HWEI LEE 
