memey

[pylduck]

My responses to a book meme to appease the almighty peebles (may his name be ever revered):


1. One book that changed your life.
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (I think this is when I decided to be a literature professor.)

2. One book you have read more than once.
Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution

3. One book you would want on a desert island.
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (Because it rocks and also then I could read it out loud and try to affect the accents of the various characters. We could do this together if you were stuck on the island with me.)

4. One book that made you laugh.
I only read sad books.

5. One book that made you cry.
Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Blu's Hanging (Yes, I'm well aware of the controversy around the novel's representations of Filipinos.)

6. One book you wish had been written.
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (Especially the early scene of first love between the narrator and his homeboy.) (Oops... I read this as "One book you wish YOU had written.") Ummm. A book on sounds in Asian American studies. Ha ha. First the dissertation, then the book. But if someone else can do it first, I'd happily give up this thankless task.

7. One book you wish had never been written.
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, Left Behind (Seriously. It sucks ass. In a non-pleasurable way. And it's making creepy fundamentalists creepier.)

8. One book you are currently reading.
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

9. One book you have been meaning to read.
Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (Of course there are about a zillion books I have been meaning to read.)

10. Tag five people for this meme. I won't be upset if you don't do the meme. But the meme ghost might be.


sa_am, poetofthefuture, robslug, kristy_chan, slanderous.

Comments

[tomface.livejournal.com]

hey do you know any critical article that kind of outlines and discusses the blu's hanging controversy anywhere? does such an article exist?

[pylduck.livejournal.com]

Yup. There's one I'm using in my class this semester for after we read the novel. It's by Mark Chiang titled "Autonomy and Representation: Aesthetics and the Crisis of Asian American Cultural Politics in the Controversy over Blu's Hanging" in the collection of essays Literary Gestures: The Aesthetic in Asian American Writing edited by Rocío G. Davis and Sue-Im Lee. Kandice Chuh also discusses the controversiy in the introduction to her book Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique. And I think Amerasia Journal has an essay or two that discusses the social context of interethnic hostilities in Hawaii that are at the foundations of the controversy about the novel.

[tomface.livejournal.com]

awesome! you're the best!

[sa-am.livejournal.com]

also, you would find stuff in Viet Thanh's book Race and Resistance over the controversy

[sa-am.livejournal.com]

oh gross, you so totally suck for tagging me

[pylduck.livejournal.com]

ha ha get off your lazy sick ass and do the meme

also that reminds me i should respond to your e-mail

[sa-am.livejournal.com]

yea, did you think it was workable?