About writing and the arts
24 Sep 2022 Leave a comment
Haenyeo, the Sea Women of Korea: Published in the June issue 2021 of Skipping Stones magazine.
Discrimination against Asians in the United States: Published in the April 2022 issue of Skipping Stones magazine.
The Internment of Japanese Americans During WWII: Published in the April 2022 issue of Skipping stones magazine.
16 Jan 2021 Leave a comment
I just finished reading Zhang’s much praised debut novel How Much These Hills Is Gold. It is original, deep, cruel and lyrical. I wonder if she has a second book coming out soon.
I was disconcerted about some of the Mother’s dialogue in Chinese, without translation. A reader without knowledge of Chinese may miss something. I am mainly a Cantonese speaker with passable Mandarin. I read aloud the romanization of the dialogue and it turns out to be Mandarin. I understand that in that era right at the tail end of the gold rush, the Chinese who came to seek their fortune as prospectors were from south China, where the dialect is Cantonese (different versions according to which village they come from. ) I was surprised that she spoke Mandarin. Perhaps the Chinese did come over from provinces north of south China.
In her acknowledgement, she thanked the Vermont Studio Center where she developed or wrote this novel. I was at the studio for two weeks several years ago. The novel I was revising there is still in limbo. Maybe I’ll work on it again, but I have other projects on going. An author has to learn when to stop a project at some point.
08 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
The 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, A Soldier’s Play will end its run on Broadway in mid March. Catch it if you’re close to NYC. It lasts only 90 minutes, plus a 15 minutes intermission, but it proves a play doesn’t have to be long to pack a punch. This play, by Charles Fuller about a Black lawyer sent to a segregated regiment in the in the early 1940s to invest the murder of a Black sergeant. It was tense as soon the play opens. It explores tensions between the lawyer and the White captain and between the Black soldiers. I didn’t want it to end.
Hadestown was a best musical winner and it lasted three hours. For the first time, I waited for it to end and I’m one who wants my money’s worth. The ancient Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice , set in modern times, had a few songs that didn’t move the story along. I didn’t connect with Orpheus from the first moment he appeared, mainly because I found him, as directed, a little wimpy. Most of the musical was about their courtship, rather than on how he tried to bring her back from the underworld. I didn’t find the courtship convincing either.
12 Jan 2019 2 Comments
in Books
Book review: The War Outside
Author: Monica Hesse
Publisher Little, Brown 2018
Page count: 336
I have written an unpublished middle grade about a Japanese internment camp and read at least 6 middle grade or young adult novels in similar settings. The War Outside is the newest, published in 2018. This book is the second young adult historical novel about the internment I’ve read, and the first that is set in a camp at Crystal City, Texas, for Germans as well as the Japanese. I didn’t know such a camp existed. It turned out that German prisoners came to build the camp and stayed on afterwards.
Hesse recounts the unusual friendship between Haruko and Margot who go to the same camp school. It is a friendship that is secret at first and frowned on by both communities. Despite suspicions and reservation about each other, the friendship offers solace to each’s fears, about Haruko’s concerns of her brother in war and Margot’s realization her father is influenced by Nazis. Hesse’s characterization of the teenagers are heart felt and nuanced. The book keeps me reading. Her research is deep and detailed. I find the story believable except the ending, which is a little disappointing. The friendship is irreparably destroyed when Haruko thinks Margot has betrayed her and Margot knows what she did is to save Haruko’s family. It’s the way Hesse sets up and resolves the crisis that is not entirely believable . Overall, this book contributes to the knowledge of this shameful period in American history for middle graders and young adults.
I don’t know whether the author has approval rights of the cover. All the covers of the previous books I’ve read reflect the setting of the camp. Except for the barbed wires and watch towers in the distance, one would not know what this book is about. Two stylishly dressed young women, one in a vibrant red, the other wheeling a bicycle are in the forefront. The Asian girl seems to be looking at the reader, as if she were in a fashion photo shoot. I do wish the cover does more justice to such a fine book.
18 Dec 2018 Leave a comment
Title: Grandmother’s Vsit
Author: Betty Quan
Publisher: Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press 2018
Word count :518
This is a warm story of a grandmother who teaches a young girl how to measure water for rice with a finger. Grandmother tells stories from her childhood and walks the granddaughter to and fro from school. They have a special relationship.
Grandmother’s key ring hangs on a hook so she won’t forget to take it when she leaves the house. Grandmother dies and after she is buried, the girl’s mother tell her that the spirit of a dead person can find the way home to say the final goodbye on the third day.
The girl waits and listens. She hears the jangle of a key against a jade key ring. She finds the missing key is no longer on its hook. It’s in a photo album, like a bookmark. The photo marked is a picture of the grandmother holding a little baby on her lap. The baby is the girl.
While I love the story, I question the part about the dead grandmother coming back to say good bye. I’m Chinese and have heard that the dead can come back on the third night. My grandparents died in Hong kong when I was a young woman in the U.S. I did not have the experience of feeling scared and waiting for their return.
This book is a picture book, for children 6-9. Would a child be scared when they come to the end of the book.? The girl in the story is not scared. But I imagine a lot of children may be.
10 Dec 2018 Leave a comment
in Books
Book Review #2
Title: Her Right Foot
Publisher: Chronicle Books 2017
Author: Dave Eggers
Illustrator: Shawn Harris
Word count: 1538
Grades 4-6
Picture Book
At 1538 words, Her Right Foot has a very high word count. Publishers are amendable to high word count for biographies. For a non-fiction picture book, not so much. But the book doesn’t seem that long, because the words are spread out in 108 pages. Picture books usually are between 30 and 48 pages.
This book is about the Statue of Liberty, particularly her right foot which is not in a static position. It seems to be about to take a step, to move forward. What an unusual take in writing about the iconic landmark.
The author addresses the reader in a breezy style, as if he were having a conversation with the reader. I can imagine the reader answering his questions on whether he or she knows this fact and that fact. He gives a good history of the making of the statue that you find in other books. But I didn’t know some interesting tidbits, such as Thomas Edison once proposed to have a giant record player inside the statue. He wanted the statue to speak. I am glad this idea was not pursued.
The author finally gets to the right foot on page 45! You don’t notice because of the writer’s breezy style. He calls the statue “a woman on the go”, with broken chains around her feet. Frankly, I was not aware of the chains.
The author’s theory is that Liberty and Freedom, represented by the statue cannot stand still. It cannot rest, it continues to welcome refugees, from Poland, for Cambodia, from Estonians, Syrians etc. She must meet them at the sea.
I enjoy the book and find the flat, simple style of the illustrator meets the spirit of the text.
I recommend it highly.
09 Dec 2018 Leave a comment
in Books
Book Review #1
Title: Temple Grandin
How The Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism And Changed The World
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012
Author: Sy Montgomery
Word count: 23907
Grades 4-8
Sy Montgomery is a natural first and foremost. She’s an author of adult and children non-fiction that teaches and entertains. She has written about the octopus, the great apes, and the dolphin among other animals. The only book she has written about a human is the biography of autistic Temple Grandin. Probably Montgomery was compelled to write this book because Temple loves cows. I’m sure Montgomery loves cows too.
I had watched an award-winning documentary about Temple Grandin. It spiked an interest in her extraordinary story. Now that I’m writing biographies (picture books and middle grade), I need a mentor text and this book is the perfect one.
There are many B/W and color personal photos of her childhood, contraptions Grandin designed to calm herself, and her chute systems to calm the cattle. Her detailed blueprints of cattle pens are reproduced in the book.
Sy Montgomery captures what is in Grandin’s autistic mind as she is bullied in school as a child and teenager. Her heightened senses of sounds and details bring her information that she cannot process. She fears she would go mad.
What rescues her is a visit to her aunt’s Arizona ranch. She loves riding the horses and watching the cattle. She observes that the calves are calmer in the cattle chute that is closed as it squeezes their bodies snuggly for vaccination. Later, she designs a squeeze machine to calm herself.
After Grandin graduates from college, she goes on to graduate school to study animal science. She becomes a premier designer of buildings and equipment that handle livestock in a humane way. She is a professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University. She and her students work to improve the lives of animals raised for food.
Grandin wrote her autobiography, which I haven’t read yet. This book takes us into Grandin’s extraordinary mind of an autistic person. The way Montgomery writes about this mind, I can hear the voice of Grandin, how she can’t relate a person’s expression to feelings. Or how she speaks bluntly and hurts people’s feeling.
There are other middle grade books about Grandin. A more recent one is by Annette Wood, published in 2017.
I highly recommend this one by Montgomery. The print is large and it’s an easy read. It’s well researched and written. I only hope I can do as well with the biographies I will be writing.
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12 Apr 2018 1 Comment
in Uncategorized, Writing
I belong to a writing critique group at the local library. I’m the only children’s writer. It’s helpful for my middle grade writing, but not for picture books. Now I’m concentrating on the craft of writing picture books. I’m very happy that through the 12×12 picture books writing forum (write 12 books drafts in 12 months), I have found a picture book critique group. My group consists of non-published writers. The writing is still not at a publishable level. But we’re learning from each other. I have paid for professional critiques. Their comments were helpful, but they are expensive and I can’t afford to get nine paid critiques. Getting nine critiques from my group of ten bring out nuances that even professional editors have missed. Of course, I have to decide which comments can help and which don’t. By commenting on the others’ manuscripts is also a learning experience for me. I’m looking for a year of hard work. It takes five years to get a picture book published. Learning, writing, getting an agent, getting a publisher, time for the illustrator and production. 5 years! I started writing late in life. It’s a incentive to stay healthy and live a long life!
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