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...

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