All posts in category women in art

Women In Art: Louise Upshall on creating art and zines inspired by fashion


[originally posted on Kickaction.ca]

The world of blogging can be a wonderful place. Case in point: you connect with an awesome feminist artist who runs a blog named Cervixosaurus. It can’t get much better than that, can it? Read my interview with the Australian artist Louise Upshall to find out!

What kind of art do you do?

I make small collages and oil paintings that I use to create installations. I also make zines.

Fashion played a big part in your grad show. Why did you decide to focus on fashion, as opposed to other subjects?

I’m specifically interested in fashion magazines, which are the source material for all my work. There are so many different issues that can be explored through fashion magazines. On the one hand, readers are enticed by the fantasy and glamour the magazines promise. Yet many of the values they promote- the beauty myth, consumerism etc- are destructive and unrealistic. This ‘greyness’ relates to how I feel about fashion in general.

Lately I’ve started thinking a lot about the storytelling and symbolic properties of clothes. One of my current projects is a series of cut-out women in large skirts who are going to be walking along the floor or on ledges. I’m exploring what I can get out of the magazines, and whether I can use the generic images to create something personally meaningful.

How has being a woman influenced your artwork?

My work used to focus on the representation of women in magazines, but now it is becoming more and more about the female experience. Although I detest biological determinism and gender dichotomies, I still think that there is a female essence. Or rather, that being female permeates my life. Our experience is so tied up to our bodies-having a uterus affects my self-identity, but also how the world treats me.

It’s frustrating that so much art is made from the ‘male as neutral, female as other’ viewpoint. In our society in general, woman are taught to objectify the female body in a similar way to how men do- to consume images of it. And the women in fashion magazines are presented in a really controlled way- they are mostly young white models in designer clothes and their images are generally photoshopped. They are used to sell products and don’t have any individual identity. I’m interested in opening up this very constricting representation.

I want to use the female body to talk about how it feels to be female.

Since I am based in Canada, I know pretty much nothing about the art history or the art scene in Australia. Can you tell me more about both? Who are your favourite Australian artists?

At the moment I’m reading a book of letters between the incredible ink artist Joy Hester, and famous art patron Sunday Reed, from the 1940s. Their whole circle was full of scandal-Joy left her husband, ran away with her lover and gave her son Sweeney to the Reeds. Meanwhile Sunday was having affairs with the famous painter Sidney Nolan right in front of her husband. There are even rumours that she helped him paint the Ned Kelly series.

I really admire Vivienne Binns. She was really active in the women’s art movement in Australia and one of her most well known works is a psychedelic vagina dentata painting. She is 70 years old and I was lucky enough to have her as my supervisor in third year.

I also love the art of Richard Larter and his late wife Pat. Pat was a pioneer of mail art in Australia. Richard makes large crazy paintings based on collages with lots of glitter and pattern. He sometimes juxtaposes images from porn mags with photos of politicians, or often photos of his wife Pat. He paints her in very explicit poses, which she chose. If you look at his paintings you can see the love between them, and the sense of collaboration.

A more contemporary Australian artist is Del Kathryn Barton who makes creepily beautiful work. One of my lecturers said that she paints like someone who just discovered how to orgasm! (This was meant to be a disparaging comment but I reckon it’s pretty awesome)

Tell me about the zines and the creation process for them.

For my most recent zines I’ve been making poems from fragments of sentences cut out of magazines. It’s kind of like collage with words because I just move the scraps of paper around until I find some that look (sound) good together. Each page of the zine has some text and at least one collaged figure. The images aren’t exactly meant to illustrate the words, but I do want them to talk with each other.

And while the poetry writing is like making a collage, on the reverse side my art making process is also a bit like writing poetry. A poem is a distilled experience, and it is evocative. Similarly, in my art I’m interested in how much information the viewer needs. The poet plucks out words that do something together, and in my collages I try to combine images that work together. I’m inspired by Nancy Spero’s description of ‘images of poetic ritual.’

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by RK on May 25, 2011  •  Permalink
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Women In Art: Klara du Plessis on running McGill’s creative review, Scrivener, and collaborating with other writers

[This interview was originally posted on Kickaction.ca]

Klara du Plessis is a poet resident in Montreal and Cape Town, who is  currently completing her MA English Literature at McGill University. She works as coordinating editor for Scrivener Creative Review, and founded Writing Pamphlet, a publication commenting on the poetic process through the medium of poetry itself. After the end-of-term madness, I asked her some questions about the challenges of wearing the “poet” label as ayoung woman, and her latest writing projects.

Name three living womenwriters whose work you’re in love with at the moment.

I like this question because I have a mug with caricatures of anumber of women writers – Austen, Woolf, Plath – and I enjoy imagining whom Imight add to the lineage. Definitely Joanne Kyger. Partly because I’m preparing to write my M.A. thesis on her work. Also, having shared my life half-half in Canada and South Africa, I guess I associate with the tension between rootedness and mobility I track in her poetry. A friend recently brought Adrienne Rich to my attention. She’s one of those inspiring writers I only read two lines ofbefore sitting down to write myself, sometimes I have to force myself to finish her poem first! She is also a fabulous essayist. Caveat of course that, faithless lover that I am, these names are only those I’m in love with right now in an on-my-bedside-table kind of way – so many good writers out there. The Argentinian poet María Negroni is really great too. I’m only familiar with hercollection Night Journey, but it’s here I first became interested in forgetting about line-breaks for a bit. She makes airport customs scans seem poetic.

You’ve been the head editor for Scrivener Creative Review for 2 years now. What have you learned from editing the review?

Do you want the orthodox or the non-orthodox answer? The former would be that Scrivener has given mea more practical, hands-on experience of the publishing world, becoming familiar with the finalizing of submissions, worrying about funding, designing of layout and front covers… We get a lot of writing sent our way and we have to treat it all objectively, from a distance; it’s learning to interact withliterature without the emotional load generally associated with writing or even personal reading. I’ve also definitely become more sympathetic towards the generic rejection slips journals tend to send out! On a more whimsical note, Scrivener has this little dusty broomcloset of an office up on the top floor of McGill’s Arts Building – each time I go in there I feel like a character from some novel – Jane Eyre, Harry Potter! It’s good to know that a real-world, pseudo-office-job can be creative,imaginative, all those fun adjectives.

What are you writing about at the moment?

Visual stimuli – paintings, films, whatnot – are often importantstarting points for my poetry. Now I’m beginning to incorporate my ownsketches, paintings, photos into the text too. So I guess you could say I’m writing about art, or at least textually embodying art in some way. Obviously art isn’t the only answer to theabout question though. Right now I’m collaborating with South African artist Dot Vermeulen on a visual/verbal dialogue about Passive Violence, therestrictions placed on the human body in compromised situations. We’re focusing on the metaphor of the Frame, the framed artwork, the frame of a white page,the frame of the human body, and how all of these can be violated. Otherwise, I want to try some new things over the summer, like writing happy poems about Spring, science fiction and using my travels as muse.

What are some challenges you’ve faced as a young poet starting out? And what kept you going?

There’s a story about someone asking Robert Creeley after areading if his were “real poems” or if he had made them up! I think being perceived as a “real poet” is one of the greatest challenges. People so often assume one writes for fun only, that poetry is secondary to some other occupation – the danger being that, without a name, you start believing that you’re actually only doing poetry on the side. Montreal has a very active and welcoming creative community and it’s so inspiring seeing young poets publish, going to Paragraphe Bookstore and finding “Ah here’s a copy of Gillian Sze or Larissa Andrusyshyn” or whoever. People are active here; if you have writer’s block go to a reading or read at an open mic event yourself. What else keeps me going? Words! Throw in a cup of good coffee.

Where can people find yourwork? 

I’m very excited that my long poem “Variations on Dream Diary” is appearing in the South African literary journal New Contrast soon. A number of my poems can be found in issues of Steps Magazine. I started a poetry publication called Writing Pamphlet a few years ago, circulating a variety of poems – some of mine as well – on the politics of poetry, in an informal manner around Montreal. So check smaller bookstores, ask me, or wait for the newest issue to hit thestands in the next few weeks. I’m hoping to go online soon to enlarge the audience, but hopefully also to initiate a poetic dialogue between writers indifferent parts of the world. So long you should check out my blog To Make Poesis. It’s supposed to be about my creative process, but it ends up being about everything!

[Photo: Klara du Plessis with a painting by Jean Dreyer]

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by RK on May 6, 2011  •  Permalink
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Women In Art: Sueyeun Juliette Lee on using poetry as investigation & publishing innovative multiethnic voices

[This interview originally appeared on Kickaction.ca]

Sueyeun Juliette Lee is a poet, publisher, and literature educator who is currently based in Philadelphia. I was first introduced her by May-lee Chai, and fell first in love with her words (you can listen to her reading some of her poems here) and her publishing house that publishes beautiful chapbooks. In our conversation, Lee told me all about the authors she’s published, her liminal sense of belonging as a Korean American, as well as her favourite women of colour writers.

Can you describe your writing style in 3 words?

Inquisitive. Spacious. On.

Whose poetry has influenced your own?

A friend introduced me to Myung Mi Kim’s work when I started to take poetry seriously, in an “I think I might be an artist” kind of way. When I sat down with Under Flag, my head just blew up. POETRY CAN DO THIS! I remember screaming to myself inside. I felt so *addressed* by her. We’re both Korean Americans, and I had never read a book that included me–that spoke the story of my family–so well. She so poignantly captures the devastation of war. It’s a horrible legacy to have inside one’s bloodstream. Sadly, too many of us share this fact. For me at the time, this family history lay like a dark bruise on my spirit. And Kim’s work hurt me, pushed on that bruise, but also made the old blood well up to the surface to be expunged. To breathe. To speak. Her writing changed my life. She helped me touch something I didn’t have the capacity to allow myself to consider at the time.

Reading Mei Mei Berssenbrugge’s book Empathy almost made me give up writing. I remember thinking–THIS IS IT. She has done exactly what I had wished to do and so much better than I could have ever done it. It was immense. I was so moved and so personally devastated at the same time. But I kept going somehow. And in some ways, it was a GOOD thing for me to be so humbled by someone else’s work. It forced me to move in other directions, to explore other possibilities.

Among my peers, I feel myself in the spiritual company of writers such as Cara Benson, Brenda Iijima, Douglas Kearney, Craig Santos Perez, and Tisa Bryant.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with John Donne, Shakespeare, and Milton. Seriously. I can still recite some of their poetry by heart. They have such an intensity and inventiveness about their work that stands up to the test of time.

Can you tell me a little bit about your publishing house, Corollary Press?

Corollary Press is a chapbook series devoted to multi-ethnic, innovative writing. I’ve released 10 titles so far. All the books are hand-sewn, in small editions of 150, many of them with letter-pressed covers, and all of them are quite beautiful!

I’ve published some amazing work. It’s delirious to me that I get to put out books like Jai Arun Ravine’s This is January, or Brandon Shimoda’s Lake M. These are amazing writers, people who are truly in pursuit of the unsayable in their work–and they capture SOMETHING so alive, rich, and vital! It’s challenging writing that I feel makes me a more vibrant and engaged spirit for having read it. Truly. So, Corollary is the way I can help share this work with the world. It is my humble (but necessary!) intervention into our social psyches, a way of making us pause and re-consider history, beauty, relationships, landscape, memory, being, etc.

It’s important for me to promote and support innovative ethnic writing because I hate to see reductive cliches continue to circulate about Asian-ness or black-ness or “differences” generally. My authors are bad “representatives” because they challenge and question these types, they complicate the texture of ethnic identity and being. It is precisely their “badness” that I love!

You’ve written a lot of poems about Korea – both the North Korean conflict, as well as the precarious position of South Korea. How does your identity as a Korean-American influence your position on Korea, as well as poetry?

Because my parents grew up during the Korean War, they didn’t like to talk about their childhoods. There are lots of very sad stories from that period in their lives. Being orphaned, losing family members, being hungry, terrified, ill, lost, uncertain. They had good reason to not want to speak of those things with their young children. They were also very focused on making sure that me and my siblings could succeed here. They didn’t push us to speak Korean or keep Korean holidays or traditions, like Chuseok or saebeh. This is not to say that we were totally assimilated. I always KNEW I was Korean, but WHAT that meant was rather fuzzy to me.

As I got older, I became more interested in this heritage. WHAT does it mean to be Korean? Well, I can never know that because I’m Korean American. But what does it mean to be Korean American? That was an intensely complicated question for me. And a lot of my earlier writing was about trying to figure this out. What it meant to me to have an ethnic heritage, to be living in a neo-colonial metropole, to have these questions and to have imperfect access to the tools that might help me answer them–well, that query became the basis of my poetry practice. So, poetry to me is an investigative means through which I can create some shadow of understanding. And my understanding is always changing, so the poetry does, too.

I have a great fondness for Korea. It’s a mythic place for me. An Elsewhere. It’s a dark star in the sky, my stomach up in the clouds. I long for it, I’ll never have it, I love it, I don’t know it. Korea is alive and transforming just as I am alive and transforming. It’s a landscape, an ethos, a culture, an economy, a history, many histories. You can see why I return to it so regularly in my writing.

Who are some great women of colour authors you would recommend to Kickaction readers?

THERE ARE SO MANY! Aside from the ones I named earlier–Wang Ping, Duriel Harris, Prageeta Sharma, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Tamiko Beyer, Kimiko Hahn, Sawako Nakayasu, Evie Shockley, Cathy Park Hong, Barbara
Jane Reyes, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Le Thi Diem Thuy, May-lee Chai, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Divya Victor, Lynn Xu, Bhanu Kapil, Renee Gladman, Tonya Foster…

–
You can find more of Lee’s work and words on her blog.

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by RK on April 19, 2011  •  Permalink
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Links Roundup: awesome (but excluded) female artists, and problematic beliefs in Mississippi

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of profiling Montreal’s own fine poets for the “Women In Art” Q&A series. Oana Avasilichioaei is a Montreal-based poet who founded and curated the Atwater Poetry Project from 2003 to 2008, bringing poets from all over Canada and the United States. The second conversation features Branka Petrovic, who started writing poetry during her undergrad years at McGill, and continued her journey into poetry with an MA in Creative Writing and English Literature at Concordia University.

Meet Magda O: photographer extraordinaire, DJ, and feminist scholar who is researching on women electronic artists (she will soon be relocating to Montreal from her native Toronto to start a Ph.D. at Concordia. Yes!) The stats she posted some startling stats on how many (or how few) women participate in electronic music festivals for a documentary she’s working on caught my eye this week. Bottom line: things aren’t looking good for women electronic artists.

Amy Mihyang, a Korean-American writer now living in Seoul, is performing her one-woman play “between” about her life as an adoptee of American parents. Her birth parents – she reunited with them 6 years ago – will also be attendance. I wish I was in Seoul to catch this.

According to a recent PPP Poll, almost half of Mississippi Republican voters not only believe that interracial marriage is immoral, but also believe it should be illegal. In 2011.

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by RK on April 10, 2011  •  Permalink
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Why feminist blogging? (and what’s next?)

[In March, I was invited to participate in Kickaction.ca's blogging carnival, on the topic of "women, art and technology. Here is what I wrote, which appeared on Kickaction in the last week of March.]

A few months ago, I was sitting at The Main, eating potato latkes at a time when I should’ve been in bed instead. The night wound down as I discussed my tentative idea about how great it would be to have a weekly Q&A with women artists with my late-night dining companion. Fortunately for me, she also happened to be a pretty good poet, and so the “Women In Art” series for Kickaction was born.

I wasn’t sure how long the series could last, or how many women artists I could find. But each woman artist I talked to was generous enough to provide me with names of other women writers/ musicians/artists/filmmakers. Four months later, the series is still going strong. Running the series taught me the obvious fact that there are so many talented women artists who don’t get enough press. It also reinforced my belief that there is no singular “version” of a woman artist – each woman’s art and vision is unique. My ultimate goal for the series is to show the diversity of women artists out there, while also engaging future women artists in a meaningful conversation. This also mirrors my belief that logging and feminism go hand-in-hand, in the way that both are versatile concepts that encourage plurality and conversation.

To me, feminism is not about imposing an enforced “sisterhood” about one unified cause. Doing so would be to erase the diversity of experiences and backgrounds in women. I find more and more nostalgia about second-wave feminism, and how “unified” and focused it was. Of course, that was possible due to the fact that much of second-wave feminism was restricted to the singular identity of a middle-class, white, cisgendered and heterosexual woman. While I may share the heterosexuality and the middle-class background of second-wave feminists, my non-white status also means I have different concerns when it comes to my politics. Other feminists also have different set of priorities than I do, as they may be queer, trans, and come from different class and cultural backgrounds than mine.

With increasing pressure to capture the viewer or the reader’s attention in this world of information overload, the mainstream media can only represent the complex and intersectional feminist identities in simplistic ways that fit into a soundbite. But blogging doesn’t have to. The feminist bloggers I know and read debate, discuss, and disagree with each other on a variety of issues. Blogging also encourages reader participation and collaboration in a way that newspapers or television do not, where the public has the potential to reshape the discussion. Feminist and anti-racist blogs like Racialicious, Feministing, Bitch Blogs, and Colorlines cover news items and topics that are often ignored in the mainstream media. It was through Colorlines and Racialicious that I found frank discussion on sex lives of women of colour (Racialicious’ “Love, Anonymously” series), as well as living as a plus-sizd woman (Bitch Blog’s “Sex and the Fat Girl” series), or thoughtful analyses of popular cultural symbols that promote white supremacy, heteronormativity and passivity for women. It is through these blogs that I learned how to apply the theoretical knowledge of my feminist education in real life.

Of course, blogging has its challenges too. It can become competitive and degenerate into a
high school-like popularity contest in its race to gain more followers and comments. Sometimes,
disagreements can turn into downright ugly fights. In one rather infamous in the blogosphere,
when Megan Carpentier of Jezebel, when she criticized the Guardian article “I’m not a feminist (and there is no but)” by Renee Martin of Womanist Musings, the comments quickly became a blame game without critically engaging in the heavily white bias of mainstream feminism (which was the point of Martin’s piece in the first place).

There is still the dicey subject of blogging largely being a labour of love. Although some bloggers have successfully turned their blogging into a business, these are usually apolitical – a.k.a. “lifestyle” – bloggers. It’s damn hard to make a living as a writer in the first place, and trying to make a living being a feminist/anti-racist blogger is still fairly impossible, unless you hold a day job. This also raises the question of whether blogs can have a real, measurable impact, or how voices of dissent in the blogosphere can transform themselves into real political change. I’m not raising these concerns because I have real answers, but because I believe they are important concerns for feminist bloggers to keep in mind.

So what’s next for feminist bloggers? How can feminist blogs secure the support – emotional and financial – they need? Should feminist blogging be more professionalized? Let me know what you think.

[image from Gender Focus]

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by RK on April 9, 2011  •  Permalink
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Win one of three copies of Holly Luhning’s new novel, Quiver!

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to interview the very talented (and McGill’s own) Holly Luhning, whose first novel Quiver (HarperCollins) received rave reviews from The National Post. Today, I’m excited to announce that three lucky readers can win copies of Luhning’s novel through a giveaway I’m hosting with Kickaction.ca.

To celebrate the fourth installment of the blogging carnival (which will kick off on March 8, International Women’s Day – more information on the carnival here), Kickaction giving away three copies of Quiver.

To enter the contest, all you need to do is:

a) “like” the Kickaction Fan page on Facebook
b) leave a comment on the Kickaction Fanpage wall answering the question: why do you think feminist blogs are important?

The deadline to enter the contest if midnight (eastern time) on March 20th. A winner will be drawn at random on March 21.

Enter and tell us why feminist blogging matters!

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by RK on March 3, 2011  •  Permalink
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Women In Art: Monique Polak on writing young adult fiction

[originally posted in Kickaction.ca]

Monique Polak and me in her office at Marianopolis

“Women In Art” is a series that could not exist without the internet – I rely heavily on social media and email to find the next interview subject, exchange questions and answers. But this week was a little bit different than normal – I did my first face-to-face interview with someone who works in the same building as me. Monique Polak is an established young adult novelist and a journalist for the Montreal Gazette. Her novels have won various accolades including the Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for Chlidren’s and Young Adult Fiction (for What World is Left, 2009). However, it was during her office hours at Marianopolis, where she teaches courses on children’s literature and journalism, that I met her for this week’s Q&A.

As for why she chose to write young adult novels, she has a simple answer: “I never really didn’t want to write them – I think I never got past being 16, even though I didn’t like being 16.” Young adult novels also have a potential to make a lot of profit, says Polak. “Teen books are doing really well – there’s a great demand for them … so it’s satisfying business-wise.”

But more importantly, Polak believes that young adult novels can provide wisdom for their lives: “teens need the support they can get from reading young adult novels.”

Even though she has numerous novels and Gazette articles under her belt, it wasn’t until 10 years after she finished her Master’s thesis that Polak started writing professionally.“The academic life had a negative effect on my creativity,” said Polak. “I was good at it – I did well on my thesis. But I was so focused on writing term papers that I lost the fun that writing had for me.

“I loved teaching [at Marianopolis] – but I always felt that something was missing. And I knew exactly what was missing too.”

Her writing career started with journalism, with a book review she sold to the Montreal Gazette.
But success didn’t come easily the first time when she started writing – in fact, it took many tries.“I had a hard time getting published for my first book – I wrote several manuscripts before it was accepted,” Polak said. But once she found a publisher – Orca Books – for her first book, she’s been on a prolific writing journey, publishing 12 novels since 2004.

Reading through the summaries for her books, I noticed a theme of loss and isolation. When I inquired her about it, Polak said she doesn’t think about the themes in her books too much. “Something I’m interested in is the grey area. For young people, things are often a mix of black and white. You fall in love with someone, think they’re perfect, but realize that things aren’t what they seem. But it’s better to realize it than not.”

With teaching and writing both fiction and newspaper articles, how does she find a work-life balance?“I try not to work on the weekend. Or if I have to work on the weekend, I try to keep at least one day to not working,” said Polak. “As for my life – my daughter’s grown, but my husband complains that I work too much.”

She’s also been able to take a few sabbaticals, which have been made possible through self-financing and government grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseils des arts et lettres du Quebec.

But working too much isn’t too big a problem when one enjoys the work. “The thing is, even though writing is working, writing makes me happy. It’s almost like having a lover. Like I’m going to make this person and I’ll fall in love with that person.”

Polak’s next novel, Miracleville (which will be launched in April 2011), is about a young girl living in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, whose parents own a souvenir shop in the small Quebec town where religious miracles have been known to take place. As the girl wonders about the realness of such miracles, she will find herself in need of a miracle.

For those who want to make writing as their career, Polak’s advice is simple: “You have to be persistent. Write a ton. Write regularly, and write when you don’t feel like it. If you work hard enough, you’ll make it.”

To find out more about Polak’s work, visit her website.

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by RK on March 1, 2011  •  Permalink
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Links….Saturday: America still being crazy, plastic surgery, and cool blogs

I had an unexpectedly eventful Thursday night, so I opted to go to bed early on Friday (I’m fun). So here are some links that caught my eye this week, a day late:

Oh America, I want to stop talking about you. I really do. But every week, some other ridiculous anti-choice thing happens, and I just have to mention it again. Like how the House of Representatives just passed a bill that would cut all federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Protest this decision and sign the ACLU petition here.

This New York Times article highlights the different ethnic preferences in plastic surgery, and reveals that a higher percentage of women of colour have had plastic surgeries done than white women.

To celebrate Women’s History Month, Feminist Fashion Bloggers network will have a virtual roundtable AND a featured series, where feminist fashion bloggers can answer the question: “How do you express feminism in the way you dress?”

Here are some great blogs I’ve recently added to my regular , and you should check them out too:

Crunk Feminist Collective is a blog that aims to “create a space of support and camaraderie for hip hop generation feminists of color, queer and straight, in the academy and without, by building a rhetorical community, in which we can discuss our ideas, express our crunk feminist selves, fellowship with one another, debate and challenge one another, and support each other, as we struggle together to articulate our feminist goals, ideas, visions, and dreams in ways that are both personally and professionally beneficial.” Amen!

Shitty First Drafts is a series of intelligent, sharp, and funny reflections from an ABD graduate student in English literature – everything from how James Franco will finish his Yale Ph.D. to how being a graduate student can warrant many inane questions and rants about grammar from strangers.

For Women In Art next week, I interviewed Monique Polak, young adult book writer extraordinaire/journalist for the Montreal Gazette who also happens to teach at Marianopolis. She was kind enough to blog about our meeting and even take a picture of us in her office.

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by RK on February 19, 2011  •  Permalink
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Women In Art: May-lee Chai on women of colour writers

[originally posted on Kickaction.ca]

May-lee Chai is a writer, and an educator, based in California. I had first encountered her through the Angry Reader of the Week series in Angry Asian Man (a great resource for Asian-Americans and Asian-Canadians), and was impressed by her articulateness as well as her impressive bibliography. Her books have been recognized and listed by many awards, as well as translated into other languages. When I contacted her via Twitter about this Q&A, she was gracious enough to provide me with thoughtful answers about working as a woman of colour writer, and the health scare that turned her to book-writing.

I’ve noticed a common theme of migration in your books, as well as your own life. How has your own history and background influenced your writing career? How do you decide to write about the things you do?

I’ve moved a lot and lived in several countries. Both my parents moved a lot in their lives and childhood. My father as a child of WWII had to move multiple times in order to escape the advancing Japanese Army in China. My mother in America didn’t live through war, but her family moved 27 times by the time she was 17. After they married each other, they moved us all as a family to very different kinds of environments. I don’t have a sense of having a hometown or a place I can return to that is, definitively, “Home.” I think perhaps this may be why I’m drawn to stories about migration, war, disruption… but I’ve never tried to analyze myself seriously and figure out why I’m drawn to certain topics.

Your works have been translated into many languages – how involved do you get in the translation process? What kind of communication do you engage in with the translators before and during the process?

Sadly, I’m never involved in the translation process! Foreign publishers either contact my agent or my American publishers. I’d love to be involved, but no one’s ever asked me any questions.
However, I’ve translated a book (from Chinese to English): the 1934 Autobiography of Ba Jin, the famed 20th century Chinese novelist. My publisher worked very closely with Ba Jin’s daughter and a member of the Ba Jin Association in China so that we could have the translation rights as well as family photos. Ba Jin was unfortunately deceased by the time I had found a publisher, but his daughter actually let my publisher go through private family albums. I was able to tell my publisher what kind of photos I’d like for the book and I had a whole CD to choose from by the end of the process.

I can understand why most commercial publishers don’t have the time to deal directly with the author in another country, but I think it’s kind of a shame that authors are usually not involved in the translation process.

You worked as a reporter for the Associated Press before turning to writing books. When and how did you decide that you wanted to switch to fiction (and non-fiction) writing?

I decided to take the plunge into novel writing after I had a cancer scare. I had a fast growing tumor and, suddenly at age 24, I thought I might be facing great illness and even death. Before that moment, I never dared to devote myself to writing a whole novel. It seemed impractical. I didn’t know anyone who wrote novels or short stories. But when faced with the prospect of dying without having at least tried to write a novel, I realized it was time to pursue my dreams. Fortunately, my tumor turned out to be benign and my first novel was published after I wrote it. But if I hadn’t had that wake-up call, who knows if I ever would have dared?

In your opinion, what are some challenges that are unique to women of colour writers?

Stereotypes are still persistent and, alas, they often sell very well. So in addition to having to write really, really well (as all writers should do), we also have to battle stupid notions of what we should be writing about and how we represent ourselves and our characters. It’s really insulting, for example, to be told, “Your English is too good!” I’ve heard that criticism because some people in publishing think Asians need to sound like fortune cookies. Fortunately, I do think the stereotypes are changing. But I’d be lying if I said the stereotypes weren’t a problem.

What are some tips you have for young women of colour writers? What are some resources they could use?

Don’t give up. Read, read, read. Know your field. Read the classics and contemporary authors. Read world literature. Make connections to other writers. If you find a writer’s work you like, write to that person and say so! It’s easier to fight the stereotypes when you have friends helping you, so reach out to others. As for resources, there are some great blogs out there. For example, I love Angry Asian Man and Disgrasian. They have tons of news and make fun of the stereotypes about Asian Americans, which helps. SharifWrites and LargeHeartedBoy have interesting interviews and essays by all kinds of writers. [My own] blog -www.jroselkim.wordpress.com -is a great resource!

What are you working on at the moment? Where can people find updates about your upcoming work(s)?

I’m working on a novel about a man who uncovers a terrible crime but can’t reveal it outright because he himself is involved in shady activities. It’s still considered “literary fiction” as opposed to a straightforward detective or crime novel, and it features people who have to leave their home and hide in a faraway city. Somehow I just can’t leave that “migration” theme, can I? For updates, readers can always check my blog.

1 Comment
by RK on February 10, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in literature, race politics, women in art
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Posted by RK on February 10, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/women-in-art-may-lee-chai-on-women-of-colour-writers/

Women In Art: Holly Luhning on publishing her first novel

[originally posted on Kickaction.ca]

Holly Luhning recently published her first novel, Quiver, which will be available in bookstores on Feb. 1. Prior to the novel, she received a Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor’s Arts Award, and her first collection of poetry, Sway, was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award. I spoke to the author (who holds a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature) about the writing and researching process for Quiver, and the literary scene in her new home Toronto.

Photo by Ben Checkowy

Your first novel, Quiver, comes out on Feb. 1. How did you become inspired to tell this story?

While I was researching an undergrad paper, I came across across Raymond McNally’s non-fiction book about Báthory, Dracula Was A Woman. The book had nothing to do with my paper, but I took it out of the library anyway. I was interested in Báthory’s historical and political stories, but I was even more interested in contemporary fascinations, and even obsessions with her – artists, musicians, criminals who have been influenced by her legend. I was intrigued by this sustained, contemporary fixation on her the social anxieties this fixation reveals in regard to issues of violence, beauty, ritual, and femininity.

Shortly after my first collection of poems came out, I started researching Báthory further. I began to write poems about her story, but I started to realize that what I was really writing was a novel. I was interested in Báthory’s historical and political stories, but I was even more interested in contemporary fascinations and obsessions with her – artists, musicians, criminals who have been influenced by her legend. I was intrigued by this sustained, contemporary fixation on her the social anxieties this fixation reveals in regard to issues of violence, beauty, ritual, and femininity.

You’ve published two collections of poetry before launching your novel. Is the poetry-writing different from novel-writing? If so, how?

I don’t think there’s necessarily a concrete division between genres. As I mentioned, Quiver started as poems, and there are some parts of the novel that contain lines of those first poems (but just disguised as prose!). For me, working with poetry feels like I’m working with a very small space – one that can house beautiful, intricate art that’s often very tricky to make. But with a novel, I feel like I can spread out and work on a bigger canvas. I’m drawn to elements such as plot, story, narrative structure, character, that while of course are not restricted to the form of the novel, tend to be more central to the work than in poetry. At the same time, elements such as imagery, rhythm, metaphor, and economy of language are also important to the work. Figuring out how to put all these things together in the form of a novel is a wonderful creative and intellectual challenge.

The National Post review of Quiver – which was great and positive– reassured the readers that your book is not “academic,” despite your Ph.D. status. How do you feel about that assessment? Why does academic writing get such a bad rep?

I loved that comment and took it as a definite compliment. Quiver is a novel, not an academic monograph. So if it had come across as “academic” that would have been a serious shortcoming. I’m not saying one way of writing is better than the other – I do them both and they’re both a skill – but they each have their context, and a novel is extremely different in terms of structure, elements, tone, and audience. I wouldn’t want my novel to read anything like academic writing – I think that would make for a poor novel. Similarly, good academic writing is generally not going to be mistaken for a novel.

What are you reading at the moment?

Stunt by Claudia Dey (Coach House Books). The writing is lush and efficient – I’m really enjoying it.

What are some good literary events and networks for aspiring writers in Toronto?

I’ve only lived in Toronto since the fall, but from my experience it is a wonderful city for writers and has very active literary communities. At some times in the year, especially in the busy fall book season, you can pretty much go to a literary event most nights of the week if you want. There’s the Art Bar poetry series, the TINARS series, the Pivot series, among others, and many launches and other readings. There’s also several workshops and creative writing programs in the city, such as the Humber School, the U of T Continuing Studies creative writing courses/program, the Ryerson Chang School workshops, and for graduate programs, the MA at U of T and MFA at Guelph/Humber.

—

Quiver launch party will take place in Toronto on Feb. 10, at 7pm on the second floor of the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St W).

In Montreal, the launch will be on Feb. 17 at 7:30pm, in the basement of Thomson House (3650 rue McTavish). Poets Jon Paul Fiorentino and Thomas Heise will also read from their recent work.

You can find out more about Luhning’s writings and updates on her website.

1 Comment
by RK on February 2, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in literature, women in art

Posted by RK on February 2, 2011

http://jroselkim.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/women-in-art-holly-luhning-on-publishing-her-first-novel/

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