Reads – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Sat, 16 Mar 2024 21:51:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Reads – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Students spring into humanities research over break https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/spotlighting-humanities-research/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/spotlighting-humanities-research/#respond Wed, 13 Mar 2024 08:32:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244606 The Humanities Research Intensive (HRI) seeks to provide undergraduate students with opportunities for hands-on research, improving the accessibility of humanities disciplines.

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When people think of research, they usually think of lab coats, number-crunching and computers. But what if research could be more than that?

The Humanities Research Intensive (HRI), a spring break research methods course first piloted five years ago, seeks to answer that question. Developed by Assistant Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences Jeffrey Schwegman and philosophy professor R. Lanier Anderson, the class provides early exposure to humanities research for frosh and sophomores, as well as a follow-up grant program intended to increase the accessibility and appeal of such research.

Humanities research has historically been less visible than its STEM counterparts across university campuses and, as a result, less engaged with. While Stanford students can participate in a variety of STEM research opportunities — from the paid computer science internship program CURIS to the bioengineering department’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) — students in the humanities face unique challenges. Schwegman said humanities faculty rarely need research assistants the same way that STEM departments do, as work is often completed independently with no built-in mentoring structure. 

Elijah Negron ’25, who is pursuing a combined major in philosophy and religious studies with a minor in classical languages, said it “can be difficult to approach humanistic research” and that projects “can be hard to get off the ground.” 

According to Schwegman, HRI is tailored toward students who are interested in the humanities but may not have had extensive previous research exposure. By providing opportunities for these students, faculty hope to open the doors for more underclassmen to get involved in humanities fields. 

“We’re trying to tease out promise and potential, rather than prior achievements,” Schwegman said. 

Hanson Hu ’27, a freshman interested in philosophy, said he was excited to attend HRI this spring break “to learn what philosophy research looked like,” specifically regarding what goes into a research paper.

The spring break program typically commences with a brief introductory session Sunday afternoon, followed by five full days of instruction, then concludes Saturday. According to Schwegman, days are split with lectures or discussions covering the research process in the morning, while afternoons are dedicated to hands-on projects within University collections. 

This experience is supplemented with visits to other campus collections like the Cantor Arts Center, the Archive of Recorded Sound, Stanford University Archaeology Collections, the Hoover Library and Archives and Memorial Church. A full day is also dedicated to an off-campus field trip — in recent years, for example, students have gone to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve to explore research methods and topics in archaeology and environmental history.

HRI students also undertake a small research project as a practical application for the research skills they learn through the program.

Negron, who participated in HRI as a sophomore in 2023, described the program as a “really unique opportunity.” During the program, he studied a map from the David Rumsey Map Center titled “The Bridge to Total Freedom,” which shows the spiritual progression of a Scientology follower.

“It showed me how, with a little elbow grease, you can pull an incredible amount of information out of a seemingly very straightforward item,” Negron said.

According to Negron, funding in the humanities is often hyper-competitive and limited, which can make it difficult for students to get started. A major reason he chose to participate in HRI was because of the “accessible funds” that helped alleviate the burden for more competitive grants, like the Chappell-Lougee Scholarship

The summer after HRI, Negron obtained full-time funding to pursue a project that he believes will now be his senior thesis. 

“Even if you’re someone who feels like you have a grasp on humanistic research methods, the access to grants solely available to HRI students are extremely valuable,” Negron said. 

Following the program’s initial success, a program modeled on HRI was introduced as a Sophomore College (SoCo) course last year. Led by faculty members Elaine Treharne and Caroline Winterer, it will return this summer as HISTORY 30SC.

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Poetry Live unearths aliveness and authenticity https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/12/poetry-live-unearths-aliveness-and-authenticity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/12/poetry-live-unearths-aliveness-and-authenticity/#respond Tue, 12 Mar 2024 07:29:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244403 Spoken word performances at Poetry Live! immersed audiences in stories that were at once deeply personal and universal, Burtner writes.

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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

In seventh grade, I fell in love with spoken word poetry — I watched it religiously and performed it sparingly.

I discovered Olivia Gatwood’s “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” and Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s “My Spanish” on the YouTube channel for Button Poetry and was amazed at how their poems captured what it is like to feel alive.

As I watched these performers in person on March 7 at Bing Concert Hall, I found that same liveliness unearthed within me. From what I could tell, all of us — the audience and performers alike — unearthed something that night.

The evening began with student performances by members of the Stanford Spoken Word Collective. These performances felt gut-wrenching and raw. As openers, the performers taught the audience how to watch the show: how to listen, participate and immerse ourselves in the words. They revealed how alive poetry can be.

Through an extended ‘dog’ metaphor, an immigrant story and a powerful meditation on alcoholism, the collective’s performers touched on themes of race, place and deeply-seated emotion. Rhythm and rhymes took hold of the audience, alliteration abounded. Clichéd metaphors were made fresh, and impossibly large themes were made poetically succinct.

It’s striking that these performances took place on Stanford’s campus because, traditionally, the spoken word form is known for evading intellectualization. Sitting in the audience, clapping and stomping when the verse speaks to you, it is impossible to get bogged down in analysis and formality. The Spoken Word Collective brought us words off the page and they took on a life of their own.

When Gatwood took the stage, she managed to weave humor into an incredibly real rhetorical question. She read a poem about a high school friend: “I knew of her before I knew her, you know those girls?” — a concise way to encapsulate a universal truth of girlhood. In her poetry, she delved into the class politics of high school soccer, embedded love into a story about linens and poetically (of course) drew connections between the color of Pepto Bismol, “mace for girls” and a pink switchblade knife. 

Gatwood revealed that her performance was an unearthing in itself: many of her poems dealt with scenes from a life that time had separated her from: “I haven’t read these poems in, like, seven years,” she said.

Lozada-Oliva was up next. She read poems that included the topics of lovesickness and Our Lady of Guadalupe rolled into one, as well as a breakup that inspired the epic line, “I’m a wet little idiot.” She touched on identity and obsession while interjecting to include humorous context and asides. She then treated the audience to a contrapuntal poem, saying that she’ll likely only write “three in a lifetime.”

Lozada-Oliva ended the evening with a pandemic poem — as she puts it, “everyone gets one pandemic poem.” Somehow relatable while incredibly personal, humorous and dead serious, Lozada-Oliva captivated the audience through her dense and purposeful verse.

Something that struck me about both poets’ performances was their candidness. While artistic inspiration is sometimes elusive and mysterious, Gatwood got real about what inspired her to write her different pieces. This included a poem inspired by a quote which she simply “had to write a poem about,” from event introducer and ITALIC instructor Sam Sax: “relationships are just a little cult.”

In a similar vein, Lozada-Oliva got on stage after Gatwood’s nostalgic poems about her high school experiences and joked, “I wish I were younger.” When referring to her own vulnerability up on the stage, she quipped again about the audience watching her, saying “Oh my god, the eyes.” With art that deals so closely with the human experience, hearing these artists perform their own words with uniquely human interjections, active commentary and humorous asides was quite powerful.

At this year’s Poetry Live! event, the Stanford Spoken Word Collective, Olivia Gatwood and Melissa Lozada-Oliva unearthed personal and global histories, stories of past selves and emotions that feel at once personal and universal. For students and educators alike, Poetry Live! took the written word out of an academic setting and directly into our imaginations.

The audience was a lucky crowd. For everyone else, you’ll have to secure a ticket to next year’s Poetry Live!

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Lyrical love winds and turns in Pulitzer Prize finalist’s debut novel https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/10/lyrical-love-winds-and-turns-in-pulitzer-prize-winners-debut-novel/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/10/lyrical-love-winds-and-turns-in-pulitzer-prize-winners-debut-novel/#respond Mon, 11 Mar 2024 05:36:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244305 Kelly Link's debut novel demonstrates her strength with lyrical prose and leaves readers sentimental.

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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

“The Book of Love” is both everything and nothing like it sounds. Superstar short story writer Kelly Link’s debut novel is captivating and heartwarming, but at times unsettling and even heartbreaking.

Link’s deftness with lyrical prose makes reading this book feel like walking in a dream. Yet it is a dream grounded deeply in reality, grappling with childhood, parenthood, sisterhood, being an outsider, being an insider, being loved and loving in return.

It all begins when Laura, Daniel and Mo are raised from the dead in their high school music classroom. Their music teacher Mr. Anabin, whose knowledge of fantastical things is starting to sully his reputation as a standard human public school teacher, tells them that they have been gone for nearly a year, and that they must now undertake some mysterious magical tasks to stay in the land of the living. They cannot tell their family and friends what has happened — no one, not even Laura’s twin Susannah, knows the truth of their disappearance. 

From there, a story rich with magical beings, messy relationships, emotional reckoning and self discovery unfolds. By the end, I found myself caring for the sensitive Mo, steady Daniel, driven Laura and even brash Susannah as I would my own collection of wonderful, multifaceted friends.

Most criticism so far seems to cite the length as a chief complaint, and this argument is not unfounded. Though I consider myself a fast reader, it took me several days to get through with considerable hours spent reading each day. I would hesitate to recommend this book to anyone uncomfortable with winding paths, converging perspectives and unclear intentions. To those whose interest is now piqued, however, you will find the wandering journey more fulfilling than the destination.

The way Link crafts words into life lessons and hard truths is what makes immersion in “The Book of Love” so enjoyable. My breath often caught when reading her stunningly poignant dialogue.

Exchanges such as: “‘Some might think life without end in the company of the one who loves them would be enough.’ ‘Some might. For a while,’” left me devastated.

Moments like this show this book is not always about being in love, rather, what it means to feel love, at any stage of life, for any person.

I almost cried again when Daniel asked himself, “if one of his brothers or sisters had scorned their abilities, their gifts, wouldn’t he have talked with them? Told them to celebrate what they could do, who they could be?” Because is this not the perspective we all require in considering our own flaws and shortcomings? Link composes a beautiful network of familial, platonic and romantic relationships with heartstring tugs lying in wait around every bend.

If you need further convincing, this book also happens to contain various enchanting hints leading up to the conclusion, including the best Easter egg I have ever experienced. Hidden messages become clear when the roving plot loops back on itself at the end, the shadows and secrets surrounding the teenagers’ disappearance finally clarified.

Tunes by everyone from Barry Manilow to John Mayer are sprinkled throughout “The Book of Love” like delightful frozen yogurt toppings. A remarkably crafted karaoke scene features a slew of sly musical references to love and death (“This love is good / This love is bad / This love is alive back from the dead”).

I compiled as many of the songs mentioned in the book as I could into a playlist so when I walk around campus romanticizing the feeling of raindrops on my face or wind in my hair, I have something to hum along to. Because if there is one thing this book reminded me to do, cheesy as it sounds, it was to savor life and the relationships which make it worth living. 

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World of Words: ‘Lizard’ unveils the extraordinary in the mundane https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/06/world-of-words-lizard-unveils-the-extraordinary-in-the-mundane/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/06/world-of-words-lizard-unveils-the-extraordinary-in-the-mundane/#respond Thu, 07 Mar 2024 07:47:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1244172 Burke reexamines Banana Yoshimoto's use of language to turn everyday life events into remarkable lines, in her review of "Lizard."

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In “World of Words,” Breanna Burke reviews international books as a way to explore different cultures and perspectives on life.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

As I stepped onto the plane that would take me back to Stanford this winter break, the smell of recycled cabin air exacerbated the dread I felt towards the six hour ride ahead. “You think they’d give us a bit more leg space, huh,” whispered the woman beside me. Before I knew it, we were sharing our life stories, and walked off the plane a little different — and a lot more hopeful — than we had entered.

Mundane yet extraordinary snippets of life like this are exactly the kinds of stories Japanese writer Banana Yoshimoto tells in her short story collection “Lizard,” written in 1993 and translated into English by Ann Sheriff in 1995.

Set against the beaming cityscape of Tokyo, Yoshimoto’s stories capture short-spanned moments of her characters’ imperfect lives that “explor[e] time, healing, karma and fate,” as she writes in the collection’s afterword. A newlywed unhappy in his marriage, a woman who marries the man she had an affair with, a recovering sex addict afraid that her past will impede her new love — in each story, Yoshimoto reimagines love as a healing force, capturing the poignancy and bliss of, arguably, the essence of our lives. 

The most striking thing about Yoshimoto’s style of writing is how her simplistic diction complexifies the ordinary. Nothing is as it seems on the surface. In the eponymous second story of the collection (and my personal favorite), the male narrator, a therapist for emotionally disturbed young children, wants to marry his girlfriend, a physical therapist, referred to as “Lizard.” Lizard is hesitant, revealing she has a secret she has been hiding from her lover.

It is amid this tension Yoshimoto creates between her characters that the narrator is “reminded of [his lover’s] separateness, a being with different organs, bundled in a different sheath of skin, who has dreams at night that are nothing like [his] own.”

When Yoshimoto writes the journey of her characters’ lives, their imperfections aren’t a sign of weakness. Rather, they are a necessity for her protagonists to experience growth and move from one stage of life to another. 

While some may find Yoshimoto’s simplistic style of writing disconcerting or even boring, I was captivated by her stories. Admittedly, it was sometimes challenging to disregard the question of whether the English translation of the novel authentically conveyed Yoshimoto’s words, a question that I am still grappling with as I continue to venture into the world of translated literature. 

Nevertheless, I found myself in every character she brought alive on the page. In “Newlywed,” I couldn’t help but relate to the narrator’s fear of “encountering something much larger than myself and feeling immeasurably small and insignificant by comparison.”

Likewise, in “Helix”, the narrator worries about being forgotten by his lover, who is considering undergoing a spiritual seminar in which her mind is completely cleared. Their dialogues engrossed me as the characters debated the significance of memory as a potent force in our lives. 

Amid the whimsical sprinklings of magical realism in both “Helix” and “Newlywed,” including characters capable of apparition, mind-reading or shape-shifting, I was grounded by the humanity of Yoshimoto’s words.​​ The power she places in the sanctified phrase “And then…” and the awakenings in her plots that inspire some sort of change in her characters, forced me to reflect on the potency of the unremarkable in my own life.

The heart of “Lizard” is the warmth of heartbreak, love and healing that Yoshimoto brings to life on the page. “No one can survive childhood without being wounded,” she writes in “A Strange Tale from Down by the River.” This collection is Yoshimoto’s invitation for us to heal by appreciating the glistening moments in our lives, whether it’s our favorite song, the tranquil beauty of Lake Lag at sunset, the way our favorite person’s whole face lights up when they smile or akin to the narrator in the collection’s final tale, the recognition that “[the] light within [us] was something gorgeous like that.”

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Almost, but not quite: Kiley Reid’s ‘Come and Get It’ falls short https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/29/almost-but-not-quite-kiley-reids-come-and-get-it-falls-short/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/29/almost-but-not-quite-kiley-reids-come-and-get-it-falls-short/#respond Fri, 01 Mar 2024 01:10:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243789 Kiley Reid's highly-anticipated second novel disappoints in its representation of college life.

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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

Kiley Reid’s second novel “Come and Get It” can be summed up in one word: almost. Following her successful debut “Such a Fun Age,” it had a lot of hype to live up to — hype which the book almost, but did not quite, deliver on. This campus novel follows several different characters, including a residential assistant, several of her residents and a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas. What ensues is a story that touches on themes of privilege, life at different ages and bending and breaking the rules.

“Come and Get It,” while an entertaining and character-driven novel, veers into reading as awkward and cringe-worthy at times. A few of the central characters are almost unlikeable, the humor almost lands, the descriptions are almost over the top. Overall, the book feels askew. It is set on a college campus, yet I would guess that any college student would feel falsely represented by it. The characters say and do things that no college student would actually say or do; there are over-the-top references to ‘narps’ and ‘dorm-cest’ that had me cringing while reading. 

I think it is unfair to look at “Come and Get It” solely in comparison to Reid’s bestselling first novel “Such a Fun Age,” which is what a lot of readers and reviewers may feel inclined to do. However, if the goal of “Come and Get It” was the same as the goal of her first novel, I believe that Reid has not been successful. “Such a Fun Age” was packed with interpersonal drama, nuanced meditations on race and privilege and writing that felt effortless to read. The interpersonal issues that “Come and Get It” focuses on, by contrast, felt childish to me and touched specifically on money and privilege more than on race (with there not being enough discussion of either). 

The novel’s biggest departure from Reid’s debut, though, was the writing style. The scenes read awkward and unrealistic, which I think can largely be chalked up to the unnatural dialogue. For example, no one says “So yeah” as a full sentence as frequently as it’s said in the book. In fact, I struggle to remember the last time I’ve heard anyone utter this sentence in real life.

Despite these shortcomings, there are also moments in the novel that felt true to life in a way that I hadn’t heard put into words before. For example, there’s the seemingly endless icebreakers when one enters a new space, the relatable realization that “it would be a struggle to pass the next forty-five minutes” in a given social situation and the descriptions of disparate relationships that young people have with money. That being said, I think the book could have been less on-the-nose about “relatable” facets of college life and more overt with its discussion of money, race and privilege. These moments felt like they started out being central to the book, but the distracting awkward scenes and numerous throwaway lines really took away from the interesting points that could have been made about the world.

The book succeeded at times in describing specific and poignant emotions that the characters were feeling. If anything, I wish there was more of this. The book is written in a close third-person perspective that alternates between characters each chapter. Although this offered interesting focalizations through different characters’ eyes, it also created a lot of inconsistency with the voice. There were around eight central characters, which I might venture to say is too many. I couldn’t bring myself to care about each and every one of them, or even distinguish between them in any meaningful way, because they all spoke and acted much too young for their age. Immature pranks played, inappropriate behavior from a middle aged professor displayed and teenage dialogue spoken by a “super hot” residential director. The book’s close third-person perspective almost worked — but not quite. 

Another strength of the novel that I think could have been taken even further was its queer representation, which I found to be quite nuanced. For example, there is a meditation from a queer woman character on feeling the need to be “formal, factual, and platonic to a severe degree” around straight women. There were certainly times when this kind of social commentary landed. For the book as a whole, however, it only almost did. 

All in all, I was interested to read a campus novel with an RA as a central character — I don’t see a lot of those. Even given all the parts of “Come and Get It” that fell short for me, it was still a semi-enjoyable and fast-paced read. If readers are looking for simultaneous escapism and in-depth meditations on race and privilege, I would turn to Reid’s debut novel “Such a Fun Age.” If readers are looking for a more chaotic and fairly unrealistic book with its fair share of interesting and insightful moments, they should consider picking up Reid’s new novel “Come and Get It.”

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World of Words: Brokenness as being in ‘There Is an Anger That Moves’ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/22/world-of-words-brokenness-as-a-way-of-being-in-there-is-an-anger-that-moves/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/22/world-of-words-brokenness-as-a-way-of-being-in-there-is-an-anger-that-moves/#respond Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:05:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243108 "When I started seeking out authors who could voice my experience growing up on my tiny but mighty island, Kei Miller fell into my lap like a gift from Heaven," Burke writes.

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In “World of Words,” Breanna Burke reviews international books as a way to explore different cultures and perspectives on life.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

As I sat cross legged in the chair by my study desk, engrossed in Jamaican writer Kei Miller’s first book of poems, “There Is an Anger That Moves,” I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, someone actually understands my love for plantains!”

Growing up in Jamaica, my literature curriculum was mostly composed of books by British and American authors. When I started seeking out authors who could voice my experience growing up on my tiny but mighty island, Kei Miller fell into my lap like a gift from Heaven.

Reading his critically acclaimed third book “Augustown” was the first time I saw the colorful words of my native dialect speaking to me, from rough coated off-white paper that had previously made me feel isolated and foreign.

The title of this book, “There Is an Anger That Moves,” raises a question about the cause behind this seething anger. The poetry collection, consisting of six sequences, is not Miller’s attempt to answer it. Rather, it is a reflection on his home country, love, heartbreak, racism, religion and the social constructs that diminished the dreams of his family. 

Miller, having moved to the U.K. to pursue his master’s degree in 2004, is a fish out of water in the first poetic sequence: “In this country you have an accent; / in the pub, a woman mocks it. / You want to ignore her but wonder / how many hearts is she being bold for?”

As I read, I reflected on how I would go over exactly what I wanted to say in discussion-based classes like COLLEGE before I even dared to raise my hand, taking all safety precautions to ensure my Jamaican accent kept hidden, and my heart softened. Alongside Miller’s homesickness, which he amusingly conveys through his being “desperate enough to buy plantains online,” the poignancy of his heartbreak is tangible through his blunt but tender style of writing.

Miller does not shy away from the complexity behind the meaning of home. “The Broken (I),” the second sequence of the book, is composed of a series of poems that aggrandize this very brokenness: within his home, his family and even himself. I was moved by Miller’s style of writing as he created a delicate interplay between the fragile nature of our humanity and our desire to be “whole” when we cannot. For Miller, brokenness is a way of being. Whether reflecting on his mother’s “sleight of hand / that made [her] crowd the verandah / so visitors overcome by blossom and green / would see no flaw in [their] house,” or the initial struggle between him and his lover to “fit [their] legs and [their] chests together,” I was awed at his point.

Love is brokenness.

Like Miller, I felt as if the way I viewed my own “broken” relationships was being rewritten: “Love is how our skin breaks against each other, / how we bleed into each other; / how we heal.” 

But what happens when the brokenness of a place you love is so horrific that it cannot be made beautiful? How can you be so inextricably linked to a place that breaks your heart? It’s a question that Miller keeps coming back to as he transitions to life in the U.K.: “Some days you want to forget / it is your choice to be here – that, hard as you fight to break in / was as hard as you fought to leave.”

He makes clear that it’s complicated, especially as a gay man raised in “the most homophobic country on earth,” as Jamaica was named by Times Magazine in 2006. “I would write about the love / of men and the fear of stones / which in my country is the same thing.”

Like Miller, I have had to reckon with the fact that my beautiful island home with its tender warmth is also a raging bull, inciting homophobia and violence. It is the echo of a gruesome truth that Miller is reminded of whenever the “chorus of a reggae tune” rises in his house or the memories of “sipping cocoa back home” spring into his mind: “I cannot completely love in this country.” 

His is a world where not only is love forbidden romantically, it is also forbidden internally. Much of the collection is meticulously spent liberating the women in his family and his community by giving breath to the untold stories of their lives.

My usual wariness of men attempting to “free” women immediately dissipated as I read his poems, addressed to the women in his life like a love letter of sorts. In one of the last poems of the collection and one of my favorites, “An Allowance for Ula May,” Miller unshackles his staunchly religious great-grandmother who “believed only in laws that forbade, / none that allowed.”

He proclaims that “the page of this poem is a space” where she can “let [her] hips go where they have wanted” and turn love “towards [her] awful self.” Here, the delicacies of life, “the love of skin, the love of what we bring to this word, are no longer forbidden.”

The pages of Miller’s poems are also spaces he has created for us, as readers, to free ourselves. As a Jamaican now living in a foreign country, his words hit home. Whether it’s my own unceasing craving for the delicious goodness of Jamaican KFC or the curious, pitiful glances I see whenever my broken accent seeps through, the feeling of being “the other” is embedded in his words. As I navigate my own feelings towards Jamaica, amid the heartbreak there is an effervescent and undeniably broken love that rises within me.

For anyone attempting to navigate their connection to home and the various loves and fears that make them who they are, Miller’s words are a call to action, a gentle but firm push on the shoulder: “You may.”

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Stanford TBR: Re-examining 2020 in Zadie Smith’s ‘Intimations’ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/20/stanford-tbr-re-examining-2020-in-zadie-smiths-intimations/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/20/stanford-tbr-re-examining-2020-in-zadie-smiths-intimations/#respond Wed, 21 Feb 2024 06:59:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1243000 Zadie Smith's pandemic essay collection "Intimations" is still as thought-provoking as it was in 2020, Burtner writes.

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In her column “Stanford TBR” (to be read), Cate Burtner recommends books that would resonate with the Stanford community — a reading list compiled for outside the classroom.

While I love contemporary author Zadie Smith’s novels, it is her essays where she shines the most. The writing of Smith’s brilliant essay collection “Intimations” was bookended by two tragedies: the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. The book was certainly timely in July 2020, but I’d argue it is just as relevant today. “Intimations” is a thought-provoking collection of meditations on life in the 21st century, and conveys its ideas efficiently in a mere 97 pages. I truly believe this book should be all the rage among busy and politically-active college students, as most of us at Stanford are.

The collection as a whole is philosophical, literary and political. In “Something To Do,” Smith muses about the act of writing, representing the art form as childlike while also having “potential political efficacy.” I found this essay thought-provoking in the most literal sense: Smith writes and posits in a way that spurs the imagination and causes the reader to make allusions in their head to other texts and philosophies. When she writes that “art takes time and divides it up as art sees fit,” I was reminded of Stephen King’s memoir in which he discusses art as a support system for life. This essay might have prompted readers to also think about how the art we create can take on a life of its own, à la Frankenstein’s monster. With the rise of contemporary AI as a tool for creation, readers may think of Smith’s essay as raising the question of whether we are responsible for the actions of our creations.

Essays throughout “Intimations” lend themselves greatly to intertextuality, both between essays in the collection and outside of it. Even among her complex political commentary, it’s clear that Smith has an ease with language that can only belong to a fiction writer. The essays were poetic in their brevity and economical in their efficiency. 

The essay “Screengrabs” piqued my interest because it poignantly zooms in on everyday people during a time of intense isolation, highlighting many of the issues that permeated life in the year 2020. This is evident even just through the essays’ sub-section titles. For instance, “A Character in a Wheelchair in the Vestibule” brings to the forefront different perspectives on the pandemic and how the lockdown pushed different people to the brink of survival in differing ways.

Other essays focus on our connections with people, calling attention to just how lonely and isolating 2020 was. In “A Woman with a Little Dog,” Smith touches on the idea that people are full of surprises, and that getting to know someone interesting is like opening an endless gift. These essays in particular made me feel all of the feelings: I was commiserating and feeling grateful, drawing conclusions about my own experience during the COVID-19 pandemic and contemplating imagination itself. Smith’s writing manages to feel political and sweeping, as well as immensely personal to her and, in the process, to the reader.

Reading a work from the midst of lockdown led me to question what I would have written during that time; certainly nothing so profoundly connected to the human condition. My admiration for Smith’s work only grew upon seeing her ability to show beauty and make interesting points, particularly about people, during such (and say it with me) an “unprecedented time.”

One might not expect a book of essays to make use of formal literary features, but “Intimations” certainly delivers as a work of literature in addition to being a work of nonfiction. In “The American Exception,” Smith describes an unnamed president using metaphors of war and strategically including the word “bottom line,” to comment on the specific political and capitalistic state of 2020 America. 

In “Suffering Like Mel Gibson,” art and time are discussed in a way that is laced with empathy. The essay has been stuck in my head since reading it because of its perspective on children and their use of new technology — a topic on which people like to opine. The essay manages to distinguish between melancholy and suffering in this broader meditation on privilege and positionality. Whether or not readers fully agree with her points, one gains new perspectives from Smith’s writing that allows mind-expanding room for contemplation.

With the official end of the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2023, the evolving Black Lives Matter movement and the fact that it is Black History Month, “Intimations” holds just as much relevance today as it did when it came out in July 2020. A retrospective look back from current readers on the year of 2020 will provide an interesting lens for appreciating these essays. From readers of 2024 to those of the distant future, “Intimations” will provoke thoughtful conversations about that historic moment.

Dear Stanford, I know it’s a busy time in the quarter — but as socially-conscious young people, I strongly recommend you keep “Intimations” by Zadie Smith in your back pocket. It’s short, it’s dense with thought-provoking content, it’s sharp and ultimately just real. Go find yourself a copy — I’m waiting!

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Turning the page on love https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/15/turning-the-page-on-love/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/15/turning-the-page-on-love/#respond Thu, 15 Feb 2024 08:09:17 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1242686 Whether you're in a relationship or single, curl up with one of Sava Tamanaha's recommendations for the loving season of Valentine's.

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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

“People We Meet on Vacation” by Emily Henry

For Alex and Poppy, two uncanny best friends who met on a treacherous road trip home from Univeristy of Chicago to their small shared hometown, a one-week trip becomes the highlight of their year. That is, until something happens, and they don’t speak for two years.

Poppy, desperate to have Alex back in her life, asks him to go on one last trip to Palm Springs. As Poppy tries to balance the luxury prices of Palm Springs and her not-so-luxury budget, their trip quickly devolves from the ideal weekend getaway to a hot mess.

Henry’s novel is a must-read friends-to-lovers romance, and her intricate writing delves past clichés to explore themes of difference and forgiveness. Although Henry has written several popular books, like “Beach Read” and “Happy Place,” this one is my favorite. Henry’s writing style regarding the yearly trips Alex and Poppy go on is uniquely transformative, and I felt completely immersed in every adventure.

“Love and Other Words” by Christina Lauren

Set against the picturesque backdrop of the Bay Area, Christina Lauren’s “Love and Other Words” is an unforgettable childhood friends-to-lovers story that shows love’s resilience.

Soon after her mother’s death, eleven-year-old Macy Sorensen and her father purchase a vacation house outside of San Francisco, where she meets Elliot Petropoulos. Elliot and Macy quickly become best friends, and as time goes on, their relationship blooms from friendship to something more. That is until, for an unspoken reason, they are cut out of each other’s lives. Their story resumes when they accidentally run into each other 11 years later. Told in alternating timelines, readers explore the evolution of the pair’s bond from childhood friends to lovers and strangers to something more once again.

Though the book’s reliance on tropes can be predictable, “Love and Other Words” is worth the read. Lauren’s story captures the importance of first loves, truth, healing and the complexities of human connection and emotion.

“One for My Enemy” by Olivie Blake

In the shadow of modern-day Manhattan, Olivie Blake’s “One for My Enemy” is a fantastic retelling of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The story unfolds amidst a fiery rivalry between two witch families — the Antonovas and the Fedorovs — vying for control over their criminal empires. Blake’s story focuses on the Antonova sisters, their enigmatic mother Baba Yaga and the Federov brothers, who support their father’s dominion over the city’s magical realm. After an act of violence shatters the already brittle peace, ancient grudges and vengeance reignite, fueling a cold war.  

Blake’s signature blend of world building and prose leads to a unique version of Shakespeare’s classic that explores the complexities of familial relationships and captivates the reader. Among the many retellings, this has to be one of my favorites. Blake’s inclusion of magic and magical realism adds a lot to the story, and creates an exciting twist on the old classic.

“Dance of Thieves” and “Vow of Thieves” by Mary E. Pearson

Mary E. Pearson’s duology “Dance of Thieves” and “Vow of Thieves” plunges into the tumultuous lives of Kazi of Brightmist and Jase Ballenger. Kazi, a member of the Rahtan or the Queen’s guard, is on a mission to Tor’s Watch, a city filled with underground and black market activities controlled by the Ballenger family. Jase, son of the Ballenger clan, is set to succeed his father as the leader of the clan.

When Kazi and Jase first meet, they are at odds, which is only made worse when an unexpected event spirals out of control, causing them to be kidnapped hundreds of miles away from their homes. Kazi and Jase are true enemies, and although they are tied together in the kidnapping, they continue to attempt to fulfill their own missions. As their game of cat and mouse continues, Kazi and Jase see unique sides to each other, which sparks a romance filled with love, lies and true tests of loyalty.

If you love slow burns and a true enemies-to-lovers story, Pearson’s duology is for you. Pearson’s world-building is unbelievable, and both protagonists and side characters provide interesting developments and stories.  

“The Songbirds of Ballads and Snakes” by Suzanne Collins

Set during the tenth Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ prequel to “The Hunger Games,” “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” follows high school-aged Coriolanus Snow (Coryo), who lives in the shadow of the once prestigious Snow family home, now about to be impounded from Coryo, his cousin Tigris and their Grandmother, the last of the Snows.

The Gamemaster introduces a twist for the tenth Hunger Games: mentors for the tributes. Coryo, desperate to salvage the Snow name, sees his mentor role as the only chance to restore his family’s diminished glory. As he gets to know his tribute, Lucy Gray of District Twelve, Coryo struggles internally to balance his ambition and compassion. As an unlikely romance blooms between the two, Coryo must decide what he values most: love or power.

Collins uses her skillful writing to craft a narrative that balances the brutal battles of the arena and the internal battles her characters face. She explores ideas of loyalty and ambition in a world where every decision, even freeloading on a school project, means life or death.

“The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller

After being abandoned by his father and exiled from his homeland, the gangly and awkward Patroclus finds himself enslaved by the king of Phthia. On the other hand, Phthia’s son Achilles is perfect. He has golden skin and lustrous curls and is adored by everyone around him. Achilles befriends Patroclus, treating him as more than just an exiled servant, treating him as an equal.

As they go from young boys to men, Achilles is forced to balance the line between achieving his destiny and glory as the greatest warrior of the Greeks and his love for Patroclus, something that comes to a head at Troy’s tumultuous battlefields, Greek mythology’s legendary conflict.

If you loved reading Homer during in AP Literature, you will love this book. Miller breathes a new life into the tale of Achilles and Patroclus, offering a fresh perspective on their story that combines love, friendship and the test of fate to pull at her reader’s heartstrings and make for a beautiful story.

Going into the story, I did not realize it was a romance, but once I started reading it there was nothing more that I wanted than the two characters falling in love. Miller authentically captures human emotion and relationships, and after reading this book, I feel like I have higher standards for what makes a good romance.

“The Seven Year Slip” by Ashley Poston

Months after the unexpected death of her aunt, Clementine spends all of her time safeguarding her heart through her repetitive job and lifestyle. Clementine’s delicately crafted life bursts when she meets Iwan, a young aspiring chef living in her late aunt’s apartment, who also happens to live seven years in the past.  As Clementine realizes that the many childhood stories she heard about her aunt’s time-traveling apartment were true, she is forced to accept that reality is not necessarily what it seems. She falls deeper in love with Iwan while grappling with the fact that modern-day Iwan is out there somewhere, living a different life.

Poston’s magical prose and vivid imagery make for a story about love’s enduring power and the complexities of human relationships, both romantic and familial. Although this is a romance novel, Poston spends a lot of time focusing on self love, especially as it relates to work and career choices, as well as grief and familial love. Poston explores ideas of truth, love and identity, and her meticulous attention to detail creates an enchanting narrative that emphasizes that love hinges largely on timing.

This was the last book I read in 2023, and it ended up being one of my favorites.

“Carrie Soto is Back” by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Six years after retiring from the professional tennis world, Carrie Soto, the greatest player of all time, watches as Nicki Chan threatens to eclipse her grand slam record. Facing Nicki’s threat to her legacy, Soto returns from retirement, determined to recapture her record and prove herself the best tennis player of all time.

Amid high-stakes competition, Carrie connects with Bowe Huntley, an old tennis star who is also trying to return from retirement. As Carrie and Bowe spend grueling hours training against the sun-drenched backdrop of California, a romance kindles between the two. As tensions rise with competition timelines, so do the tensions between Bowe and Carrie.

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Carrie Soto is Back” is a story of resilience, familial bonds, self-love and romance. Reid’s narrative brilliance shines through her work, creating a story about athletic and emotional strength.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of my favorite realistic fiction authors. Every book that she publishes, from “One True Loves” to “Daisy Jones and the Six” is an experience on its own. She is not afraid to take risks in her writing, and they always pay off. Carrie is objectively an unlikeable person, consistently rude and brutish. But this is what makes the story such a gem. We get to follow her thought process and see her growth as she goes through this journey, and every part of it is exciting to read.

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Shelves for contemporary readers: Recycle Bookstore https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/06/shelves-for-contemporary-readers-recycle-bookstore/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/02/06/shelves-for-contemporary-readers-recycle-bookstore/#respond Wed, 07 Feb 2024 05:14:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241842 Recycle Bookstore is reinventing reading habits in an age of social media and mass information, writes Ellen Yang.

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Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

In the age of mass information, the book is a rare yet valuable medium. Its limited volume — with words fitting neatly within only a few hundred pages, rather than a few thousand pixels on a screen — creates a sacred space for language. 

But who is still reading physical books, much less going to bookstores, when it’s so much faster, simpler and cheaper to consume content online? 

I found the answer in a small bookstore located outside of the weekly farmer’s market in Campbell, CA. 

Independent bookstores like Recycle Bookstore would argue everyone should still be reading and buying books. With two locations in the Bay Area, it provides physical books at discounted prices and actively engages readers in the exchange cycle. 

Offering buy-backs and book trading, Recycle Bookstore curates a diverse and vibrant collection, housing both popular and lesser-known titles, from “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” by Joan Didion to  “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett. The bookstore encapsulates the essence of intentional reading, fostering an environment where every book finds a purpose — and an audience. 

Recycle Bookstore boasts a loyal and local fanbase of all ages and has been able to maintain it through its focus on redefining people’s relationships with their bookshelves. Rather than just encouraging people to add to their collections by buying more books, they encourage them to refine collections through a buy-back service that allows patrons to sell and trade in their books. At Recycle Bookstore, they are not replacing the library: They are fostering something new altogether, where people do not see their unread or forgotten books as a blocker to reading, but rather, as an opportunity to find books that do excite them. 

Between the ages of five and 15, I was a voracious reader. My father took me to our local library almost every other day after school. It was in the bookshelves of the YA fiction section that I fell in love with the world and met myself. I read between three and five books a week. 

Today, despite language being the very focus of both my majors (English and linguistics), I’m lucky if I even read three books a month of my own volition. Unfortunately, I’m not alone. In 2022, the average American spent a mere 15 minutes a day reading, resembling pre-pandemic levels. Both genders exhibited a decline in reading compared to the previous decade, with the average American adult completing just over five books per year. Despite American’s record access to libraries, bookstores and online resources, we seem to have lost the magic of reading. 

In the realm of literature, the act of buying books transforms the reader’s relationship with words, offering a unique experience that extends beyond the confines of library walls. Growing up, buying books was a luxury my family couldn’t afford, so the local library became my sanctuary. Why buy when you can borrow for free?

However, as my appreciation for literature has matured, so has my understanding of the power of building a personal library. As humans, we have a natural urge to collect and preserve beautiful things. It is for that same reason that we even write books at all: to hold onto words in a world that values speed over sentiments and quantity over quality. Modern overconsumption is powered by the demand for more, faster — and yet it is also the very thing that fatigues and discourages us from enjoying stories again. 

I’ve battled this by starting an 80/20 practice with my reading habits. While 80% of the books I read will first be read on my Kindle, 20% of them will be books that I serendipitously find at a bookstore. Of the 80% I read digitally first, I will buy the physical copy if I find myself already heavily marking it up or returning to certain pages again and again. Most recently, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin joined my shelves. So did “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed — a book I found in person and bought for one-third of the original price at Recycle Books. 

By being more intentional about how I read, I also establish why I read. 

It’s often said that you don’t truly own a book until you’ve read it, but perhaps the reverse holds true as well. To rekindle the love for reading in the modern reader, we must allow them to reclaim ownership of words. Holding a copy of a book and letting it take up space in your room gives it physical and emotional weight, for better or for worse. While some may fall in love with reading again by reinvesting in books, others may benefit from letting go of the books cluttering their space to make room for new ones. 

After all, it’s also crucial for modern readers to be mindful of sustainability. Here, the concept of recycling takes center stage, and local Bay Area establishments like Recycle Bookstore emerge as beacons of conscientious reading habits.

The name “Recycle Bookstore” itself serves as a poignant reminder of what we, as modern readers, need more of — to recycle our very human need to read with purpose. In embracing the cyclical nature of literature, we can reinvigorate our connection to words, allowing them to transcend the transience of digital information.

Perhaps the point is to not buy books, but rather, to find ways to come back into the ownership of language.

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New York Times bestseller documents journeys of the undocumented https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/new-york-times-bestseller-documents-journeys-of-the-undocumented/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/new-york-times-bestseller-documents-journeys-of-the-undocumented/#respond Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:42:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241431 Javier Zamora and Asad L. Asad reflected on their books exploring the complexities of immigration in the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity’s (CCSRE) quarterly book salon.

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At nine years old, Javier Zamora departed from El Salvador and crossed the U.S. border alone. Twenty-five years later, Zamora is a New York Times bestselling author writing on his experiences as an undocumented child migrant, hoping to take back ownership of the immigration narrative.

Last Thursday, Zamora and sociology assistant professor Asad L. Asad reflected on the diverse and complex experiences of Latinx migrants in Chautauqua, a quarterly book salon at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity’s (CCSRE). Director of Research at CCSRE and Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education Alfredo J. Artiles moderated the conversation.

Zamora, a former Stegner Fellow, wrote his 2022 memoir “Solito: A Memoir” on his experience as an undocumented immigrant. He said one must understand the history of conflicts in El Salvador to fully understand his book. 

Zamora learned of the Salvadoran Civil War from 1979 to 1992 after watching the film “Los Inocentes” and has since conducted research on immigrant’s native contexts. 

“I never could get my parents to talk more about the war,” Zamora said.

Zamora delved into Latin American history and writing during his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He found that Washington aided the Salvadoran government’s military despite the group’s human rights abuses, comparing it to the U.S. government’s funding for the Israeli military during the Cold War to limit Soviet influence in the region. Washington’s spending in Israel topped that in El Salvador.

“The right wing military murdered 70,000 people from 1980 to 1992, and 38,000 of those, including my aunt and uncle, disappeared,” Zamora said of the war in El Salvador.

Inspired by the immigration stories of his Palestinian parents, Asad conducts research on Latino immigration, surveillance and social control.

To write his newest book, “Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life,” Asad spent five years interviewing Latino immigrant families in Dallas County, Texas. During his time, Asad learned how they navigated surveillance while engaging with state institutions.

“The story I tell is at times optimistic and at times bleak, reflecting the structure of the U.S. immigration system,” Asad said. 

Asad and Zamora also discussed the importance of healing in enabling them to communicate immigrant experiences with a full breadth of emotions. 

While writing his book, Asad wrestled with the loss of his brother. In the process of grieving, he was able to more deeply understand the families he interviewed.

“Even as I maintained my professional composure to keep [their stories’] general structure, I sought to add a bit more of me and what I’ve accepted into my own life,” Asad said.

Zamora said he was able to write “Solito” only after many years of healing, through therapy and poetry. After undergoing the 3,000-mile journey to reunite with his parents as a child, Zamora became less willing to trust his surroundings. 

“A lot of how I wrote the book is therapy, healing — and a lot of it was trusting my memories,” Zamora said.

Amid the difficult realities explored in Asad and Zamora’s books, the work of both authors seeks to give a fuller picture of immigration and to bring hope for a better future. 

“It is my job, as a dreamer, as a writer, to provide something else,” Zamora said.

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Aparna Verma ’20 on ‘The Phoenix King,’ centering South Asian stories and ‘BookTok’ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/aparna-verma-20-on-the-phoenix-king-centering-south-asian-stories-and-booktok/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/31/aparna-verma-20-on-the-phoenix-king-centering-south-asian-stories-and-booktok/#respond Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:41:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1241447 Stanford alum Aparna Verma '20 shared the cultural significance of her TikTok-viral novel and her road to publishing, in an event sponsored by the Stanford Storytelling Project.

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Last Friday, Aparna Verma ’20 embossed copies of her debut novel, “The Phoenix King,” with personalized stamps at a signing at the Stanford bookstore.

On the stamp was a line of text encircling a flame. “From the Royal Library of the Kingdom of Ravence,” the text read.

Touching on Indian and Hindu culture, ritual and traditions, “The Phoenix King” is a sci-fi fantasy that explores the Ravence bloodline in a futuristic desert kingdom. The book follows three characters — Elena, Yassen and King Leo — in a story of fire-magic and action, prophecy and fate, home and belonging, love and betrayal. 

Verma told The Daily that she explores her culture in writing about complex themes. “At some point I was like, ‘I refuse to be categorized,’” she said.

Verma returned to Stanford for a speaker event sponsored by the Stanford Storytelling Project (SSP) last Thursday. Moderated by creative writing lecturer Tom Kealey, the conversation detailed Verma’s writing and publication journey.

“You don’t really see brown Indian people in novels about the future,” Verma told the SSP audience. “When you see books about that, they are usually in a position of servitude — or they just don’t exist at all. Why can’t we exist in the future? Why aren’t we valued in the future?”

As an immigrant, Verma grew up feeling out of place in different social circles. Verma said that she did not want to write characters of color that fit the “model minority” stereotype, but fully flushed characters with passion and flaws.

“You could be a king, you could be a queen, you could be an assassin, you could be any of these,” Verma said. “You could be good, but you can also be terrible.”

Birth of “The Phoenix King”

Verma said she wrote “draft zero” of “The Phoenix King” in English 190E: “The Novel Writing Intensive” (popularly dubbed “The NaNoWriMo class,” short for the National Novel Writing Month). After a brief break away from writing, she rewrote the draft in four months of pandemic isolation.

It felt like a “fever dream,” she said.

With the job market down during the pandemic, Verma noted her shift in mindset for writing the book she has always wanted. “I was thinking, ‘I’m actually going to [write] it this time, and do it justice,’” she said. “It could take as long as I want, because who knows how long this pandemic is going to take.”

After editing the draft with freelance editors, Verna self-published the initial version of the book, titled “The Boy with Fire,” in August 2021. She used a kickstarter campaign to raise money for the costs, and she reached out to everyone she could in the process.

At first, Verma’s parents were lukewarm about her decisions to major in English and write a book. Verma persisted, however, and they have been supportive since. Her dad even became known among coworkers for helping ship copies of “The Boy with Fire.”

Using “BookTok” to her advantage

“The Boy with Fire” was later picked up by Orbit Books after gaining traction on TikTok, Verma said. While she had been reluctant to advertise her book on the app in its early days, her brother encouraged her, citing authors’ success with promotion on “BookTok,” which connotes the app’s collection of users and content concerning book reviews and recommendations. 

Upon joining, Verma did what any Stanford student would do: watched and researched. She noted how she wrote “The Boy with Fire” in silos, not even thinking about the “trope” categories that are popular for finding an audience. She later adopted some tropes to take advantage of TikTok’s algorithm so that her book was recommended to more users.

“I saw what the trends were. I saw what people wanted to see. I saw how people talked about their books in an effective manner that actually got views and sales,” Verma said. “And then, once I had done my research, was when I started posting.”

It worked. The book resonated in the South Asian “BookTok” community, according to Verma.

“I never came across something like ‘The Phoenix King,’ so it felt wonderful and surreal to know that people wanted to read it,” she said.

The road to publication

The process of getting published by Orbit Books was unconventional, Verma said. Describing herself as opportunistic and ambitious, she sent a query to a senior editor after seeing their tweet calling for Asian fantasy stories. The editor told her that another editor, Priyanka Krishnan, who would later become Verma’s editor, was already reading the book. 

Verma noted she was grateful for having an editor of the same background and highlighted the importance of women of color in positions of power. 

“If there’s one lesson to learn it is that you can make your own opportunities,” she said to the audience of students. “You don’t have to wait for someone to say yes. Make them say yes.”

Verma’s path forward

After graduating from Stanford, Verma has been balancing writing with a full-time job of social media content production for big brands, including Barnes and Noble. 

Verma just received the first round edits for a second book in a trilogy that includes “The Phoenix King.” She hinted that the book relies heavily on the theme of “manipulation.”

“People will critique your decisions, your story — and that’s a part of the business,” Verma said. “Writing is a story of courage, of talking about the issues that really matter to you in a truthful way.”

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SLE challenges the boundaries of the Western canon https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/26/can-a-course-on-the-western-canon-serve-a-diverse-student-body/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/26/can-a-course-on-the-western-canon-serve-a-diverse-student-body/#respond Fri, 26 Jan 2024 08:19:30 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1240974 Stanford's Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program has faced scrutiny over its focus on the Western canon, prompting discussions on diversity within its curriculum.

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Dante, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Zhuangzi. 

Not all of these writers might be considered “Western,” yet each of them are featured on this quarter’s syllabus for Stanford’s Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program. This reflects a growing effort within SLE to embrace diversity despite the program’s academic focus on “great works […] from the Western tradition.” 

SLE, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, is an integrated residential and educational program that houses 90 frosh in East Florence Moore (FloMo), where they attend weekly lectures and discussions together. It has long faced criticisms for centering works by Western thinkers in its curriculum. 

Jeremy Sabol, who has served as the program’s associate faculty director for the past 20 years, said that SLE was “intentionally, purposefully created as a Western tradition course,” rather than a world cultures course. However, he said that faculty are focusing closely on how they can make the SLE student experience more equitable for an increasingly diverse student body who are interested in alternative perspectives on the traditional canon. 

“The way in which we think about diversity — and the complexity that comes with the word ‘diversity’ and what it means — has become a much larger part of our conversation than it was 15 years ago,” Sabol said. 

Conflicts over the canon

SLE’s focus on the Western canon can be traced back to the program’s creation in 1974. According to Sabol, SLE was founded in response to the social upheavals of the 1970s, including the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and ensuing student protests. 

Mark Mancall, professor emeritus of history and SLE’s co-founder, chose to create a residential course on Western civilization to help students process the current cultural moment in the United States within a broader historical context.

“We are the products of this culture,” Mancall told The Daily in 1978. “Even though we may have ties to other cultures, we all live in Western culture.” 

For the next few decades, SLE’s curriculum remained focused on authors considered to be part of the Western tradition, with occasional non-Western texts like the Quran or the Bhagavad-Gita being included in syllabi around the 2000s.

The first significant challenge to SLE’s grounding in the Western canon came in 2016 from the student activist group Who’s Teaching Us (WTU), which demanded the inclusion of diverse authors within the curriculum. According to Sabol, WTU representatives met frequently with SLE administrators to voice their concerns about the lack of representation for non-Western or marginalized voices in the program. 

This led to the creation of a new student-run course titled “Expanding the Curriculum” (ETC), which sought to “bridge SLE texts with modernity and challenge them within alternative contexts.” The program’s curriculum in 2016, which spanned topics from decolonization to the erasure of Native American history from the Western canon, aimed to ask the question of “what the [Western] canon is, and why.” 

ETC has since been discontinued, but the course has left a legacy of SLE students actively engaging with faculty to challenge and diversify the program’s readings. Milly Wong ’27, an international student from Hong Kong, said SLE section leaders and faculty welcome students to dive deeper into non-Western texts.

This year’s curriculum did incorporate the perspectives of Chinese and South Asian writers alongside Plato and Aristotle, to the enjoyment of students like Aiden Pinuelas ’27.

“SLE advertises itself as being the course on the Western canon, but we also don’t live in a purely Western world and shouldn’t just be learning from a Western perspective,” Pinuelas said. “I think the question to figure out is, what does it mean to have a Western canon course that does not only have a Western focus?” 

An ethos of change

These conversations are hardly unique to Stanford. Efforts to diversify our understanding within the Western canon have gained some ground over time, with prominent 20th century writers like W.E.B. DuBois and Frantz Fanon featured in SLE’s curriculum.

By drawing connections between ancient Greco-Roman philosophers and diverse contemporary thinkers from the West and beyond, SLE Faculty Director Marisa Galvez hopes to leave students with an understanding of the Western tradition as something that is “constantly changing” rather than a static literary canon. 

“We try to help students think about categories such as Western and non-Western, Black and White, and we try to make that complex,” Galvez said.

For Galvez, including non-Western texts in the SLE curriculum is an opportunity to show that the Western tradition is “one among many” and should not be privileged over any other tradition. Still, these works are intended to give SLE students an alternative perspective on the West, rather than provide them with a thorough understanding of different world cultures. 

Students expressed varied perspectives on this intention. Audrey Jung ’27 felt that SLE has provided her with an inviting community and the tools needed to critically understand readings across cultures.

“They don’t try to spoon-feed us ideas,” Jung said.

However, despite SLE’s increasingly diverse reading list, some students found that they were not able to express their own non-Western perspectives within the program. 

Selin Ertan ’25, who participated in SLE during her frosh year, said that she felt her perspective as an international student from Turkey was not always respected by other students.

She said that students from the U.S. often applied a “modern-day American perspective” to Western and non-Western texts alike, rather than trying to understand the cultural context that the works came from. This was particularly salient to Ertan in class discussions of the Quran, during which she felt she could not express her opinions as a student from the Middle East. 

“Including more books from different canons would be very nice,” Ertan said. “But it would be completely useless so long as students don’t want to hear those perspectives.”

The experiences of students like Ertan and Jung are important to faculty like lecturer Michaela Hulstyn, who emphasized the importance of such feedback being the driving force behind SLE. Hulstyn described the faculty’s relationship with students as a four-year conversation about what SLE is doing and how they could do it better. 

“That’s really one of the main ethos of the program — change, a philosophy for change,” Hulstyn said.  

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‘Dawning of Diversity’ narrates Mexican American students’ stories of the 1970s https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/25/dawning-of-diversity-narrates-mexican-american-students-stories-of-the-1970s/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/25/dawning-of-diversity-narrates-mexican-american-students-stories-of-the-1970s/#respond Thu, 25 Jan 2024 09:26:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1240821 Frank Sotomayor M.A. '67 delves into discriminatory admissions and the Chicano experience of 1970s Stanford in his new book.

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When Frank Sotomayor M.A. ’67 arrived at Stanford in the 1960s, he was one of only a few Mexican American students at the University. Years later, after graduating with a master’s degree in journalism, he chronicled how several classes of Chicano students changed Stanford’s landscape over the following decade, in an era when people of color were disadvantaged in admissions and higher education.

Sotomayor’s 2022 book, “Dawning of Diversity: How Chicanos Helped Change Stanford University,” documents systemic racism in higher education in the 1960s and later decades. It also spotlights students and faculty members whose initiative contributed to Stanford’s increased diversity today.

Sotomayor collected data on Mexican American students of the early ’70s, including information about their family backgrounds, how they were recruited and their evolution through four years at the University. Central to his argument are inequities in the admissions system — something especially intriguing to present-day readers, after the Supreme Court reversed affirmative action last June.

Sotomayor highlights disadvantages faced by applicants of color: In 1960, the legacy system was in full swing, recruitment targeted high schools with children of Stanford alums and students of color had less access to college preparatory courses — to an even greater degree than today. 

Crucially, Stanford had no quotas for white admits, but sought to limit admissions for women, Jewish students and students of color. The student bodies of most leading private universities were over 95% white until the mid-1960s, Sotomayor writes in “Dawning of Diversity.”

“Stanford’s status quo continued a long-standing set of policies and practices that produced institutional inequity in undergraduate admissions,” he concludes.

Sotomayor said he wanted to raise awareness of instances of racism in Stanford’s history. This began with the University’s first president, eugenicist David Starr Jordan, and Lewis Terman, a professor of education who developed the Stanford-Binet IQ test. The test, which was meant to diagnose developmental and learning disabilities in children, was “terribly culturally biased,” Sotomayor told The Daily.

Although the book focuses on the past, Sotomayor takes his research and activism into the present. He points out limitations in Stanford’s diversity today, as presented in data from the IDEAL dashboards.

“18% of undergraduates are Latino, and that’s good,” Sotomayor said. “But when you go to graduate students, that drops dramatically, to only 9%.”

Sotomayor said the Stanford faculty is also lacking in diversity, with only 5% being Latino and less than 1% being Native American.

“There is a lot of work that has to be done, and Stanford has a lot of excuses,” Sotomayor said. “If Stanford wants to get more diversity among graduate students and faculty, it’s going to have to make that a priority. Not lip service, but a priority year after year.”

Besides relevant discussions on diversity of the student body, “Dawning of Diversity” tells deeply human stories about Mexican American students’ struggles and growth.

“I really wanted to get inside the head and memories of students of that period,” Sotomayor said. “I wanted to feel their pain, feel their joy and make it more of a human story.”

The stories Sotomayor told in the book certainly moved me. One I found particularly compelling was that of Albert (Al) Milo Jr. ’73. While involved in movements on Mexican American rights and Vietnam War protests, he was questioning his sexuality. 

Milo absorbed “homophobic remarks and innuendos by male students” and witnessed how the campus was not “ready for an openly gay professor.” He did not realize Arturo Islas, an English professor immensely popular among students, was gay until after Milo left Stanford.

The son of a farmworker, Milo experienced culture shock coming to the University.

“Being around so many super smart people raised the bar for me in terms of what I expected of myself,” Milo says in the book.

Sotomayor does justice to stories like Milo’s, all of them equally rich, personal and specific to being a Mexican American student at Stanford during this time.

“I wanted to show how they left a legacy for Stanford, what they did after Stanford and how the education was helpful,” Sotomayor said.

“Dawning of Diversity” was as much a masterful narrative as a piece of serious scholarship. Sotomayor incorporated more than 800 footnotes in the book to ensure it was “academically sound.”

Reading “Dawning of Diversity” was an eye-opening experience for me. Delving into each individual’s narrative, I can’t help but see similarities to our student life today. Stanford students today also explore multiple identities, feel culture shock and engage in community activism. Decades have passed, but immense wisdom remains in these unearthed stories.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Pulitzer Prize winner reimagines Netanyahu’s trek to America https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/19/pulitzer-prize-winner-reimagines-netanyahus-trek-to-america/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/19/pulitzer-prize-winner-reimagines-netanyahus-trek-to-america/#respond Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:54:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1240570 Jewish American author Joshua Cohen recalled the chance visit to Yale that sparked his Putlizer Prize-winning novel — a story about "the Netanyahu that no one cares about."

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On Tuesday, writer Joshua Cohen recounted how a famous literary critic’s offhand remark inspired his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Netanyahus.”

During the Stanford Humanities Center event, Cohen discussed Jewish American literary influences, writing amid the pandemic and the little-known historical episode fictionalized in the novel. Steven J. Zipperstein, professor of Jewish culture and history and faculty director of the Taube Center, moderated the conversation.

Cohen, who struck up a friendship with Harold Bloom toward the end of the critic’s life, stumbled on the premise for “The Netanyahus” during a trip to Yale University. He was sitting in Bloom’s living room when Benjamin Netanyahu’s face appeared on television — Bloom mentioned that he had met the prime minister as a 10 year old, and Bloom’s wife, Jeanne Gould, recounted a peculiar visit by the Netanyahus to Cornell University.

“My name is Rubin Blum,” Cohen read aloud from the beginning of his novel. “I am a Jewish historian, but I am not a historian of the Jews.” The year is 1959, and Blum, a reimagined version of Bloom, is a scholar of taxation at the fictional Corbin College in New York. 

As the only Jewish professor at Corbin, Blum weathers antisemitic blunders by his colleagues. When a bombastic Israeli scholar of the Spanish Inquisition arrives on campus looking for a job, Blum and his wife are tasked with hosting his entire family, who practically crash land on their doorstep.

The man is no ordinary applicant. He was Benzion Netanyahu, the ardently Zionist father of a 10-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu — who would one day become Israeli prime minister. 

“The novel is about the Netanyahu that no one cares about,” Cohen said.

What follows is a seriocomic portrait of mid-century academic life and evolving Jewish American identity.

Bloom and Gould’s scraps of memory were the genesis of “The Netanyahus,” sparking Cohen’s prodigious imagination during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, years after his trip to Yale.

Writing in the face of disease and death accelerated Cohen’s process, infusing the work with a sense of impending doom. 

“I had a sense that my life was over,” he said. “I was doing two dumb things — writing an academic novel and a historical novel. I thought I was ruining a life that was going to end in a few months.”

“It’s nice to be out of the house,” Cohen joked about his Stanford visit.

The novel seemed doomed at first. Twenty-four publishers rejected the manuscript, Cohen said, prompting murmurs of surprise among the audience. 

“No one can even pronounce the word ‘Netanyahu’ in this country,” Cohen quipped. 

Soon after publication, however, “The Netanyahus” won praise for its biting wit, audacious approach to history and vigorous prose style.

A trained composer, Cohen told Zipperstein that he hears sentences the way a musician does melody. “I try to think of sentences like counterpoint,” he said. He prefers to write by hand in order to “feel the periodicity” of language, listening for harmonies between the multiple “lines” that compose a sentence.

Cohen speaks with the same linguistic virtuosity that characterizes his writing. Throughout the event, he traded friendly zingers with Zipperstein and the audience, indifferent to causing offense.

When Zipperstein brought up Jewish American writer Philip Roth’s influence on Cohen’s writing, Cohen sighed over the comparison — one made throughout his writing life

Cohen acknowledged that “The Netanyahus” dealt with the style of 20th-century Jewish literature, including Roth’s “Goodbye Columbus.” 

Yet, the novel introduced subjects long “buried,” he said, including the post-war Jewish diaspora. In writing “The Netanyahus,” he wanted to capture the 1950s “with those ghosts really in the foreground,” he said.

During a Q&A, the conversation turned to antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. “I was shocked by the barbarity of Oct. 7 as I was shocked by the violence of Israel’s response,” Cohen said. “But I wasn’t surprised by the outpouring of antisemitism.”

One audience member asked whether Cohen felt identity “circumscribed his imagination” and compelled him to write from certain perspectives and not others. In response, Cohen said he was unafraid of social sanctions. “Writing is not a career to me,” he said. “I don’t know how the reactions of other people will demonstrably make my life worse.”

“Why tell stories?” Zipperstein asked Cohen at the conclusion of the event. 

“I write portraits of people who desperately need to tell stories,” Cohen said. “The impulse of someone to tell is almost a sufficient purpose for existence. It’s the most graceful way to express loneliness.”

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‘Yours for the Taking’ is a subpar speculation on feminism and the planet https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/16/yours-for-the-taking-is-a-subpar-speculation-on-feminism-and-the-planet/ https://stanforddaily.com/2024/01/16/yours-for-the-taking-is-a-subpar-speculation-on-feminism-and-the-planet/#respond Wed, 17 Jan 2024 07:37:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1240190 In her review of the new dystopia "Yours for the Taking," Cate Burtner elaborates on the use of overdone dystopian tropes and highlights a unique outlook on futuristic feminism.

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With the growth in climate change concern over time, imaginations of the planet’s future have flooded literature and media.

In her most recent novel “Yours for the Taking,” Gabrielle Korn envisions a dystopian wasteland that raises interesting questions about identity, feminism and social justice. The story begins in 2050: The planet is rotting, society suffers from extreme economic disparity and, interestingly, tension between feminists and men’s rights activists. Jacqueline Millender — celebrity, feminist and heiress to a powerful company — wants to create a physical utopian bubble called “The Inside” to protect people from extreme weather, solve all forms of oppression and expand her scope of power while she’s at it. 

Amid skepticism, Jacqueline executes her plan, the implications of which reverberate far into the future. The sci-fi novel follows this development through the perspectives of several women from different backgrounds and circumstances.

I found the reading experience subpar. While the novel’s representation of futuristic feminism was interesting, many of the other elements were somewhat trite, almost familiar. These included a decaying planet, an oppressive government, space travel, mind control and exacerbated inequality. 

The novel ultimately felt like an unnecessary addition to the climate fiction genre. The premise is such a stretch that it doesn’t serve as a warning or a call to action in the way that other sci-fi books do. If you’re looking for a better written and more innovative work of climate fiction, I would recommend Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” or Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” 

While the writing in “Yours for the Taking” is not groundbreaking, it does give characters unique voices, explore the ideas of power and powerlessness and represent modern-day political issues in a new light. 

Characters and their perspectives are at the center of the novel. These include Ava and Orchid, a queer couple forced to reckon with limited opportunities for safety; Olympia, a black, queer female doctor who bends her own moral compass out of desperation and Shelby, a transgender woman from a working-class family who grapples with her life’s purpose. 

Korn goes beyond exploring diverse perspectives of LGBTQ+ women and people of color. She asks her characters: who are you, and what tools do you use to define yourself? For some, it is their marginalized identities, their relationships or their bond to their children. For others, it is a much more perplexing desire. 

Jacqueline wants to eradicate sexism, but can’t see beyond her heterosexual, white feminist perspective as she crafts the only safe space for human life.

Olympia wants to create change from the inside, but what if that idea is a fiction? 

In the end, characters want social justice, and readers want poetic justice — is achieving both too good to be true? We see characters manipulated and characters in denial. We are confronted with the human tendency to believe what is most convenient to us and even find ourselves questioning this tendency in our own lives, identities and politics. 

When characters are given the chance to discover the truth about “The Inside,” they must decide whether to live in ignorance or to create crucial change. “Inside” is a clever name for the bubble: each character in the story is trapped, stuck or imprisoned in one way or another. 

This led me to examine our society’s tendency to passively follow daily tragedies of current events and let values like individuality and morality fade away. While the novel’s imagined future is an implausible one, we can certainly draw thought-provoking parallels between our world and the fictional world.

Aside from an interesting conception of a dystopian future, what’s distinct about Korn’s story is her use of dramatic irony. Readers are almost regarded as characters in the story — the third-person omniscient point of view strategically gives us insight and withholds information from us, too. This lends itself to an at-times entertaining and suspenseful reading experience. Every now and then I found myself sitting up, leaning in and even gasping as the story unfolded.

As we contemplate the future of our planet, we can all relate to the desire for poetic justice as a story ends. In Korn’s “Yours for the Taking,” we come to learn that there is no justice, poetic or otherwise, in a dystopian future.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Britney Spears takes back the woman in her https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/27/britney-spears-takes-back-the-woman-in-her/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/27/britney-spears-takes-back-the-woman-in-her/#respond Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:40:57 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238001 One of the best-selling books of the year, Britney Spears' memoir, "The Woman in Me," is not just a deep dive into celebrity gossip but a reclamation of womanhood and liberty.

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What would you do if the people you trusted the most didn’t actually have your best interests in mind?

For much of Britney Spears’s life, this was the case. Despite having lived most of her life governed by others, Spears finally gets to write the narrative in her new memoir “The Woman in Me.”

The book begins the same way it ends: with family. Rather than starting the story of her life with her birth or childhood, she starts with her grandparents’ story, followed by that of her parents. This retelling is indispensable since so much of Spears’s adult life was shaped by her family’s decisions rather than her own. Spears recounts her family heavily overstepping throughout her life, from the mild incident of her parents’ quick and decisive involvement to end her drunken marriage in Vegas to the extreme of her father’s infamous 13-year conservatorship over her. 

Britney Spears’s story is one of tensions and dualities. She’s relatable yet untouchable; she’s America’s sweetheart and the media’s “unfit mother.” Under the conservatorship, she was a trapped woman forcibly reverted to a childlike state.

Through it all, Spears’s tone is friendly and simple, allowing the readers to interpret her narrative as genuine. Readers might feel like they are being told a story by a friend.

There are moments when she seems to interject into her own writing, usually by weaving her thoughts and memories into the narrative. These insights are often humorous, like when she recounts her thoughts at her 2001 VMAs performance: “Are you fucking serious right now? The fucking goddamn snake’s tongue is flicking out at me.” Spears shows us what is behind that iconic, strength-radiating performance — fear and recognition of its insanity. By breaking the fourth wall throughout the memoir, Spears begins to break down the marketed public image we know from the media and build herself up as an ordinary, vulnerable person.

I would advise readers not to expect a literary masterpiece. This is not what the book is aiming to be. According to The New York Times, it took three ghostwriters to bring about Spears’ book. Arguably, though, it doesn’t matter whether it was actually written by Spears herself; what matters is that she approved of the way her story was told.

Spears’s book sold over 1 million copies in its first week in the US alone. It is not just Britney Spears superfans reading this book — and for good reason. “The Woman in Me” shares a long-overlooked story, gives readers an emotional whirlwind and, yes, details the whole “Justin Timberlake situation.” There are moments of heightened tensions and rising stakes, as well as devastating blows and heartbreaking injustice. (Here are a few of my actual annotations to give you a sense of my own journey through this emotional roller coaster: “Holy shit.” “Disgusting” (underlined). “Ok, I’m crying now.”)

“The Woman in Me” is not just titled as such — throughout the memoir, Spears provides valuable insight into her experience as a woman in the entertainment industry. She recounts her struggles with mental health, such as when the industry diverted focus away from her actual performances and onto her body image.

The public may have a sympathetic perception of Spears in 2023, thanks in part to recent attitude shifts toward mental health and illness, but this certainly was not the case in the past. In 2007, the media’s portrayal of Spears’ famous ‘meltdown’ framed her as a mentally spiraling mother. In “The Woman in Me,” Spears is finally able to reveal the real reasons why she shaved off all her hair: “Shaving my head was my way of saying to the world: Fuck you. You want me to be pretty for you? Fuck you,” Spears writes. “At the end of the day, I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was see my boys.”

The act was a reaction to being sexualized from a young age and valued principally for her looks, as well as the experience of having her children taken away. While Spears details her extreme issues with her manipulative parents and ungrateful siblings, she makes it clear just how much she cares about the family she’s built for herself: namely, her two sons. She describes being with her kids as “the closest I’ve ever felt to God.”

Seeing Britney Spears’s name on the cover of “The Woman in Me” might make readers eager for a peek into all the juicy Hollywood gossip they’ve been dying to know for years. Yet Spears gives us much more. She offers nuggets of wisdom, beautiful moments tinged with spirituality and insights into the complex dualities of life as a celebrity. Written in a voice that is loudly and shamelessly hers, this book shows us that perspective is everything, and untold perspectives, like Spears’s own, are invaluable.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Lecturers recount finding community and voice in creative writing MFA programs https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/27/lecturers-recount-finding-community-and-voice-in-creative-writing-mfa-programs/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/27/lecturers-recount-finding-community-and-voice-in-creative-writing-mfa-programs/#respond Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:03:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238170 Stanford does not offer a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing, but many lecturers from the English department pursued this degree elsewhere.

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A Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing is an often selective, often two-year degree program that gives writers time to hone their craft under the mentorship of established writers. The program is not offered at Stanford, but many faculty affiliated with the creative writing program pursued an MFA.

The Stanford Daily interviewed Tom Kealey, Sarah Frisch and Sara Michas-Martin from the English department on how their MFA degrees influenced their writing and teaching careers. 

Kealey, author of “The Creative Writing MFA Handbook,” earned his MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Frisch holds an MFA in Fiction from Washington University in Saint Louis. Michas-Martin attended an MFA program at Naropa University before completing the degree in Poetry at the University of Arizona. All three are former Wallace Stegner Fellows.

Each lecturer emphasized the importance of MFAs in surrounding them with a community of writers. 

“Teachers are important for sure, but a workshop is only as strong as your fellow writers in the class,” Kealey said.

“The people you really are going to learn from are your peers,” Michas-Martin said. “Sometimes the conversations that happen in the bar or at someone’s house or at the coffee shop are the ones that will stick with you.” 

An MFA program also gives writers a chance for extensive reading, which can be beneficial for those without a strong literature background. 

“I was able to start to understand the work I was reading in relation to the kind of work I wanted to create,” Frisch said, referencing the Ph.D. literature classes she took during her MFA. 

Frisch also stressed the importance of reading for aspiring writers, with or without intent to pursue an MFA. She advised writers to read every day. “If I’m stuck somewhere in my writing, often the answer is in my reading life, not in my writing life,” Frisch said. 

For students interested in pursuing an MFA, Kealey recommended that they take some time off after their undergraduate studies.

“I think this is true no matter what degree you pursue,” Kealey said. 

Similarly, Frisch has always told people to take a few years before pursuing an MFA program. 

“It makes such a difference to have been writing on your own — finding your voice and your material and then returning to the MFA program,” Frisch said.

Michas-Martin took a year to travel around the world after completing her Bachelor’s degree. “That’s when I decided I really wanted to write … I just knew I loved it,” she said. “So I do think taking time off is really important.”

Lecturers encouraged students to try new things in the MFA program and beyond. “Write as much as you can. Try on voices and styles that you might otherwise not pursue,” Kealey said.

Kealey described writing as a process in which writers discover who they are. “The page reflects ourselves back to us, even if we are clearly inhabiting characters very different from us,” he said. “When we write with honesty, integrity and courage, we generally are delighted by what we discover.”

Kealey, Frisch and Michas-Martin also recognized that an MFA is not for everyone. 

Michas-Martin suggested that students with interdisciplinary minds should pursue multiple interests. “Let’s say you’re a CS major, but maybe you’re also really passionate about fiction. You can hold those two things at the same time,” Michas-Martin said. “And practically, it may be necessary.” 

Interdisciplinarity features in the courses that Michas-Martin teaches at Stanford. She has found that her teaching “feeds” her writing.

Ultimately, Frisch advised young writers to embrace the changes on their journeys in writing and beyond. “Building a life that feels meaningful is going to go a long way,” Frisch said.

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Menlo Park Storytelling Festival artists fight discrimination https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/26/menlo-park-storytelling-festival-artists-fight-discrimination/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/26/menlo-park-storytelling-festival-artists-fight-discrimination/#respond Mon, 27 Nov 2023 04:19:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1238032 In the eighth annual Menlo Park Storytelling Festival, performers from different backgrounds shared folktales and myths with the local community, highlighting the value of cross-cultural unity through storytelling.

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It is 6 p.m. on Oct. 23 — parents off from work and children out of school sat in a semicircle at Menlo Park Library. They listened avidly to the storyteller Roopa Mohan, who shared the story of Ganesha, a Hindu god with an elephant head, at the eighth annual Menlo Park Storytelling Festival.

Every year, Menlo Park Library invites storytellers from different backgrounds to celebrate storytelling with the local community throughout October and November. The festival champions traditional storytelling as an art form that not only allows the expansion of oral history but also gives listeners’ unique imaginative liberties. 

Mohan lived in India for 20 years before moving to the United States. Trained at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, she tells personal narrative, folktale, myth and tall tales related to food and culture. 

“As we listen to stories, we start telling our stories. We start sharing stories about family, about our heritage, about all kinds of things,” Mohan said. “When children experience this, it really broadens their world and it brings people closer.”

When hate crimes toward Asian Americans spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mohan joined other Asian American storytellers to start the Asian American Storytopia project for elementary school children, families and others. She also sits on the board of the Storytelling Association of California, which brings storytelling to underserved schools all over the state. 

“We came up with a plan to educate children with stories from all different Asian countries, so that people will embrace each other,” Mohan said. “I think it will expel racism and all those negative feelings that we see in our society.”

The festival gathered storytellers from both in and outside of California. At the final event on Friday, the audience enjoyed stories from performers based in Texas, Australia, South Korea and elsewhere through Zoom.

A week following Mohan’s performance, children and parents returned to hear from Olga Loya on Oct. 30. Loya invited the audience to take a fresh, personal look at life and death with a story about Día de los Muertos (day of the dead), along with family stories and other Latin American folk tales. 

Loya’s stories seek to help people overcome emotional and cultural boundaries. Instead of believing in what society says what one is capable of achieving, she encourages the audience to break stereotypes and be the author of their own story. 

When Loya was going to school, she was told that she could not go to college because of her family’s financial status. She did not let those words defeat her. Now, she writes her own story to inspire those in a position similar to the one she was once in. 

“People get discouraged when they have stuff like that happen,” Loya said. “I think it’s really important to hear somebody who has come through the other side talk about it. 

“Dancing through La Via” is one of Loya’s stories. It describes growing up in east Los Angeles, where substance abuse and gang violence are prevalent. 

“People need to tell more stories of surviving that,” Loya said. 

Tina Henson, the last in-person storyteller, regaled the audience with stories from a variety of Native traditions. A cloth adorned with drawings of bears, harvest and other symbols hung next to her while she spoke. Following the story, Henson also demonstrated a powwow dance and encouraged her audience to join one of the largest powwows in Northern California at Stanford next year. 

To Henson, storytelling means keeping her traditions alive and “reminding students that Native Americans aren’t just a part of history.”

“We’re very resilient. We’ve done what we had to still be here to be able to share our culture,” Henson said.

Henson attributed one source of inspiration for her storytelling to John Weaver, Menlo Park Library’s senior program assistant. Weaver was her librarian when she grew up in Livermore, and Henson remembered Weaver was always telling stories at the library. Part of Weaver’s mission was to assist in the library programs where children were encouraged to reach the goal of reading one hundred books.

“He made it so exciting and so fun,” Henson said.

At the Menlo Park Storytelling Festival, storytellers encouraged the young audience to pass stories of different cultures onto future generations.

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‘The Games of California and Stanford’ traces thrilling beginnings of football rivalry https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/16/the-games-of-california-and-stanford-traces-thrilling-beginnings-of-football-rivalry/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/16/the-games-of-california-and-stanford-traces-thrilling-beginnings-of-football-rivalry/#respond Fri, 17 Nov 2023 05:11:02 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1237506 "The Games of Stanford and California" captures the fierce competition between the two schools with unique depictions
of football games from over a century ago.

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In the spring of 1892, Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley came together for their very first football game as rivals. This historic moment, along with later encounters between Cal and Stanford through 1900, are recorded in Jack F. Sheehan and Louis Honig’s book “The Games of California and Stanford.”

In 1892, seven years after Stanford was founded, the University’s football team was in its infancy — playing an incomplete season in the spring quarter and setting off strong in the fall. Meanwhile, Cal had established its sports teams seven years prior. 

The very first game between Cal and Stanford was played on March 19 at Haight Street Park in San Francisco. Sheehan and Honig captured the “peculiar sense of bottled-up American excitement which thrilled the 8,000 people who wore the cardinal and blue and gold that day.” This sentiment is so familiar to modern readers; nothing compares to the energy brought out by a good, traditional game of football. 

Sheehan and Honig laid out the second game between Cal and Stanford as a touch-and-go from the beginning: Stanford ended the first half with a 6-0 lead, but Cal quickly caught up. According to the authors, “If the first half was excitement the second half was football ecstasy” to the full audience. You don’t need to be a fan of the game to be called to that thrill. The close game ended in a last-minute tie, with a score of 10-10. 

Even for those who are not particular fans of the sport, “The Games of California and Stanford” intrigues with vivid depictions of the two universities’ dynamic history of rivalry.

The Thanksgiving Day game of 1894 was a test of endurance, with Stanford’s team peaking early on with a touch-down and trying to fend off Cal for the rest of the game. Then, in the fourth quarter, Cal’s team made a break for the end zone, narrowly missing the score when they dropped the ball. Had Cal made the touchdown, the game would have ended in the third consecutive tie between the two teams. This narrow victory made “Stanford burst the heavens in shouts of victory.” 

Sheehan and Honig impressively translated the sensation of every game onto the page through photographs and words. No two episodes were alike, and the book recreates the mood of each one by setting the scene with contextual and visual details. Readers could clearly visualize those “spectacular” or “picturesque” days many years ago. 

I found the most striking moments in the authors’ descriptive language and use of imagery to depict the cheers from the spectators, the effects of the weather or the emotions in the bleachers. At times “[g]rim determination and say nothing was the salient characteristic under both college banners,” and in a particularly thrilling moment, Stanford player “Murphy electrified the crowd by adding more glory to his record.”

Don’t mistake me for a sports super fan. However, I have never been as compelled to become one as I am after reading “The Games of California and Stanford.”

In anticipation of the Big Game, “The Games of California and Stanford” reminds us of the thousands of students who stood where we did more than a century ago, cheering for our teams and our peers. 

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Enemies to contemporaries: Rising authors at Stanford and Berkeley https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/16/enemies-to-contemporaries-rising-authors-at-stanford-and-berkeley/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/16/enemies-to-contemporaries-rising-authors-at-stanford-and-berkeley/#respond Thu, 16 Nov 2023 11:19:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1237389 Authors from both universities demonstrate great talent, be it in creating immersive worlds of fiction or contemplating personal identity.

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Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley both boast talented youth authors among their students and alumni. College rivalry aside, this generation of rising writers has much in common with one another. The Daily interviewed four about their creative processes and literary focuses.

Aparna Verma (Stanford ’20)

From her early imaginative scribbles to her recent, politically nuanced works, Aparna Verma has carved a path in literature that mirrors the fiery trail of self-discovery. 

Verma believes that writing is inherently political. Her fictitious heroes confront challenges that are not only personal, but also societal in nature; they are not just black and white, but are morally complex beings living in shades of gray. She draws inspiration from Toni Morrison’s exploration of power and struggle, Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s revolutionary poetry and Jasmine Moore’s literary prowess. 

Her journey began at the tender age of four when she first tasted the power of narrative under the canopy of her mother’s storytelling. During high school, Verma ambitiously embarked on the “National Novel Writing Month” challenge to write a novel within a month. Though she didn’t complete the challenge, it did inspire her to study journalism. This educational detour shaped her philosophy in writing; she learned to craft stories that demand the reader to critically engage with the text, rather than passively consume it.

After graduating from Stanford with a B.A in English, Verma self-published “The Phoenix King” in August 2021 (previously under the title “The Boy with a Fire”). The novel caught the viral winds of TikTok, making it the first South Asian adult fantasy to surpass one million views on the social media platform. Eventually, it captured the attention of traditional publishers, leading her to sign with Orbit. 

“The Phoenix King” is a testament to her depth. She manages to simultaneously engage the readers in a close reading of politics, far-religious movements and an intricate web of generational trauma amid father-daughter dynamics. Drawing from life experiences and sensitive observations of religious fundamentalism worldwide, Verma presents a narrative that is as much about the tragedy of an unbending leader as it is about the beauty of resilience.

To dive deeper into Aparna’s literary world, you can catch her at the end of January for a reading in the Stanford bookstore. 

Muskaan Darshan Shah (Berkeley ’25)

As an international student pursuing a double major at Berkeley, Muskaan Darshan Shah has a unique perspective that she channels into her writing. She has previously contributed to the Daily Californian podcast and continues to share her narratives through blogs. For Muskaan, the creative sanctuary of writing offers respite from the pressures of academia. A prodigy in her own right, she penned her debut book at 15 and followed with her sophomore manuscript, “Scottish Lavender,” during the global stillness of COVID-19.

The evolution of Shah’s writing mirrors her own movement from the comfort of home to the solitude of an overseas education. Her first book reflects the sheltered innocence of a child, while her second is a diptych of tales inspired by her travels to England and Scotland and a summer abroad in Greece. Shah invites readers to join her on a contemplative voyage of self-discovery at the junction of innocence and experience. Her prose melds literary influences like Ruskin Bond’s “Crazy Times with Uncle Ken” with the autobiographical elements of her life. Her writing style looks to classics by Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, as well as the humor of Jerome K. Jerome. 

Shah’s artistic expression extends far beyond writing. She has been painting since before she could write and has also explored dance in the past. Today, she channels her expressive energy into abstract canvas paintings, some of which have been showcased in exhibitions. The author is also a passionate advocate for societal change and contributes to a non-profit organization (@crimson.taboo on Instagram) that educates underprivileged girls about menstruation in India. 

As she looks ahead, Muskaan Darshan sees her path diverging from the medical aspirations of her early years. Muskaan’s current ambition lies at the intersection of literature and scientific research, equipped with the pen and the petri dish. 

Kathaleen Grace Mallard (Stanford ’25)

Kathaleen Grace Mallard, a double major in English and Biology at Stanford, started her writing odyssey during the COVID-19 pandemic. She turned the tides of isolation into a creative crucible, penning two novels. She made her mark on the literary world with her bold debut novel “Shadow Walkers.”  

Influenced by the intricate plotting of Sarah J Maas, the cultural depth of Chloe Gang and the dual perspectives of Mary E. Pearson, Mallard is committed to infusing her stories with diversity that mirrors the real world. Drawing from shows like “Bridgerton,” she creates narratives where diversity is not an obstacle but an integral thread of the storyline. Her debut novel, “Shadow Walkers,” carries a profound message — our upbringing is merely a starting point, and our worldview is ours to change.

When publishing her debut novel “Shadow Walkers,” Mallard encountered an ethical dilemma early in her career. She parted ways with her initial publisher upon learning of the publisher’s inappropriate conduct regarding authors with disabilities, a revelation that Mallard says she could not, in good conscience, overlook. For two weeks now, she has been in the throes of finding a literary agent who aligns with her values. The quest has been fraught with rejection and setbacks, but Mallard approaches it with a unique philosophy: a ‘no’ is not a dead end but a redirection to a more synchronous partnership.

Her creative process is a meticulous blend of inspiration and discipline. The spark for “Shadow Walkers” came when listening to Taylor Swift’s music after a challenging chemistry exam. From there, she dove into scrupulous research into the fabric of Victorian clothing, architecture and vernacular to weave an authentic and enthralling fictional world for the book.

Away from her manuscripts, Mallard is a member of the modern dance group “Traction” and indulges in creative outlets on TikTok, where she shares her love for painting and baking with a burgeoning online community.

Fawziyah Laguide (Berkeley ’23)

Despite growing up with a general push towards the STEM fields, Fawziyah Laguide found herself drawn to the fertile grounds of Berkeley’s literary academic community. With the University’s help, what started as a spirited form of rebellion has since matured into a diverse tapestry of themes, reflecting her multicultural experiences and passions.  

For Laguide, writing has become a powerful tool for wrestling with the challenges of growing up in a culture that often overshadows its own vibrancy. Her craft is a bridge between two worlds: the one she inhabits and the ancestral stories of Benin that she knows only through tales. Rejecting the notion of romanticizing her heritage, her work grounds itself in the realism of her family’s experience in the United States. Her unique perspective and dedication to authenticity make her a powerful voice for those whose stories have been overlooked or misunderstood.

Her creativity is spontaneous, igniting whenever she catches a muse, be it in the shower or during a walk. This approach has culminated in an anthology of unfinished poems quickly scribbled in between daily tasks. Sharing her work is an intimate act, reserved for her sister or partner and kept away from others until it reaches fruition. During the pandemic, she incorporated new and old poems into a self-published first poetry collection, “The Letter ‘P’: Power, Passion and Purpose.” This work is an introspective journey through Laguide’s teenage years, exploring societal dynamics, intimate relationships and self-realization.

Laguide draws inspiration from the timeless and captivating expression of Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” while equally cherishing the fresh, vibrant voice of modern creators like Simply Sayo on TikTok. Her love for literature spans from the classics to the contemporary, infusing her work with a diverse palette of inspiration.

Laguide is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her academic interests in gendered educational and political participation inform her poetry and inspiring potential forays into short stories or novels.

A previous version of this article used incorrect versions of Muskaan Darshan Shah, Kathaleen Grace Mallard and Fawziyah Laguide’s names. The Daily regrets this error.

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Second Stegner Fellow reading: How to weave humor and home into writing https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/12/second-stegner-fellow-reading-how-to-weave-humor-and-home-into-writing/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/12/second-stegner-fellow-reading-how-to-weave-humor-and-home-into-writing/#respond Mon, 13 Nov 2023 07:52:25 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1236751 Themes from the reading included urging writers to more frequently use a humorous tone and to not shy away from exploring personal themes, from childhood to home and family.

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Writing captures the breadth of human emotion, so it’s curious that we don’t often find humor taking the center stage in our literary worlds. At Wednesday’s Stegner Fellow reading, two writers reminded us that humor is a vessel that enhances the conveyance of emotions.

In an eclectic mix of poetry and fiction, the second Stegner Fellow reading of the year featured poet Luciana Arbus-Scandiffio, graduate of the Michener Center for Writers, and writer Emily Geminder, author of the fantasy fiction novel “Dead Girls and Other Stories.” 

Second-year Stegner fellow Jade Cho said that Arbus-Scandiffio’s work “takes childhood, its joys and its wounds, seriously” in her introduction of the poet. Arbus-Scandiffio, a New Jersey-native who has two lesbian moms, often writes about navigating her identity in school and about the fun of growing up in a place which people often make fun of. 

Arbus-Scandiffio feels her experience has its own “hidden wonder and joy.”

While reading excerpts from her poems “Self Talk” and “Half Brother: Letter to Eli,” Arbus-Scandiffio showcased the blend of detail and humor in her narrative. Lines filled with exaggerations and similes like “I cried like seven walruses, their crying so communal that their whiskers formed a mop,” and “my childhood was like loving the dog so much, you licked it,” initiated loud bursts of laughter. The poet had to take a break from reading while the audience caught their breath.

When asked whether she always weaved humor into her writing, Arbus-Scandiffio chuckled and said that she probably wouldn’t be writing poetry today if it didn’t make her laugh a little bit. 

“Humor and sadness really do go hand in hand,” Arbus-Scandiffio said, suggesting that humor can be a tool to help the reader experience a full range of emotions. 

While introducing Geminder, second-year fellow Ashley Hand described an episode in Geminder’s “lore” where she ran away from home in New Jersey and caught the bus down to Salt Lake City as a teenager. The audience once again chuckled in unison when the anecdote ended with the writer calling her father once she ran out of money.

Geminder’s reading for the night was taken from her currently developing novel, under the working name “The Green Aquarium.” Her work felt familiar yet fresh, taking routine settings and themes but delivering them to the audience through uniquely humorous language. 

The author presented example after example to the enraptured audience of how one might take an everyday experience and reshape it into something entirely new. Days became “patterns of light repeating”; she tempered the deeply introspective tone of her work with lighthearted narrations, changing words like alien probe and enema to “alien robe and eczema.” 

An audience member asked Geminder how much she feels the narrator in her stories might be herself. 

“In some ways I feel like all of it is me, and then in some ways I feel like none of it is me,” Geminder said. According to her, memory can often feel like fiction, leading to a situation where the self and the narrator feel deeply intertwined.

When opening the event, Nick Jenkins, co-director of the Creative Writing Program, noted the beauty of the program comes from knowing members have people that they are writing for and writing to. 

Both Geminder and Arbus-Scandiffio echoed this statement in their closing remarks; the family they’ve found amongst the Stegner fellows is a “beautiful and loving” one indeed. Sharing humor and writing with friends can be the most wonderful memories upon which to reminisce later.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Loose Canon: Cathy Park Hong’s advice to young writers of color https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/06/loose-canon-cathy-park-hongs-advice-to-young-writers-of-color/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/11/06/loose-canon-cathy-park-hongs-advice-to-young-writers-of-color/#respond Mon, 06 Nov 2023 08:27:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1235696 “Embrace discomfort and write the stories that fill your voids,” Hong told the audience at a speaker event last Thursday.

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Author Cathy Park Hong held a candid conversation with creative writing lecturer Hieu Minh Nguyen on Thursday as part of the “What Is a Public Intellectual Today?” speaker series.

“Embrace discomfort and write the stories that fill your voids,” Hong told the dozens of young writers and readers that filled the basement of McClatchy Hall.

Hong is known for various literary accomplishments, including her critically acclaimed poetry collection “Dance Dance Revolution” and Pulitzer Prize-finalist essay collection “Minor Feelings.” At Thursday’s event, Hong read from “Minor Feelings” and shared her personal experience with identity, writing and publication.

Daania Tahir ‘24 opened the event with a heartfelt introduction. 

“I’ve never had an author so eloquently, authentically and hilariously put my ‘minor’ feelings into words,” Tahir said. To Tahir, Hong’s work encapsulated the experiences of many young people of color, demonstrating the power of literary representation.

In the conversation, Hong delved into her relationship with genre. Being “very restless,” Hong approaches writing and genre in a fluid manner. She is fascinated with how narrative genres can evolve with time and experience. For example, she found that writers of color approach science fiction differently from white writers, and she attributes this difference to BIPOC writers’ unique lived-experiences with diaspora, enslavement and structural inequality. 

The conversation between Nguyen and Hong touched upon ethical considerations of writing about others and respecting personal boundaries. Hong advised writers to keep writing about human relationships, as they form the “backbone of compelling literature.” She encouraged writers to start with “the emotional truth” and flesh out the factual details later, writing first as if the subject will never read it. 

Hong read from her essay “Education” from “Minor Feelings,” which dove into many of these emotional truths. Many of the experiences are shared by Hong’s readers, leading some to deem it one of the most foundational texts on the American minority experience today. 

The essay also described the experience making art with fellow Asian-American women as grounding, despite being toxic at times. In the discussion with Nguyen, Hong called attention to an emerging “Asian-American renaissance,” a literary movement spearheaded by contemporary Asian-American writers like Divya Victor, Grace Park, C Pam Zhang and Ed Park. Hong found herself a place in this lineage under the guidance of her professor, poet Myung Mi Kim, and within the writers’ community she discovered during her undergraduate years, which she humorously described as a “four-year pressure cooker.”

What sets this “Asian-American renaissance” apart from other movements, according to Hong, is its innovative approach to form. The diaspora experience has introduced new cultural narratives by authors such as Ocean Vuong, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Jhumpa Lahiri, according to Hong. 

As the event concluded, Hong described her personal journey to publication. She submitted her work to journals that she resonated with after leafing through them on the shelves of bookstores and libraries.

Hong encouraged women writers of color to express their emotions freely. Society expects them to be constantly earnest and restrained in writing about their experiences and perspectives, but this is an unjust constraint, according to Hong. 

“Be obliviously bold. Just send your work out and keep sending your work out,” Hong said. “Don’t get discouraged by rejection.”

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Loose Canon: How advice columns were reborn online https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/loose-canon-how-advice-columns-were-reborn-online/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/31/loose-canon-how-advice-columns-were-reborn-online/#respond Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:29:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234848 In this installment of "Loose Canon," Ellen Yang explores advice columns of the past and how the genre has been reshaped to fit today's consumerist, literary habits.

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A rising star alum returned to Stanford this past week for a reunion weekend. Despite only graduating ten years ago, Christina Najjar ’13 has already left a massive legacy for herself: online, she is Tinx, the self-dubbed “older sister of TikTok.”

Najjar has over one million followers on the platform and is a well-known resource for young women on everything from dating to career advice. She often nicknames her tips as “starter packs” or “theories,” but really? They’re an advice column.

She’s not the only one to follow this model — countless influencers curate similar advice content on their accounts. On TikTok, advice has found a new genesis. While online influencers are certainly not traditional advice columnists, they fulfill a similar function: responding to audience inquiries, providing short-form recommendations and sharing incredibly intimate stories — all for free and endless public consumption. 

But why is this genre so big? Is it merely our increasing consumerist habits, or the rocketing need to form more human connections? We might begin to formulate an answer by rewinding to the year 2010. 

For two magical years on the Internet, there was a woman who was not only compassionate, but present. You could write to her about your problems and she would write back.  She’d call you “sweet pea” and then tell you about the worst possible details of her life — and also about some of the very best — in the hopes that they would help you, too. 

When Cheryl Strayed anonymously took over the advice column “Dear Sugar” for the digital publication “The Rumpus” in 2010, she placed vulnerability at the heart of her writing. Unlike many of her predecessors, who often curated strict auras (see “Dear Abby” and “Ask E. Jean”), Strayed took a deeply personal approach to her written answers.

She shared sensitive stories about addiction and painful memories of her mother. She never shied away from writing about the times she’d resented a beloved friend or struggled with her own insecurities. Alongside the allure of the traditional advice column, narrated by a poignant voice and interspersed with rich stories, this signature candor eventually drew in thousands of readers per post. 

I first discovered Strayed’s work in ENGLISH 187C: “The Evolution of the Feminist First-Person Essay, 2000-present,” a discussion-based class taught by professor Laura Goode last fall. Although I was encountering Strayed’s writing for the first time, I felt I already knew her: Strayed’s column is perhaps the earliest blueprint of an emerging contemporary genre of not just female writers, but also female influencers. 

She may not have invented the public conversation, but she did perfect its digital hook and form. Today, Sugar’s highly personal model is succeeded by (arguably slightly invasive) formats like the infamous AMA (Ask Me Anything) and Q&A. 

On TikTok, influencers like Tinx have upscaled Sugar’s intimacy. Young women rummage through LikeToKnowIt storefronts for highly recommended products by countless influencers, double-tap non-negotiable lists for the perfect Saturday and reshare video proof of Najjar’s theories on Gen Z courtship. Like Strayed in 2012, Najjar has now published a best-seller with advice drawn from her viral content.

There are other homages to the traditional column in this updated genre, most notably in the video reply. On TikTok, creators are able to reply to a comment with a video: this allows for immediate feedback between the creator, the asker and the audience. It also encourages followers to keep engaging with creators and may help boost a video’s ranking in the opaque TikTok algorithm. 

Our appetite for advice could be approaching dizzying heights — as has the tech sector’s ability to keep it growing. Today, social media algorithms are complex beasts that draw upon a wide range of personal data that goes far beyond your activity in the app: according to The Guardian, TikTok can read in-app browser searches. In its attempts to feed into user interests, the algorithm largely seeks to lead us down content rabbit holes.

While some of these recommendations may be rewarding for the consumer, constant advice consumption isn’t always a good thing. It can breed rampant insecurity and vicious curiosity, making this kind of content more addictive for the consumer and more profitable for the producer. The modern landscape for the advice-curious and human (so yes, all of us) has never been so accessible or expansive. To be online is to constantly subscribe to advice, solicited or not.

It is also an opportunity to democratically give it. Sugar herself sums up the popularity of personal content at the end of her letter to one anxious reader, writing, “I quickly realized that telling stories about my life was often the only way I knew how to communicate the complexity of my advice. Your story spilled into mine and then I spilled it back into you, with hopes that we’d all find ourselves somewhere in the big story that belongs to all of us.” 

Perhaps the advice column is — and long has been — humanity’s way of discovering and owning that big story. 

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The Daily’s recommended reads for spooky season https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/29/the-dailys-recommended-reads-for-spooky-season/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/29/the-dailys-recommended-reads-for-spooky-season/#respond Mon, 30 Oct 2023 04:56:24 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234872 Stanford Daily writers recommend some of their favorite scary books to read this spooky season.

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Recommendations from arts and life staffers if you want to cozy up with a spooky read on Halloween.

“Little Eyes” by Samanta Schweblin (recommended by Emma Wang ’24)

A prominent voice in Argentinian literary horror, Samanta Schweblin’s “Little Eyes” explores a world where people can buy pet “kentukis,” little fluffy animals with cameras that connect to a viewer. Thus, a two-way connection is established between the person who prefers to be watched and the person who prefers to watch. Springing off this creepily voyeuristic premise, Schweblin successfully weaves a dystopian world full of twists and turns, where the kentukis can be used to save a life, fall in love and even escape oppressive family dynamics.

In one chapter, a character suddenly realizes the concealed being behind her pet crow: “Then it occurred to her that this crow could peck at her private life, would see her whole body, get to know the tone of her voice, her clothes… She, on the other hand, could only ask questions.”

The reality of “Little Eyes” is not too different from today’s world where our online presence is sold to big companies, our words are used to feed large language models, our photos are spread widely and our actions are monitored. These similarities lull the reader into believing the normality of a world filled with kentukis. But, when we least expect it, Schweblin shakes us awake to face the disturbing underbelly of our current complete dissolution of privacy. 

“The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson (recommended by Leyla Yilmaz ’25)

If I had to choose one haunted house story to beat them all, it would undoubtedly be “The Haunting of Hill House.” Published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s infamous novel is one of the pioneers of the modern horror genre, incorporating elements from gothic horror and psychological thriller. It follows a group of “investigators” staying at Hill House to study paranormal activity. 

Jackson’s narrative is aware that there are multiple ways to thoroughly induce fear upon readers, be it through odd comments from the old house’s caretaker, vivid imagery of hauntings or psychological exploration of a lonely protagonist grieving the death of his mother. She leaves the readers wondering if this so-called “scientific investigation” actually revealed entities within a scary mansion or if the ghosts merely resided within the minds of the investigators all along, leaving them in a haunted state of isolation and despair. 

“The Frangipani Hotel” by Violet Kupersmith (recommended by Hana Dao ’24)

This spooky season, I’m reading Violet Kupersmith’s debut work and short story collection, “The Frangipani Hotel.” The novel weaves together a mystical yet chilling recollection of Vietnam through ghost stories. Symbolism of ghosts plays a poignant role in Kupersmith’s novel, similarly to many Vietnamese folktales where ghosts abound the cultural landscape of the country. In the novel, these ghost stories reflect a complex attempt to reconcile with the legacy of the war and the scars it left behind. Although the book is a work of fiction, Kupersmith’s compelling narrative feels like a confrontation with the real trauma that continues to haunt Vietnamese refugees. 

From Hanoi to Houston, “The Frangipani Hotel” explores Vietnamese identity within both America and Vietnam. With themes including tragedy, intergenerational dissonance and spirits, the stories give readers a new glimpse into the depths of the unconscious realm. Kupersmith further raises the unsettling question “Did we ever really escape?” as the boundaries between prosaic sanity and terrorizing imagination become blurred. This novel is a must-read for horror and non-horror fans alike. 

“The Woman in Cabin 10” by Ruth Ware (recommended by Amistad Vanegas ’27)

Ruth Ware’s haunting psychological thriller set aboard a luxury yacht is subtle in its message yet deeply unsettling. When journalist Lo Blacklock agrees to write an exclusive article on the new luxury vacation yacht “The Aurora,” things begin to take a turn and it is up to her to solve the mysteries. Playing with present and future by interrupting the events of the novel with chilling newspaper clippings from the future, Ware creates a truly frightening journey for Lo and the readers. 

“The Woman in Cabin 10” is a spectacular and unique example of psychological torture; amidst the unending waves of the sea and the conceited attitudes of billionaires aboard the yacht, you never know who to trust. With Lo out of her element on this lavish cruise, still bruised by the upheaval in her personal life, she must make a decision: is the story worth her life?

“Misery” by Stephen King (recommended by Cate Burtner, ‘25)

Stephen King is an author who hardly needs introduction. This list would be incomplete without mentioning a book by the author nicknamed the King of Horror. His novels encapsulate you until you lose yourself in his fictional universe, and “Misery” is no exception. The 1987 book follows author Paul Sheldon as he wakes up one day in an unfamiliar room, confused and in excruciating pain. There he meets professional nurse Annie Wilkes, who calls herself his “number-one fan.” She doesn’t approve of the plot of Sheldon’s latest manuscript — and she’s determined to get the ending she wants by holding him hostage.

“Misery” is a fascinating read constructed out of limited resources, hooking readers with just two characters within four walls. The rich yet simple nature speaks to how psychologically thrilling the novel is. Sheldon gives us a glimpse into the horrors of pain, paralysis and addiction, while Annie Wilkes represents how overlooked mental illness can ravage a mind and disrupt the lives of multiple people. What makes Sheldon’s perspective so convincing is the fact that he is based on King himself, and King’s own interactions with his devoted fans over his long career. However, I would be remiss not to mention the novel’s reductive portrayal of mental illness: some scenes used stereotypical characteristics of people diagnosed with mental illnesses to create an archetypal ‘crazy’ villain image and induce fear upon the readers. All that said, it is a horror novel that certainly fulfills its job of being terrifying. “Misery” by Steven King gets an easy five stars from me. Warning: it will make you want to stay up all night reading!

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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The Evolution of Short Story Criticism: Then and now https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/27/the-evolution-of-short-story-criticism-then-and-now/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/27/the-evolution-of-short-story-criticism-then-and-now/#respond Fri, 27 Oct 2023 08:11:44 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234715 Events celebrating Short Story Week start off with a roundtable discussion of how the medium has adapted over time.

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“We have professors of poetry and professors of ethnicized literature, but no professors of the short story,” Michael J. Collins said to a Stanford crowd on Tuesday. He joked that it may be because it would then be one’s job to read very little. 

On Oct. 24, Stanford University’s English, creative writing and American studies departments inaugurated Short Story Week with a gathering of eminent academics and writers from across the world, titled “Futures of Short Story Criticism: A Roundtable.” The Terrace Room at Margaret Jacks hosted excited undergraduates, graduate students and visiting academics for lunch with a side of a good story.

The event celebrated the publishing of the brand-new “Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story,” edited by Michael J. Collins and Stanford English professor Gavin Jones. Collins, who is the deputy head of American studies at King’s College London, was joined by eight other speakers from Stanford and other universities.

Like the “Companion,” Tuesday’s roundtable explored the definition of short story criticism, its evolution throughout literary history and the genre’s somewhat ambiguous relevance to readers and writers today. In his opening talk, Collins portrayed the short story as the underappreciated “gawky kid” of the literary family, hinting at the challenges it faces in an academic landscape and readership dominated by longer, “more glamorous” narratives like novels.

To lend context to the role of short stories today, Associate Professor Mark Algee-Hewitt gave an overview of the form’s history, noting that it emerged after the dominance of novels in the 19th century. Algee-Hewitt, who is a Stanford English department faculty member and the director of Stanford’s Literary Lab, underscored how the short story maintained its uniqueness while adapting over time. 

Inherently different in length from both poetry and novels, this form occupies a distinct literary space, according to speakers. Algee-Hewitt said that even today, in an era marked by rapid technological advancements, short stories continue to find their place in various media and genres. Their presence in modern formats like fanfiction, cell phone novels and screenplays challenges the notion that longer narratives are the sole literary currency of the digital age, he said.

Still, speakers explained that short stories struggle to garner attention in commercial publishing today due to their perceived lack of profitability and reader appeal. Seventh-year Ph.D. student Jessica C. Jordan spoke to one paradox of short story consumption today: short stories can be financially lucrative when distributed through magazines as a quick, enticing choice for readers, but the same stories tend to lose their appeal when bundled together in collections.

According to Jordan, this dichotomy encapsulates the short story’s unique market dynamics. Brevity captures the reader’s attention as a standalone piece, while the aggregate diminishes the allure.

McGill University assistant professor Alexander Manshel Ph.D. ’19, said that amid the shifting landscape of short story publishing, these works have found a niche in the mass educational system, particularly within high school English curricula. He identified this as another site of friction.

While short stories thrive on brevity and the ability to convey depth through minimalism, the English classroom environment often decompresses these details, leading to what Manshel termed “analytical maximalism.” In this academic setting, every element within a short story becomes a subject of scrutiny, emphasizing the stark contrast between the literary world’s perspective on short stories and their role within education.

Long Le-Khac, an assistant professor in the ethnic studies department at University of California, Berkeley, opined that short story analysis is at its best when it acknowledges and embraces the format’s unique place in the literary ecosystem. This intricate relationship between the literary form and its academic interpretation underscores the short story’s capacity for both brevity and depth.

Across the roundtable’s varied segments, speakers emphasized the enigmatic duality and endurance of the short story form.

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Finding solace in humor at the first Stegner Fellow reading of the year https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/19/finding-solace-in-humor-at-the-first-stegner-fellow-reading-of-the-year/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/19/finding-solace-in-humor-at-the-first-stegner-fellow-reading-of-the-year/#respond Fri, 20 Oct 2023 06:40:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1234042 First-year fellows Joseph Rios and Hassaan Mirza shared visions of home through poetry, packaging heavy explorations of their US hometowns with humorous deliveries.

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“It’s okay, you can make a lot of noise if you want!” said poet Joseph Rios as he encouraged the audience of the first Stegner Fellow reading of the 2023-2024 academic year. The event, which featured first-year fellows Joseph Rios and Hassaan Mirza, brought both tears and laughter to its audience.

Both writers employed humor in reflective personal pieces that paid homage to their US cities of residence — Fresno, California and Cincinnati, Ohio. Mirza is originally from Lahore, Pakistan.

The reading began with pieces by poet Rios, Fresno’s 2023 Poet Laureate and winner of the American Book Award. Rios opened with a nod to the past, reciting a poem from his book “Shadowboxing and Other Impersonations.” The poem, titled “Curse of the San Joaquin Valley,” paid homage to a past Stegner Fellow and fellow Fresno resident, Victor Martinez ‘79.

Rios explores the city as a once-lush valley now choked by smoke, concrete and carcinogens. Protagonist Josefo and his fast friend Victor Martinez marvel at “the look of the San Joaquin valley before the dams and the canals / the wildlife the marshland the tabletop mountains the seashells / still coating the Valley floor.” The poem ends when Victor Martinez dies by way of lung cancer, showing Rios’ grief for the landscape and lives that the valley has lost to industrialization and big agriculture.

He continued with a poem about his late friend “Doña” Michelle Cerros, becoming emotional when eulogizing her in a not-quite-ode that started, “This could have been an ode / to your fur coat / to your gold shoes stuck in the mud outside Salinas.”

When the writers were asked how their respective hometowns informed their pieces, Rios said that his love for his hometown motivated him to write, and that showing his work to his family, while terrifying, set him free.

But Mirza noted that he resented the question because “sometimes that question gets asked of writers from other countries so much, and that’s the first question that’s asked.” He noted that while he felt nostalgia outside of the page, when he wrote about Lahore, Pakistan, it was usually from a place of pain and anger.

Mirza instead shared poems honoring his US city of residence, where he is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati. The magazine-published poet read an unfinished short story entitled “Name, Place, Animal, Thing,” which follows “a white lady married to a Pakistani man who lives in Cincinnati, next to the Cincinnati zoo.” His story brought themes that first seemed unrelated — such as bonobo intercourse and COVID — yet by the end made up a riveting storyline. 

In Mirza’s story, the narrator slowly reveals her identity to the reader, recounting first her seven daughters with her Pakistani husband. She then unravels the relationship between her and her mother-in-law, Ammaji, who can only share fragments of conversation due to a language barrier. Made both comical and vulgar by Mirza, their dialogue showed the stilted natures of two people who cared equally about their shared family, but could never quite reconcile their different backgrounds.

But the most strained relationship in Mirza’s story concerned one of the narrator’s daughters, who returns to live at home during the pandemic and grapples with her biracial identity by lashing out at her white mom. Mirza explores this complex dynamic in an unlikely way — through images of two bonobos having intercourse at the Cincinnati zoo, in the middle of the pandemic.

The narrator, watching the bonobos because she can’t stand to go and socially distance from her husband, muses: “Were they making a mockery of us, rejoicing our long-awaited demise? Or were they totally indifferent to our plight?”

Indeed, the pandemic itself represents a time when, amongst such tragedy, many of us were left with nothing to do but face the conflicted realities of family.

Both writers agreed humor allowed them to approach these difficult topics from an easier angle. Rios, who had previously applied to the Stegner Fellowship before being accepted in this round, read his uproarious initial personal statement: “Please provide an introduction to your work, 250 words / Response / My poetry comes from a big water truck / bouncing and exhaling smoke over dry molds of wheel marks made by other trucks that pass the same way.”

The crowd — particularly the English department faculty and Stegner Fellow admin — laughed immediately. Rios continued, “This is the poetry of a man / in the passenger seat of said truck / He’s trying to light a cigarette amidst all the vibrations / and the damn truck keeps moving.” 

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Carmen Boullosa reinvents Eve in a frontier-crossing novel https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/09/carmen-boullosa-reinvents-eve-in-a-frontier-crossing-novel/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/09/carmen-boullosa-reinvents-eve-in-a-frontier-crossing-novel/#respond Mon, 09 Oct 2023 07:58:16 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1232844 The Mexican writer discussed her latest novel, “The Book of Eve,” in an event held at the Stanford Humanities Center on Friday. Boullosa invites readers to re-examine their understanding of womanhood and religious identity.

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The story of Adam and Eve is universally recognizable: Eve, “the first woman,” took a bite out of a forbidden fruit and ushered in humanity’s exile from the Garden of Eden. Mexican author Carmen Boullosa, who was raised Catholic, recently challenged that narrative. 

Boullosa shared insights on her latest novel, “The Book of Eve,” in a book talk hosted by the Stanford Humanities Center on Oct. 6. The novel reimagines the story of Genesis from Eve’s perspective with a feminist lens, Boullosa said in conversation with Lisa Surwillo, associate professor of Iberian and Latin American cultures.

Boullosa revealed that she initially had little interest in writing a book about Eve. 

“Eve, in the Book of Genesis: she speaks once, she acts once and she ruins us all,” Boullosa said. The author recounted she had always been far more attached to the “grand Mexican goddesses” of pre-Hispanic Latin America, who exhibited a sense of sensuality, ferocity and complexity that the Biblical character of Eve did not.

“As a Catholic-raised girl, instead of having this, I had Eve. Why?” Boullosa said. 

This frustration spurred Boullosa’s search for more nuanced portrayals of the “first woman” and ultimately gave rise to her novel, “El Libro de Eva” (“The Book of Eve”), which was translated from Spanish into English in May of this year. 

Boullosa’s novel presents Eve as a thoughtful, sensual and eloquent protagonist with the agency to tell her own narrative. Boullosa said this enables a re-examination our contemporary understanding of Eve’s role in the Bible: a subordinate to men and someone who brought ruin to humankind.

Boullosa read an excerpt from the novel in which Adam berates Eve for eating the “forbidden” fruit from the Tree of Knowledge: “But Adam,” one of Boullosa’s characters points out, “knowledge is a good thing […] How can you say that what Eve has given us is bad?”

Boullosa, who has published dozens of novels, poetry collections and plays in addition to “The Book of Eve,” is no stranger to works of fiction that re-examine traditional understandings of history and folklore. In a previous novel, “Texas: The Great Theft,” Boullosa revisited the American myth of how Texas was founded through a distinct Mexican perspective. 

Mexican cultural identity also plays a significant role in “The Book of Eve.” Boullosa said the novel was “deeply Mexican, deeply Catholic Mexican,” and shared that the book was partially inspired from her childhood experiences in a missionary household. Boullosa described her parents, particularly her mother, as “radical” Catholics, which shaped her early understanding of religion and womanhood.

Audience member Rebeca Oliva, a first-year Ph.D. student in Iberian and Latin American cultures, resonated with Boullosa’s relationship with Mexican religion. 

“I just feel like she captures so well the experience of being a Latina, raised Catholic, and not having images of strong women in our religion or iconography, even if our women are very strong,” Oliva said.

Boullosa, who serves as a distinguished lecturer at the City University of New York, also discussed her experience as a writer caught between Mexico and New York City. She described herself as someone who “always lives on a frontier,” whether as a Mexican living in the United States or as an accomplished woman writer in Mexico. 

For many, the talk itself crossed frontiers, bringing together an audience of different nationalities, genders and academic backgrounds.

“The talk really shows the power of literature that transcends some of the things that we think about so often at Stanford as disciplinary boundaries,” Surwillo said. “Boullosa is an author that draws together people into a common area from such different perspectives.”

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‘No room at the table’: Student authors call for diversifying publishing industry https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/05/no-room-at-the-table-student-authors-call-for-diversifying-publishing-industry/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/10/05/no-room-at-the-table-student-authors-call-for-diversifying-publishing-industry/#respond Thu, 05 Oct 2023 07:34:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1230987 Three fiction writers shared their experience with discrimination on the road to publishing and called for changes to the publishing industry.

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When Kyla Zhao ’21 was looking for agents to publish her debut novel “The Fraud Squad,” prospective agents asked if she would be willing to change her book’s setting from Singapore to America. If she wanted her novel to be more “marketable,” they said, she could make some of her Asian characters white too. Zhao refused and found her current agent, Alex Rice, instead.

“It’s apparently quite common when you’re an author of color that a publisher says, ‘We already have one book coming out this season from a Black author, we don’t need another story from a Black author,’” Zhao said. 

Though the publishing industry has long been a rigid and oversaturated environment for authors, the road to publishing can be even more challenging for women and writers of color. Traditionally, books published by female authors are also priced 45% lower on average than those by male authors. 

This creates a “zero-sum game” in publishing, said Zhao, and leaves “no room at the table to foster stories from the same community.”

“I think that also goes back to this perception of marginalized communities as a monolith, where everyone in this community has the same experiences,” she said. “There’s just not as much room for diverse experiences as one would hope.”

“The Fraud Squad” tells the story of a woman who impersonates a socialite to infiltrate high society and secure her dream job. Because Zhao is supported by Berkley Books, she can publish and promote the novel through resources like Berkley’s marketing team and cover artists for free. These resources can cost thousands of dollars for a self-published author. 

But still, as traditional publishing can push out authors from marginalized communities or limit their creative control over edits, more and more writers are now turning to self-publishing. More than 1.7 million books are self-published every year. 

Aparna Verma ’20 has, uniquely, gone both routes. Her debut novel, “The Phoenix King,” was originally self-published as “The Boy With Fire” in 2021. 

“I want to keep writing the books that I want to write,” Verma said about her initial decision to self-publish the novel. “I don’t want to ever be held back by people’s rules or expectations.”

Verma called her novel “an Indian-inspired sci-fi fantasy that blends futuristic elements with ancient Hindu mythology.” After “The Boy With Fire” gained popularity on social media platforms such as TikTok, it was picked up by a traditional publisher, Orbit Books, and republished in August. For Verma, one vital factor of her positive experience with Orbit was working with a South Asian editor.

“It was so amazing working with a South Asian editor because she just understood all the little intricacies and subtleties,” Verma said. “She didn’t ask me to change the cultural authenticity. She asked me to expand.” 

Verma called for more women and people of color to hold positions of power in the traditional publishing industry. So did Shanti Hershenson, a self-published teenage author from California.

“If I were a man, I feel as though I would be so much more successful by now and I would have so many people reading my books,” Hershenson said.

Hershenson, a sophomore in high school who lives in Carlsbad, Calif., has published 14 books and written 26. She said she has felt and seen sexism during book festivals, where she has witnessed men acting “really passive aggressive” towards young female writers. 

“I had a guy come up to me and try to tell me how my book’s title is grammatically incorrect,” she said. “It’s not. That title went past multiple people before it went out, and I know my grammar.”

Among Hershenson’s books is “Neverdying,” a dystopian series about an immortal girl who accidentally finds herself stuck on an adventure with someone on a mission to exterminate all immortals.

“There are a lot of men that read science fiction and still don’t want to read books written by women,” Hershenson said. “It is unfortunately still a very male-dominated genre.”

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Alum publishes poetry collection eulogizing Atlanta spa shootings https://stanforddaily.com/2023/09/27/senior-publishes-poetry-collection-eulogizing-atlanta-spa-shootings/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/09/27/senior-publishes-poetry-collection-eulogizing-atlanta-spa-shootings/#respond Thu, 28 Sep 2023 05:33:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1231964 In response to anti-Asian hate crimes, Chua turned to poetry as a sanctuary to slow down time and heal collective wounds. Chua's writing journey was influenced by many Stanford offerings, such as the creative writing program and the Spoken Word Collective.

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Months before Ethan Chua ’21 graduated from Stanford, tragedy struck: eight lives were lost in the Atlanta spa shootings, one of many anti-Asian hate crimes fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic. To process the collective mourning of the Asian American community, Chua turned to poetry.

“I found myself really wanting to take my time with the grief and not get caught up in the news cycle — the temporal dailyness of that cycle,” Chua said. “Poetry, as a form, really gave me the opportunity to do that work.”

Thus “Sky Ladders” — a collection of multilingual poems and translations dedicated to those who passed away — was born.

“Sky Ladders” was published by Bull City Press on Sept. 12 after it won nonprofit organization The Frost Place’s annual Chapbook Competition last year. 

Chua explained that much of the work grew from a poetry workshop taught by writer Rohan Chhetri and offered by Kundiman, an Asian American writing group. Chua read myths of the underworld from various cultures and religions in the workshop. They were particularly drawn to the concept of “katabasis” — which, from Ancient Greek, means a form of descent of some kind or trip to the underworld.

Chua said the class gave them an avenue for experimentation in poetry and a community to process their grief from the Atlanta shooting: “Reading these stories and poems about visitors to the underworld made me think about new ways to reckon with ghosts, grieving and the dead.”

Both the class and Chua’s work lean on mythology and hone in on a feeling of wanting to slow down time amid news cycles filled with racially-motivated gun violence. They captured this feeling through enjambment, a poetic technique where a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. 

Enjambment is “a strategy for introducing pauses into the dailyness of speech,” Chua said.

For Chua, it was a way to communicate “with grief that happens on different scales of time as opposed to just journalistic time.”

Together, these concepts and techniques lend a certain impact and gravity to Chua’s body of work.

“After reading ‘Sky Ladders’ I came away haunted, thinking about the poems and the world they illuminated for me,” wrote Chapbook Competition judge Rajiv Mohabir in a statement to The Daily. “Ritual and mystery, history and personal myth kept me reading and rereading the manuscript.”

Bull City Press co-director Noah Stetzer wrote that “we are excited to bring this talented new poet to the attention of our readers not only because of Chua’s skill as a writer but also for the powerful concerns of these specific poems.” 

Chua first became involved in poetry through spoken word while growing up in the Philippines. At Stanford, Chua pursued a creative writing minor with a concentration in poetry and was a member of the Spoken Word Collective. They found the organization to be their first ever home as a poet, and a support system that provided “a communal experience of performance” — something they consider crucial to poetry as an art form.

Chua worked alongside DeeSoul Carson ’21, who is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at New York University. Carson called “Sky Ladders” a “beautiful and deeply touching collection” that paints nuanced and humanizing portraits of the shooting’s victims. 

“In the work, they are still alive, they are people who loved and laughed and had flaws and could be petty and they were just as deserving of life as the rest of us,” Carson said.

Chua said they developed their style and voice during a senior year Levinthal Tutorial with poet and former Stegner Fellow Monica Sok, who also lectures in the creative writing department. They moved away from writing solely from personal experiences in a lyric register, to writing “persona poems” from more historical perspectives. Part of their process even incorporated historical research into poetry, like delving into the Stanford Library archives on the Filipino-American War. Reading the work of other writers also helped Chua imagine the possibilities of their own project.

Sok read her poetry at Chua’s launch event in New York this past August, alongside Kimberly Alidio, who wrote “Teeter,” and Emily Lee Luan, who wrote “回 / Return.” Sok said that she and Chua studied the works of Yuki Tanaka, who also won the Chapbook Contest in 2018. Some of the poems they discussed during the Levinthal are translated in Chua’s collection.

“Ethan [Chua] truly honored each individual who had been killed in this spree of anti-Asian violence,” Sok said. “Their memories are engraved in these poems, [and] Ethan’s words are a gift to both the living and the dead.”

Following the publication of “Sky Ladders,” Chua described coming to terms with relinquishing control over interpretations of their work, a conundrum they said many artists deal with.

Chua however does not want people to assume they are only writing about the victims because they are Asian: “For me, that would be missing the point, which is that it always takes work to let people into our lives, and it always takes work to understand the stakes of belonging.”

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Climate fictions to diaspora reflections: Meet the AAPI Creative Writing Prize winners https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/02/climate-fictions-to-diaspora-reflections-meet-the-aapi-creative-writing-prize-winners/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/06/02/climate-fictions-to-diaspora-reflections-meet-the-aapi-creative-writing-prize-winners/#respond Fri, 02 Jun 2023 07:28:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1229708 In celebration of the end of AAPI Heritage Month, The Daily highlights the award-winning works of Asian American/Pacific Islander students in the Creative Writing Program's annual competition. Works explored ideas ranging from speculative climate disasters to dictionary poems.

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Every year, the Creative Writing Program hosts a writing competition, calling on students to enter their work in a wide number of prize categories. With submissions due in late April, the winners were announced last Friday; notably, several prize recipients identified as Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI). In honor of May being AAPI Heritage Month, The Daily sat down with a number of these students to discuss their work. 

Nandita Naik ’23 M.S. ’24 – Bocock/Guerard Fiction, Second Prize – “When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Fossil

Set in a near-future dystopian world’s prehistoric-themed amusement park, “When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Fossil” follows a young woman’s search for a sense of agency amid the chaos caused by uncontrolled wildfires. The piece came about during Naik’s Levinthal Tutorial with Stegner Fellow mentor Georgina Beaty, when Naik said she set out to write climate fiction. 

The prize-winning fiction story is marked by the depth with which Naik describes prehistoric events and creatures. This is drawn from her broader “interest in the stories of the past,” which she attributes as being “learned from [her] heritage.” During childhood visits to her grandparents in India, Naik enjoyed reading historical and mythological comic books. 

“Mythology and history were presented with equal authority, which was really interesting,” she said. “I didn’t grow up [in India] so learning about the stories that took place and approaching everything with a sense of humbleness really affects the way that I write.”

Yu chen (Rellie) Liu ’24 – Creative Nonfiction, Second Prize – “Last Breaths

In her piece “Last Breaths,” Liu offers readers a peek into a summer spent in her hometown of Dalian, China, during the pandemic. She utilizes a braided narrative to draw connections between her experience learning how to freedive and her time volunteering in a morgue. As Liu learned how to appropriately hold her breath underwater, she also observed how funeral practices brought mourners peace after loved ones had taken their last breaths.

During this time, Liu was grappling with her grandparents’ passing. She described herself as “on the run from [her] hometown for a very long time,” but said she found solace in diving. 

“I was living in all sorts of different places — just not in my hometown — so the diving experience was really calming in a certain sense,” Liu said. “It made me realize that I wanted to face death instead of run away from it.”

Through her involvement with the morgue and attending her family members’ funerals, Liu learned about the Chinese traditions around mourning, from the feng shui of a grave’s location to the order in which relatives burn funerary incense.

While these new kernels of cultural knowledge informed her summer spent in China, Liu described her creative nonfiction piece as focused upon her “psychological growth.” Coming to terms with her grandparents’ deaths taught her that “death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it” — a Haruki Murakami quote which prefaces Liu’s self-transformative piece. 

Max Du ’24 – Creative Nonfiction, Third Prize – “All the Stars in the Air

“All the Stars in the Air” chronicles Du’s experience growing up with family pressure to engage in various athletic activities. Having immigrated to New York from mainland China, Du’s mother sought to help him assimilate into a vision of the “American Male” who excels in sports. As a means to this end, she offered her son incentives in the form of illegal fireworks.

When approaching the topic, Du aspired to write about his mother in a compassionate manner and understand the reason behind her attempts to help Du fit in with his American peers in a village that was “95% white,” according to Du.

“I use the term ‘broad brushstrokes’ [as a metaphor for] the larger perspectives of this white identity she saw onto me,” Du said about his mother. “She did really come from a place of love and compassion as a lot of moms do. She just saw a prototype of the world and she tried to get me to adapt to it.”

While Du’s mother did encourage his assimilation to her vision of an American identity, she still tried to maintain connections with the family’s Chinese cultural roots. For instance, Du’s parents would go to an Asian market for groceries rather than the local American market. 

“I think that this is a common narrative of ‘Where does my culture stay and where do I have to leave for this newer culture?’” Du said. “But I think there are ways of making the culture you’re born into and a new one collaborate together.”

Huali Kim-O’Sullivan ’23 – Planet Earth Arts Creative Writing, First Prize – “NALU

“Nalu,” roughly meaning “wave” in Hawaiian, depicts the struggles of a diasporic Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) girl who returns to Hawai‘i just to encounter a climate disaster that damages her home and community. The story draws heavily upon Kim-O’Sullivan’s personal experience as a diasporic Pacific Islander seeing the impact of climate change on her family.

From her personal understanding, many members of the Pacific Islander diaspora hope to reconnect with their homelands in the Pacific because of the deep, emotional ties many have with the land. It is “where the bones of our people are and we are made out of the bones that are made out of that land,” according to Kim-O’Sullivan.

Seeing how meaningful the physical space is to the hearts of Pacific Islanders — whether they live on their homeland or not — the threat of climate change is quite frightening. Even if the islands aren’t going underwater, many residents of the Pacific have to grapple with a future where weather and storms may become so violent that their homes are no longer safe.

“That scares me as someone who is diasporic and someone who doesn’t want to be separated from my culture or my people or my community, because even though growing up in the diaspora is fantastic, there can be a lot of loneliness and isolation — especially when you’re not able to find community in certain spaces,” Kim-O’Sullivan said.

Isabella Nguyen Tilley ’23 – Planet Earth Arts Creative Writing, Third Prize – “There Will Be Fire

Drawing from Tilley’s Vietnamese-American heritage, “There Will Be Fire” is a speculative fiction piece centered around an intergenerational Vietnamese American family that is being uprooted from Clovis, CA in the 2060s due to the impending danger of a wildfire. 

Being exiled from a place that has been home to generations of one’s family is unfortunately a familiar feeling for a number of Vietnamese-American refugees — as expressed by a body of Vietnamese American literature — but is not exclusive to a single cultural identity, according to Tilley. 

“There’s a nostalgia and longing [in the story], which is relatable to a lot of other diasporic communities,” Tilley said.

Many of the story’s character dynamics and identities came to Tilley “intuitively.” As Tilley was most familiar with the feeling of having a Vietnamese mother, the family of Vietnamese Americans in their story featured only women. 

Lora Supandi ’23 M.A. ’23 – Urmy/Hardy Poetry, First Prize – “Bandung Funeral”

In their poem “Bandung Funeral,” Supandi centers on residents of Bandung, Indonesia during a period of time preceding an infant’s funeral. 

Supandi is interested in how historical events shape mortality and what hope looks like during times of imperialism and genocide. A question their work considers is, “How are we pierced by cultural memory – the ephemeral, its decay, morphed by grief, history and generational wounds?”

Supandi seeks to understand the ways by which their Indonesian American community can be freed from oppression within the U.S. They utilize bilingual poetry as a vehicle to connect with their Hakka Indonesian heritage and history. This writing medium is also a way to explore core themes like love, heartache and devotion — which “pull us back to one another” — in the face of such tragedy, according to Supandi. 

“In a society where punishments often enact a sentencing, poetry can be a space to seek possibilities outside of these harmful systems,” Supandi wrote. “In my writing, I want to break away from closure.”

Kate Li ’25 – Urmy/Hardy Poetry, Second Prize – “As Relic, As Remnant

The trend of residential displacement in hometown Chicago, Ill. inspired Li to write “As Relic, As Remnant.” The poet has come to see the process of gentrification as something “modern society is willing to do a lot of in order to prove itself as ‘contemporary’ or ‘striving for change.’” 

Displacing traditional values or customs in the name of growth is an idea expressed in Li’s work — namely, through the themes of cultural artifacts, bodily imagery and historical processes. Communities that are displaced in urbanization and modernization changes often don’t get their voices heard. Thus, Li sees poetry as “a practice that reframes these acts not from the side of people with the most agency, but instead from the side of people who become by-products of these processes.”

Having such a marginalizing experience is a pattern that Li has noticed among the Asian American community. 

“Our narratives are frequently rewritten by whatever society and social practices we’re inducted into,” Li said. “Coming from this Asian background, it’s become really important to reframe your history as one that belongs to you and not the people whose frameworks you operate within. This is a practice that I build upon and is especially critical for the formation of this poem.”

Malia Maxwell ’23 – Urmy/Hardy Poetry, Third Prize – “Pō”

“Pō,” or “Night,” (roughly translated from Hawaiian) is a dictionary poem, which delves into the poetic and associative definitions of a particular word, beyond its conventional meaning. As Maxwell began learning the Hawaiian language, she was inspired to explore the meaning of certain Hawaiian words. 

According to Maxwell, Hawaiian can be a metaphorical language since the words have many different meanings. As such, Hawaiian words don’t always map onto English terms very well. Some are used as a noun, verb and adjective. In “Pō,” Maxwell explores Hawaiian word use as an aspect of the culture.

“I moved through noun meanings of the word, verb meanings of the word and adjective meanings of the word using these different sentences,” Maxwell said. “They don’t necessarily all connect with one another directly, but I think overall, they kind of build up to a certain something.”

Some words in Hawaiian have more meaning and emotion behind them than can be conveyed by their direct English translation. For instance, “aloha ‘āina” and “mālama ‘āina” are used to speak of one’s “love for the land,” and are associated with the “love, reverence and [protectiveness]” that Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) may feel toward their homeland. Maxwell aspired to make readers feel this profound sentiment.

Speaking about the land, she said she wanted to capture “its power as something that demands respect from the reader.”

A previous version of this article included incorrect spellings of several Hawaiian words. The Daily regrets these errors.

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The Daily’s bookworm bulletin: What to read this AAPI Heritage Month https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/31/the-dailys-bookworm-bulletin-what-to-read-this-aapi-heritage-month/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/31/the-dailys-bookworm-bulletin-what-to-read-this-aapi-heritage-month/#respond Thu, 01 Jun 2023 06:47:54 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1229596 From romantic comedy novels to a Pulitzer-winning memoir, The Daily staff recommends their favorite stories about Asian American Pacific Islander identity.

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May is National Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, during which we honor the history and culture of AAPI communities around the world. To uplift AAPI voices, The Daily asked our writers for their recommendations on books that tell AAPI stories.

Stay True” by Hua Hsu (Recommended by Dana Chiueh ’23)

New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu’s debut memoir is a must-read, not only because it took home this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or Autobiography, but also for its wrenching portrayal of Asian-American friendship spanning different immigration generations. Hsu grew up between California and Taipei like many people I know, while his best friend Ken is a fourth-generation Japanese-American who doesn’t take off his shoes in the house. The memoir revolves around the two’s complex friendship and search for belonging in America.

Above all, “Stay True” is a gentle meditation on adolescence and grief, and it immerses readers in a context largely overlooked by historical memory. Set in Berkeley in the 1990s, the book is full of quiet surprises that ring true without reliance on tropes; it’s doubly thrilling for those of us with a connection to the Bay Area. Unlike many of its contemporaries, “Stay True” excels in its portrayal of a diversity of Asian American experience: both the loneliness one feels after perceiving differences between fellow Asian Americans, and the beauty in learning from those differences.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” by Nam-ju Cho (Recommended by Hana Dao ’24)

The release of this feminist novel, written as a male psychiatrist’s case study of a housewife, is key to understanding the feminist movement in South Korea. After being forced to give up her job to take care of her newborn daughter, she experiences depression and, quite literally, loses her sense of self. She is driven into madness, impersonating various other women in her life. This psychosis allows us to see the pervasiveness and severity of gender inequality through multiple lenses.

When I started reading the book, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I was surprised to find that I finished it within two days. Cho’s debut international bestseller is a profound glimpse into the everyday experiences of misogyny and sexism that Korean women face. This book holds such rich insight into the modern patriarchy and left me reflecting deeply on what it means to be a daughter, a sister or a mother when confronted with gender limits from both culture and tradition.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong (Recommended by Leyla Yilmaz ’25  and Kirsten Mettler ’23)

“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” is a novel in the form of letters from a 28-year-old Vietnamese American man (referred to as “Little Dog”) to his illiterate mother, who fled Vietnam during the war in the 1960s. Born into two different worlds, Little Dog and his mother, Rose, had two very distinct lives; it is hardly possible for one to understand the other’s troubles completely.

This narrative is intertwined with Little Dog’s teenage love affair with Trevor, whom he met working at a tobacco farm. Trevor is the son of the farm’s owner, and he represents a race and class entirely distinct from Little Dog’s. Through their relationship, Little Dog comes to understand his sexuality and reconsider his relationship to white America. Becoming a writer, departing from his social class and connecting more with the privileges of white America, the narrator grieves over the invisible wall between him and his mother. Their lives were so inherently connected, yet also separated by war, culture, class and language.

Vuong tackles the topics of immigration, family, sexuality and substance abuse with a raw honesty that maintains their seriousness without becoming didactic or melodramatic. Vuong’s novel is clearly written by a poet. Stunning imagery, smooth flow, and staggering emotional depth make the book difficult to put down.

Oculus” by Sally Wen Mao (Recommended by Dana Chiueh ’23)

At the end of last September, I checked out Sally Wen Mao’s Oculus from the Los Angeles Public Library, took it to a jjimjilbang and proceeded to devour it. For lovers of Asian American poetry, reading “Oculus” feels like both a homecoming and a kind of privilege. I studied this collection for a whole quarter for my Levinthal tutorial and am still finding gems to excavate.

Honestly, I can’t believe I hadn’t read it sooner. Mao roams with an astonishing deftness across ideas such as technofeminism, the Asian woman as a cyborg and the politics of Chinese labor across borders. She draws heavily from both Asian American chronologies and contemporary Chinese issues.

It’s Mao’s commitment to raising the stakes of American racial politics through the lens of migration history that I find so compelling. Whether delving into the stereotyping of Anna May Wong — the first Asian American movie star — or workers’ riots at Foxconn, Mao’s poems arrive over and over again through rich diction and rhythm throughout the collection. Her upcoming release in August, “A Kingdom of Surfaces,” deserves our attention for sure.

Portrait of a Thief” by Grace D. Li (Recommended by Carolyn Stein ’24)

I picked up “Portrait of a Thief” simply because I was at a bookstore and my friend placed the book in my hands. “Trust me,” she said, “You’re going to love this one.” I didn’t bother reading the plot summary and decided to trust her. And wow, am I glad I listened to her.

This book masterfully marries themes of decolonization, diaspora and identity with the personal stories of five Chinese-American college students. The story follows these college students as they decide to “take back” ancient Chinese art pieces that were looted to Western museums during colonial conquests. The art heist leaves you feeling exhilarated, but the personal stories of the protagonists are what ultimately leave you wanting more.

Last Tang Standing” by Lauren Ho (Recommended by Sarayu Pai ’23)

“Last Tang Standing” by Lauren Ho undeniably nabs a spot in my list of favorite books, for its engaging storyline and hilarious characters. After reading the “Crazy Rich Asian” series, I was searching for a novel that touched on similar themes of Asian family issues in a way that defies racial stereotypes. “Last Tang Standing” did not disappoint.

In a style that emulates “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (in which the protagonist keeps a diary on the things she wishes for in her life), Ho writes of the romantic misadventures of career-driven thirty-something Andrea Tang. When Tang and an infuriating love interest are both vying for the partner position at her firm, drama ensues. Tang learns of the power of love and being true to herself — themes that I adored. The novel is a heartfelt riot.

Frankly in Love” by David Yoon (Recommended by Anthony Martinez Rosales ’26)

“Frankly In Love” is a classic romantic comedy novel about a Korean young man who tries to please his parents by fake-dating a Korean girl, only to fall in love with her. Frank Li appeases his strict parents, helps out with the family-owned grocery store and maintains a secret relationship with a white girl — all in the middle of his college application season.

After picking up this book for my Battle of the Books competition during high school, I fell in love with its crisp humor. The novel navigates themes of family standards and love, while also weaving topics in relation to racism and privilege. I recommend the book to anyone wanting a fun read and a cute romantic comedy.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Finding authenticity and community in writing at the final Stegner Fellow reading https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/18/finding-authenticity-and-community-in-writing-at-the-final-stegner-fellow-reading/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/18/finding-authenticity-and-community-in-writing-at-the-final-stegner-fellow-reading/#respond Thu, 18 May 2023 23:53:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1228256 The final Stegner Fellow reading showcased the power of mundane moments. Writers Rabia Saeed and Christell Victoria Roach emphasized the impact of human connections on their work.

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Writing is made whole through conversation. But we often imagine the solitary writer chipping away at their masterpiece in an isolated corner of the world. At Wednesday’s Stegner Fellow reading, two writers reminded us that the finest writing is always inspired by human connections—from everyday conversations to deep ancestral histories.

The final Stegner Fellow reading of the year featured writers Rabia Saeed and Christell Victoria Roach. Since last November, four other readings have been held for the public, allowing first-year Stegner Fellows to share poetry and prose.

Saeed’s prose holds a “particular honesty,” said Stegner Fellow Rose Himber Howse as she introduced her peer. This authenticity was apparent in Saeed’s excerpt from her short story “Cadet College, Kohat.” 

The story follows a female narrator from Kohat, Pakistan who is dating a boy named Hamza, who is “nice and decent” with a shyness that the narrator finds surprisingly empowering. As she contemplates her college life and relationships, she realizes the power she holds as a woman and a better English speaker.

Saeed’s writing is conversational and light, yet she is able to press upon difficult topics underneath the surface of her character’s life. At times, her reading was comedic; the boldness of a line, “I felt like I was made of breasts,” drew laughs from the audience. Her prose also impresses with a sense of beautiful vastness. After Hamza drops the narrator off at a girl’s hostel, she looks up to find that “the stars were so full in the sky that I began to look for the sky in the sky.”

When asked how she navigates the line between reality and fiction, Saeed explained that she begins with the familiar, writing what she knows until she reaches what she doesn’t. Drawing from her own life experiences in Kohat, she writes stories that are gripping and intimate.

Roach shared several poems that celebrated the consciousness of Black femininity, as well as her relationships with family and history. She began with an excerpt from a poem entitled “Mama Taught Me the Blues,” which described women as true founders of the Blues genre. The reading was filled with musicality—both in its content and sound.  As Roach described how her mother “sang” her “into being,” every line thrummed with joy. She slowed or sped up her voice at times, giving the poem a magnetic rhythm.

Afterwards, Roach shared two more poems: “Blueswoman” and “Call and Response.” Roach has a talent for skillfully braiding her personal history with larger social movements. She affectionately dubbed herself an “archive baby”; she often dives into research first (usually in archives) before finding a personal connection that sparks her next poem.

I was struck by both writers’ humor and authentic answers to questions from the audience. When the two were asked about their writing processes, Saeed passed the mic to Roach and said, “I have to take a moment to make my laziness sound artistic.”

She then described how she writes daily, but has two-week periods of finding “true joy” and focus in her work followed by two-week periods of questioning her work.

Both writers emphasized the importance of living in conversation to effective writing. Roach’s writing inspiration comes like “lightning strikes,” which are spurred by unrelated activities such as reading the news. Saeed, on the other hand, is motivated to write after genuine chats with friends. 

Writing speaks when it is connected to the community, a belief shared by both fellows. The Stegner Fellow readings demystify the writing process, reminding us to draw inspiration from everyday communities and our collective humanity.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Lately in Literature: Everyday heroes and untold truths in ‘Small Things Like These’ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/16/lately-in-literature-everyday-heroes-and-untold-truths-in-small-things-like-these/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/16/lately-in-literature-everyday-heroes-and-untold-truths-in-small-things-like-these/#respond Wed, 17 May 2023 05:08:12 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1227969 Claire Keegan's latest novella is a clever, grave analysis of institutionalized corruption through the lens of a classically Christian hero, writes Leyla Yilmaz.

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This week’s novel is to transport you away from the alarmingly warm weather into a gothic Irish town during winter. The short page-turner is a great pick for history nerds and those looking for a chillingly mysterious plot.

Claire Keegan’s long-awaited novella, “Small Things Like These,” centers on a coal merchant, Bill Furlong, his wife and their five daughters; the seven live in a small, isolated Irish town in 1985.

Nearing Christmas, the Furlong family seem to be having a cheery time, with Bill complimenting his daughter’s path in the world and questioning what more he could ask for. But, amidst her worldbuilding of a picturesque town, Keegan also builds up tension. It becomes clear early on that Bill is actually unsatisfied with his monotonous job and finds trouble seeking happiness like the other men in the town do.

“Sundays could feel very threadbare, and raw. Why could he not relax and enjoy them like other men who took a pint or two after Mass before falling asleep at the fire with the newspaper, having eaten a plate of dinner?” questions Bill.

He starts voicing his worries to his wife, reminisces about his late mother’s hardships and falls into a lonely existential void to which others in town, carrying the holiday cheer, cannot relate. Through Furlong’s anguished state, Keegan also makes the readers uneasy and conveys that perhaps this town is just as troubled as Furlong himself.

Bill’s mother was only a teenager when she gave birth, working as a live-in maid. Her employer, an elderly woman, cared deeply about the status of the pregnant-yet-unwed girl. In his spiral, Bill often questions how life would have been if she hadn’t cared. Would he still have gotten married into a middle-class family and had five girls whom he could educate?

In many ways, Bill is similar to the infamous Dickens hero, Pip, who starts as an impoverished blacksmith’s apprentice and later enters the upper class. Also like Pip, Bill does not settle blindly to his privilege.

Often, he sees women working in a secluded convent, a frequent subject of rumors for the townspeople. The more he hears their murmurs, he cannot help but wonder if people similarly gossipped behind his mother’s back. He ponders what would have become of himself if his mother, too, had ended up in the convent. Observing the women go in and out of the convent, silent and quick, he recognizes wealth and reputation are merely temporary.

There is sharp irony in the fact that a Catholic convent — long run by nuns who exploit young girls for labor — is the cause of Bill’s Christmastime nightmares. This choice not only makes the novel a comment on social state, but also institutionalized corruption. Keegan exposes how a seemingly innocent town turned a blind eye on the corruption of the Catholic Church, as they never questioned an institution they believed to be operating through the values of Christian charity.

“Where does thinking get us? […] All thinking does is bring you down,” writes Keegan, suggesting that despite religious teachings of welfare and service, people accept injustices that have been systemized. These issues go unaddressed if they require more than money and prayers to change.

What’s brilliant about Keegan’s narrative is that in just over 100 pages, her descriptive language unearths an ugliness to the town that is hard to ignore, yet has persevered over years.

“It was a December of crows,” she writes, slowly darkening the atmosphere as she hints at the dark clouds looming over a quaint town.

She subtly reveals the dismal mise en scene of the town, just as restless as the convent and the girls working in it, who are barely allowed to speak in the outside world. Through the undeniable bleakness of the town, Keegan alludes to the undeniable existence of corruption within the Catholic Church that has not only been ignored by the characters of her book but sanctioned by the Irish government for years.

The convent in “Small Things Like These” is just one example of a Magdalene laundry, institutions where sex workers, unwed women or young girls not accepted by their parents were forced to work and keep silent. Bill’s decisions in the book are an act of revolt against these institutions, which persisted in Ireland until 1996.

Painting Bill as a conventional Christian hero, an ordinary man who sets out to do a greater good, also seems to be a clever narrative decision. Unlike pre-Christian fictional heroes — who were born of myths and stood out due to their physical superiority or God-like qualities — heroes that came later, just like Bill, were representative of normal people who only carried the deific responsibilities of heroes past, but none of their godly qualities.

By creating a Christian hero who mirrors ordinary people, Keegan ultimately shapes a character whose own values are defined by the faith that has been systematically exploited for years. Bill’s journey exposes how systems that have gained people’s trust years ago are not void of corruption and provides a chilling plot so far from the expected holiday cheer.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions, and critiques.

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Lately in Literature: Ronan Hession’s ‘Panenka’ is a Week 5 pick-me-up novella https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/01/lately-in-literature-ronan-hessions-panenka-is-a-week-5-pick-me-up-novella/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/01/lately-in-literature-ronan-hessions-panenka-is-a-week-5-pick-me-up-novella/#respond Tue, 02 May 2023 05:04:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1226619 The novella, telling the story of an athlete being haunted by a past decision, is a beautiful reminder of the importance of self-forgiveness, writes Yilmaz.

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Welcome to “Lately in Literature with Leyla.” I will be reviewing new book releases to keep you updated on some of the best contemporary fiction. Join me to pick up your next read!

Sometimes, when it’s late and you’ve got nothing better to do, you recount an embarrassing moment or a stupid decision and it haunts you for the rest of the night. For the hero in “Panenka” — the latest novel from Irish musician and author Ronan Hession — a simple decision haunts him for all of his life. In dwelling upon a past mistake, he has a fallout with his family, becomes a stranger to his own town and loses any trace of life satisfaction.

As a young football player in Seneca FC and a new dad, Joseph’s life seems cheery. Sure, he isn’t playing for the best team and he never gets to take the penalty kick amid the more seasoned senior players, but there’s not much else to upset him. 

One fateful day, he does get to take the penalty — only to shoot the ball right into the arms of the goalkeeper, who doesn’t even have to bother to move. From then on, Seneca never wins again. The town carries a gloomy mood. And Joseph, who is given the nickname Panenka, becomes the disappointment of the same townspeople who used to treat his team with a cozy sense of hometown adoration.

“It’s overwhelming. When you’re consumed with the effort of processing internal pain, it becomes impossible to do anything else,” expresses Panenka. The man finds that he no longer enjoys the place he used to call home. He chooses to keep to himself, shoveling the pain and regret away until it all becomes too much to bottle up.

The novel explores Panenka’s life years after his fateful miss, living with his daughter, Marie-Thérèse, and grandson, Arthur. As Marie-Thérèse tries to reconcile the relationship with her reclused father, Panenka tries to bond with his grandson. All the while, he is enduring an unnamed illness that causes him excruciating headaches.

Panenka stands out because it makes a protagonist from an old and somewhat grumpy man. It tells everyday stories of ordinary households. But it also shows the readers what lies under the surface of this unlikely hero’s ordinary life. The unlikeable character and simple plotlines serve as reminders for self-appreciation and forgiveness. 

“I prefer to be a stranger among strangers. It gives me the superpower of invisibility,” says Panenka, noting how his remorse after the penalty shot caused years of internal punishment, giving way to a self-loathing so deep that he desires to shun himself from society. However, seeing his daughter’s efforts to bond and noting his declining health, Panenka finally realizes that he can no longer “retreat like a woodland animal.” 

It’s not a dreary atmosphere that Hession aims to convey through this short novel. In contrast, his characters stand out for their love for one another; the book explores the second chances that are enabled by that powerful sensation. 

Just as the people of Seneca stay loyal to a football club that hasn’t won any titles in decades, Hession’s characters carry an imperishable love for one another. Whether it’s Marie-Thérèse’s relationship with her best friend or Panenka’s with his grandson, the novel showcases the love all of its characters are capable of having for someone else, even if they don’t have it for themselves yet.

Later on in the novel, Panenka meets a woman named Esther, who likes gazing around the town, admiring each of its corners. “I need it. I like absorbing the noise and the light and the faces. I photosynthesize it all. It restores my energy after the day. Don’t you like to connect with people?” she questions.

Although both Esther and Panenka are walking the same street, their points of view are entirely different. Eventually, with her presence, Panenka allows himself to notice the beauty he withheld from his mind for decades and practice love and adoration again.

If you need a pick-me-up for Week 5, definitely give Panenka a chance as the novel is a beautiful reminder of the importance of self-forgiveness. It’ll also encourage you to take the scenic route to class and perhaps kick a few footballs in the sun-kissed fields.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Lately in literature: How to turn shark stories into existential horror https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/17/lately-in-literature-how-to-turn-shark-stories-into-existential-horror-a-glimpse-into-julia-armfields-debut-novel/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/17/lately-in-literature-how-to-turn-shark-stories-into-existential-horror-a-glimpse-into-julia-armfields-debut-novel/#respond Tue, 18 Apr 2023 04:02:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1225517 Armfield’s debut novel takes readers on a haunting journey through the depths of the ocean and the depths of the human psyche. Through her review, Yilmaz convinces readers why this novel lies amongst her favorites.

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“The Seas” by Samantha Hunt is one of my all-time favorite books. It tells the story of a girl who’s convinced she is a mermaid, and her lover, who’s a veteran of the Iraq War. Spoiler alert: at the end the girl turns into a puddle of water, leaving both the readers and her lover in bewilderment. 

Since finishing “The Seas,” I thought I’d never find another book that could match its level of eccentricism. That changed when I came upon Julia Armfield’s “Our Wives Under the Sea.”

Armfield’s debut novel centers around a couple — Miri and Leah — as they navigate a relationship haunted by chronic mental health struggles. Leah, a marine biologist, has to endure months under the deep sea when one of her fieldwork missions goes awry. The narrative switches between the perspectives of Leah, chronicling her journey in the sunken submarine, and Miri, who struggles to reconnect with Leah after she has resurfaced from her months-long entrapment under the sea. 

Miri finds that the trip has turned her wife into an entirely different person — or maybe even something other than human. Leah is now so anxiety-ridden that she spends most of her time at home in a filled bathtub and frequently drinks salty water, much like the fish she saw on her horror story-like mission.

Throughout the book, Armfield explores the horror genre through references to “Jaws,” retellings of ghost stories and eerie descriptive language that dives into gore. But it’s not the imagery of Leah’s bleeding gums that conveys a crippling sense of fear to the audience. Rather, it’s an existential horror that envelops every single page of this short novel. 

Beyond the depiction of shark tales and tense couples therapy sessions, the sense of unease comes from the forced realization that human strength and knowledge is quite inconsequential.

Each chapter of the novel is titled after another zone of the sea. Readers go further below the mighty waters with every turn of a page, eventually reaching zones that even light has not reached. They end up in a dark abyss, facing all that is yet unknown to man.

Like the ocean, our consciousness and “sunken thoughts,” as Miri calls them, are not fully understood. Readers soon realize that, yes, we are clueless about the anatomy of cosmic jellyfish, but also about God, relationships, love and how we are supposed to deal with all the unknown. 

Armfield uses Leah’s trancelike descriptions of the deep sea to induce more anxiety in the reader. Long a marine biology nerd, Leah is completely mesmerized by the adaptations of deep sea creatures that allow them to withstand conditions no human could imagine. Eventually, this becomes another reminder of humans’ powerlessness against the natural world.

“I used to think it was vital to know things, to feel safe in the learning and recounting of facts. I used to think it was possible to know enough to escape from the panic of not knowing, but I realise now that you can never learn enough to protect yourself, not really,” says Leah. Looking at her colleagues, she realizes that neither their engineering skills nor their spiritual faith is enough to save them. 

Her conclusion: “to know the ocean… is to recognise the teeth it keeps half-hidden.”

Even Miri proves to be powerless against the mightiest third character of the novel, the sea. In the end, her efforts to find out what happened to her lover are inadequate. The idea of her wife becomes just another sunken thought, too mysterious to unpeel.

In middle school, I wrote a short story about a kid who hit his head on some rocks near the seashore. His body was devoured by giant waves and for years after his death, the townspeople cursed the sea for taking him. 

I wasn’t trying to make a metaphor on the inadequacy of human knowledge against nature or convey an existential dread, and my literature teacher was quite disappointed by the dark tale. But having read “Our Wives Under the Sea,” I realize how great a medium the sea was to convey a joint struggle we all face upon the realization of our limits. 

We, too, are made of mostly water. It is perhaps hardest to accept that we are most clueless when it comes to the nature of our very own being.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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How ‘8 Mile’ inspired Hieu Minh Nguyen to write poems on queerness https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/13/how-8-mile-inspired-hieu-minh-nguyen-to-write-poems-on-queerness/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/13/how-8-mile-inspired-hieu-minh-nguyen-to-write-poems-on-queerness/#respond Fri, 14 Apr 2023 04:59:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1225388 Poet Hieu Minh Nguyen delivered a reading and Q&A as part of the Poetry-in-Conversation interview series on Wednesday.

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Stanford’s Creative Writing program hosted poet Hieu Minh Nguyen in the Poetry-in-Conversation interview series on Wednesday. Speaking with a small, avid audience at Mariposa House, the former Stegner Fellow discussed his most recent poetry collection, “Not Here,” and how he writes about his identity.

Nguyen’s works were heavily influenced by his gay and Vietnamese American identities. “Not Here” conveys his experiences struggling to come to terms with whiteness, trauma and belonging. 

However, Nguyen’s career as a poet began with a seemingly unrelated piece of 2000’s pop culture: the movie “8 Mile,” which was released during his teens. A semi-autobiographical film of the rapper Eminem’s life, the popularity of “8 Mile” led to rap battles on Nguyen’s school bus. Nguyen recalled having an “overwhelming anxiety” that one day his classmates would expect him to join in.

“And so I’d go home, and I would write and memorize poems in anticipation of the day I was expected to join the rap battle,” Nguyen said. Although he didn’t end up being picked on, he learned to use poetry to participate in the world for the first time. 

Many of his poems today revolve around his mother and his complex relationship with her, as she gradually comes to terms with his queerness. In the poem titled “Nguyen,” his mother’s positive reaction to his coming-out and having a white male partner completely throws him off. “What do you do with tenderness when all you expect is fury?,” Nguyen contemplates. Eventually, he comes to understand that her “forgiveness” of his queerness stems from her relief that his partner “looks like he will keep you [Nguyen] safe.”

Nguyen opened the interview with a reading of the first poem in the “Not Here” collection, “Lesson”: “Asian men ain’t shit, her voice a loose cork / Đàn ông của mìn không tốt & I think about my father […] Leave. All you do is leave.” This unstable nature of home and family follows Nguyen’s poems from childhood to adulthood. 

Nguyen’s poems somberly confront the experiences of growing up and grappling with one’s self-image. This intimate vulnerability is most apparent in the poem “Heavy.” “I want to return to my old body / The body I also hated but hate less / given knowledge,” read Nguyen. The poet presents emotions in their rawest forms, vividly transporting the reader to moments of his lived experiences.

Nguyen believes poetry can provide readers with access to a wider range of communities. The permanent nature of poetry, however, means that sometimes certain works are still out there even if they no longer represent who the poet is. Despite having poems that he regrets, Nguyen continues to push forward. 

“There are always new poems to write, new regrets to be made,” Nguyen told the audience. 

Although poetry can be messy and full of flaws, Nguyen is hopeful that it can be a powerful tool for writers to unveil more authentic versions of themselves.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Q&A: Stanford’s emerging poets on the arts of language and teaching https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/06/qa-stanfords-emerging-poets-on-the-arts-of-language-and-teaching/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/06/qa-stanfords-emerging-poets-on-the-arts-of-language-and-teaching/#respond Fri, 07 Apr 2023 03:14:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1224959 Richie Hofmann, Michael Shewmaker and Brittany Perham sit down with The Daily to discuss teaching and the Stegner Fellowship.

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The Stanford Daily sat down with three recipients of Wallace Stegner Fellowship and current Jones lecturers in Creative Writing to discuss their poetry collections, experience and insights gained at Stanford. These interviews have been slightly edited for clarity.

Richie Hofmann

Hofmann is the author of poetry collections “Second Empire” and “A Hundred Lovers.” At Stanford, he is currently teaching ENGLISH 92L, which is focused on analyzing and writing poems of love and sexuality.

The Stanford Daily [TSD]: You wrote about love and attention in your intimate poetry collection “A Hundred Lovers.” How has your narrator’s voice changed since your first collection, “Second Empire”? Was it driven by your internal changes or your aspiration for a new form and more naturalistic depiction of love?

Richie Hofmann [RH]: I would say that it’s a combination of both. A lot of the changes in my poetry and how the speaker was situated in these poems came from changes in my own life — from growing up, being haunted by different fears and fueled by different passions. At the same time, I have an interest to change artistically — to challenge myself and to expand my notions of what the voice in poetry could accomplish.

TSD: At Stanford, you teach the course ENGLISH 92L: Poems of Love and Sexuality, where you discuss shifting attitudes toward sex and gender. Can you tell me a little more about the curriculum? 

RH: It was really interesting to me to think about how stable the subject of poems has been since ancient times. Most poets write about love, death and how we can have meaningful lives in the short time that we are given, which seems to be present in poetry across many different cultures and languages. In class we study poems by Sappho, Shakespeare and contemporary and 20th-century poets and how their attitudes are shifting slightly about what gender is, what marriage is and how openly love can be expressed. Students will write their poems and contribute to that very long, ancient conversation about the relationship between art and love.

TSD: How has being a recipient of the Wallace Stegner Fellowship influenced your literary path?

RH: The Stegner Fellowship was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me as a writer. I was at the point where I had finished my writing education in a formal sense. I was not sure exactly where to turn, and the Stegner Fellowship came just at the right time. I received a call from Eavan Boland, who became my mentor and one of the most profound and significant teachers in my life. She was really hard on me and made me think more deeply about my poems, about my craft and about what it meant to be a poet. 

Michael Shewmaker

Shewmaker, known for his collection of poems “Penumbra,” offers an innovative reimagining of the religious text “The Book of Job” in his new collection, “Leviathan.” Michael Shewmaker is the recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Stanford University, where he now teaches several undergraduate poetry classes.

TSD: I really enjoyed the musicality of your poem “Pastor,” namely the alliteration of sounds: “The pale horse is snoring / in its stall. Strike a match and light the straw.” Your poems are pleasant not only to the heart but also to the ear; how do you achieve this effect? 

Michael Shewmaker [MS]: Sometimes I don’t even know. It is just a matter of reading my poems obsessively over and over again to myself until I love how they sound. It’s also a matter of having schooled on the meter in prosody, in rhyme — in the different ways we can make a sound in a language. I rarely think about the sound in the initial composition, but do it obsessively in revision.

I think the greatest artist understands the limitations and benefits of their mediums. One great benefit writers have is that you can click the “save” button and then open another document. There is never a risk of damaging what you’ve already written, so you can always play and see if you can come up with something better. But when you think about other artists, that’s not always the case. Visual painters can do something to cover up a mistake, but eventually, the paint gets too thick.

TSD: What do you think the voice of your new poem “Leviathan” is like? 

MS: I hope it’s more personal compared to “Penumbra”, even though it’s spoken through a character. Also, since it is a much longer work, I hope that you live with the characters longer. It’s like the difference between reading a really good poem and reading a really good novel; the novel asks you to live with it a lot longer than the other. So I think about my second book in that way: that sort of echo in livability with the characters.

TSD: How has the Stanford community shaped your work?

MS: The Stegner Fellowship was a huge thing in my life because, for any artist, the greatest thing you can have is the time to focus on your craft. I was surrounded by wonderful people and writers whom I really admire. All these things affected my work: I made friendships that have lasted until today, and some of the very first readers of my poems are from the fellowship. I can’t say enough to stress how important it was for me at that time in my life and since then. 

When I think about the Stanford community, my colleagues and students being extremely affirming and hopeful and coming from so many different backgrounds, I think it’s like a miraculous constellation that is not ever likely to happen again. 

Brittany Perham

Perham has written the poetry collection “The Curiosities” and the collaborative chapbook “The Night Could Go in Either Direction.” Her latest work, “Double Portrait,” earned the 2016 Barnard Women Poets Prize. Perham teaches world poetry and composition at Stanford, and she led a Poet’s House lecture series last year.

TSD: I really love the three-time repetition of the phrase “Today is very small” in your poem “DP.agp.11.” What figurative meaning does it have?

Brittany Perham [BP]: That poem has the form of a pantoum, which has very strict rules of repetition. This poem comes from the book “Double Portrait,” and every poem in the book is a kind of double portrait. It’s interesting to investigate relationships between the self: a fictional “myself” or someone else.

In “DP.agp.11,” the speaker is dealing with what it means to have a relationship that is occupying all of one’s attention but is not active in the present. This poem is full of longing that can be very isolating and difficult to negotiate in the world.

TSD: During the fall quarter you have been a lecturer in the Poet’s House. How would you describe this experience? Why did you decide to build the curriculum around memory?

BP: Poet’s House is an amazing program that anyone in the Stanford community can join. It’s something we do every quarter, and different lecturers take turns leading the workshops. You can meet a lot of people in the community that you wouldn’t otherwise. 

I decided to do this series about memory because it often plays a big part in the moment of inspiration. Even if we are not going to write a poem that is fully non-fiction, something in our lived experience might be that drive to write.

TSD: How has teaching at Stanford enriched your life? How do you think a lecturer can learn from their student?

BP: There is no better thing about teaching than learning and being in a room with your students. Writing can feel very solitary: you’re doing your work alone, sitting at the computer and everything is based on you and a page. The great thing about being a teacher is that you have this other part of your life where you engage with other people, their own sets of concerns and their brilliance. 

I believe what has been the most profound to me about teaching at Stanford is getting to know my students very deeply in a 10-week quarter. [Students take] a lot of risk in the writing workshops — writing about family and bringing up the things they are mad about. As a result, I get to know them very well, and they get to know each other too. At workshops, we all work together; I often do the same exercises along with my students. It feels like magic! 

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The Adaptations: ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/16/the-adaptations-the-secret-life-of-walter-mitty/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/16/the-adaptations-the-secret-life-of-walter-mitty/#respond Fri, 17 Mar 2023 04:40:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1224403 The film adaptation of the short story leaves viewers pondering how the beauty in the ordinary is the real adventure of life, writes Ellen Abraham. Ben Stiller both directs and stars in the movie version.

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Welcome to “The Adaptations.” In this column, I will review film adaptations of books, short stories, poems, songs, etc. Join me in the exploration of these fascinating films and their origin stories. 

I first encountered James Thurber’s well-known short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” in an English class during my sophomore year at Stanford. Given the creative writing program’s devotion to the art of the short story, it was only a matter of time before I encountered Thurber’s interesting character Walter Mitty.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” gives a brief glimpse into the imaginative mind of the titular protagonist, who is often transported out of his ordinary life and into fantastical daydreamed scenarios. Set in the suburbs of New York City, the story begins and ends in the time that his wife, Mrs. Mitty, goes on errands and attends her hair appointment. Within this period, Walter Mitty fantasizes that he is a war pilot, a doctor, a sharp shooter and a captain.

The antagonist in the short story seems to be Walter’s wife. Mrs. Mitty is very picky and harsh on Walter and criticizes everything from driving too fast to having trouble remembering things. She insists that he wear gloves and and overshoes constantly, and she acts paranoid in the sheltering of her husband. She offers the reasoning that he is “not a young man any longer.” 

Metaphorically speaking, Mrs. Mitty represents how the larger society overlooks Walter. Mrs. Mitty shows annoyance and expresses doubt in Walter’s ability to operate as an individual in the world. As a result, she is too overprotective of him. However, although he is not happy in his present life, he does not give up his pride and remains strong. 

In the 2013 movie adaptation, Ben Stiller both directs and acts as Walter Mitty. Stiller’s adaptation is sufficient in meaning, yet largely fails in its interpretation of the true short story.

In Stiller’s version of the character, Walter works at Life Magazine as a photographic developer. His life is depicted as ordinary and mundane, but he often zones out and dreams of achieving daring acts, such as saving his romantic interest’s dog. Walter struggles to romantically connect with the woman, Cherly, as he deals with childhood traumas and his father’s early death. As a character, he has yet to realize his own potential.

Walter then gets sent on a mission by Life Magazine to retrieve a photograph negative from famous photographer Sean O’Connell (played by Sean Penn). This photo negative — dubbed “negative 25” — is of great importance because it is being used in the last edition of Life Magazine. O’Connell also refers to it as “the quintessence of life.” In his search for negative 25, Walter ends up going on a wild adventure and experiencing a version of the fantastic life he always desired. 

One moment I did really like was the scene in which Walter is longboarding in his real-life adventure down a hill in Iceland. Not only did Stiller actually longboard in Iceland for the scene, but the beautiful moment of Walter returning to his childhood passion of skateboarding is very heartwarming. 

Still, many things in Stiller’s version do not work with the original story. The movie often relies too heavily on shallow and obvious metaphors, such as Walter working at Life Magazine while leading a mundane life. As a viewer, I often felt as though the movie was too invested in the overdone action scenes instead of the root of the short story. It also preaches the cliche message that one should live in the present moment. This is shown in moments such as Life Magazine closing and instead turning into the publication “Life Online.” 

The movie successfully communicates the literal and metaphorical danger in constant escapism. However, the whole cinematic production misses several original concepts from the short story, sacrifices meaning for comedy and adds lame movie references. 

Instead of approaching this film with sensitivity and understanding of Thurber’s original concept, Stiller’s iteration comes across more like superficial sketch comedy in its situational irony and comedic actors. Adam Scott and Kristen Wigg play both funny parts, but the characters do not play to the actors’ strengths. The story itself is more serious and is ill-suited for the humor that Stiller jams into the story. 

That said, the ending of Ben Stiller’s adaptation, when Walter finds the famous photographer, saves the entire film. O’Connell is photographing a snow leopard but ends up not taking the photo. When Walter asks him why he didn’t take the shot, O’Connell offers the explanation that “beautiful things don’t ask for attention.” Negative 25 — “the quintessence of life” — ends up being a photograph of Walter Mitty at work, drawing parallels between him and the rare snow leopard.

The film adaptation of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” thus leaves its viewer thinking about the beauty hidden in the ordinary, ultimately representing the real adventure of life. 

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Celebrating women writers from Stanford, then and now https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/16/celebrating-women-writers-from-stanford-then-and-now/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/16/celebrating-women-writers-from-stanford-then-and-now/#respond Fri, 17 Mar 2023 03:08:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1224379 In honor of Women's History Month, this article highlights some of the famous women writers affiliated with Stanford. Their works range from middle-grade stories to fantasy to nonfiction.

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Recent years have brought conversations about objectifying media portrayals of women, as seen in the coining of the term “male gaze.” Beyond this, there is gender inequality to contend with even within the publishing industry itself. This year, in honor of Women’s History Month, we celebrate the laborious achievements of just a few women writers who have had a past or present connection with Stanford.

These authors’ works come from genres ranging from middle-grade to adult novels, from romance to fantasy to nonfiction. Though each of them draws from different experiences, we can celebrate all the beautifully diverse stories they have to tell and uplift the voices of women from all walks of life, even beyond this month.

bell hooks ’73

Activist, scholar and writer bell hooks graduated from Stanford in 1973 with her bachelor’s in English, going on to earn several more degrees and author academic works on various topics. Her writing mainly focused on Black feminism, sexuality, intersectionality and cultural criticism, with one of her most famous works being “Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism.” Over the years, hook’s ideas have been very influential both inside and outside of academic spheres.

Jesmyn Ward ’99, M.A. ’00

After Jesmyn Ward graduated from Stanford with degrees in English and Media Studies and Communication, she went on to receive an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and later returned to Stanford as a Stegner Fellow from 2008 to 2010. Ward is the author of three novels — “Salvage the Bones,” “Sing, Unburied, Sing” and “Where the Line Bleeds” — which each narrate the experiences of African-American families in the fictional rural town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Ward has also written a memoir and other non-fiction pieces.

Evelyn Skye ’01

As Evelyn Skye recalls in the acknowledgements for one of her novels, she came into Stanford hardly knowing she’d end up graduating with a degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her passion for all things Russian shines through in “The Crown’s Game” and its sequel, a young adult historical fantasy tale set in nineteenth-century imperial Russia. In addition to this duology, Skye has written or co-written six other works, including the forthcoming “Damsel,” a feminist dark fantasy novel and soon-to-be Netflix film.

Yaa Gyasi ’11

During the summer after her sophomore year at Stanford, Yaa Gyasi embarked on a trip to Ghana to research for a novel she had been planning. The summer project was even funded by Stanford’s Chappell Lougee grant, which supports sophomores’ projects in the humanities, creative arts and qualitative social sciences. Gyasi’s findings took her in an unexpected direction, ultimately leading to her acclaimed novel “Homegoing.” Following multiple storylines, it tells of colonial violence and its effects on the diasporic experience, reaching from Ghana to America and spanning over multiple centuries. Gyasi is also the author of “Transcendent Kingdom,” a look at a different aspect of the diaspora experience which chronicles the story of a Ghanaian-American Stanford student and her family.

Christina Li ’21

Christina Li is a recent graduate of Stanford as well as the author of the middle-grade novels “Clues to the Universe” and the forthcoming “Ruby Lost and Found.” Her books tell the stories of children finding their voices, dealing with grief and discovering what family means to them. Additionally, elements of Chinese-American identity and culture are beautifully interwoven throughout her stories. 

Kyla Zhao ’21

Kyla Zhao is another recent Stanford graduate, who released her debut novel “The Fraud Squad” just last month. This story offers a peek into the high society of Singapore, Zhao’s home country, while also presenting a critique of elitism. Additionally, her forthcoming middle grade novel, “May the Best Player Win,” will be released next year. Besides her fiction works, Zhao also has experience in the fashion writing world, having previously written for magazines such as Vogue Singapore and Harper’s Bazaar.

Grace D. Li M.D. ’23

Balancing her writing career with her life as a current student at Stanford’s School of Medicine, Grace D. Li is the author of the New York Times-bestselling heist novel and soon-to-be Netflix series “Portrait of a Thief.” The story gives voice to complex issues such as the Chinese diaspora experience, grappling with one’s identity and dealing with the consequences of imperialism. Li also has a forthcoming novel, “Anatomy of a Betrayal,” which is set in Stanford and deals with the persecution of Chinese Americans in the world of academia.

Malavika Kannan ’24

Stanford junior Malavika Kannan is the author of young adult novels “The Bookweaver’s Daughter” and the forthcoming “All the Yellow Suns.” In addition to being an author, she is also a current student of comparative literature and comparative studies in race and ethnicity. Kannan’s work explores themes of identity and resilience, especially drawing from her personal experiences as a South Asian queer woman.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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Lately in Literature: Grieving art in Rebecca Makkai’s ‘The Great Believers’ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/07/lately-in-literature-grieving-art-in-rebecca-makkais-the-great-believers/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/07/lately-in-literature-grieving-art-in-rebecca-makkais-the-great-believers/#respond Wed, 08 Mar 2023 02:02:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1223507 In this installment of her column, Yilmaz reviews Rebecca Makkai’s acclaimed historical fiction, “The Great Believers.” Yilamaz explores how the novel powerfully conveys themes of grief, loss and lost time.

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Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers” was published in 2018 and critically acclaimed, including becoming a Pulitzer Prize finalist. It was also the first book I finished in 2023. Immediately, I felt like it would make it into the list of the best books I’ve read this year without knowing any of the other books to come.

The novel spans two eras, Chicago in the 1980’s and Paris in 2015. The book starts in the first era, where the reader is introduced to a group of young gay men at the funeral of their friend Nico, who has passed away from AIDS.

From the very first scene, Makkai depicts the reality of the AIDS epidemic through peering into the inner lives of its victims. She not only portrays the loss and the grief, but the shame, the guilt, the anxiety and the loneliness. Nico’s friends diverge from his family, who won’t even acknowledge the cause of his death. 

The tension introduced from the first scene is carried out throughout the novel as Makkai depicts the progression of the epidemic. From routine tests, to anxiety over diagnosis, to the illness itself, to loss of community, Makai discloses the constant sense of fear in the lives of these young men. And we witness them grieve over what could’ve been of their lives, their friendships and their passions.

Amidst the epidemic, one of the main characters, Yale Tishman, is hired by Northwestern University to help open up a new gallery in the school. There, he meets an art collector, Nora, who voices a similar type of grief although about an entirely different situation. 

“Every time I’ve gone to a gallery, the rest of my life, I’ve thought about the works that weren’t there. Shadow-paintings, you know that no one can see but you,” Nora says. “But there are all these happy young people around you and you realize no, they’re not bereft. They don’t see the empty spaces.”

She is experiencing a sense of sorrow, not for herself, but for the art she cherishes that won’t make it into the public eye, and for the people who won’t be blessed by their beauty.

Through Nora and Yale’s uncanny friendship, Makkai delves further into the fear of missing out. This is perhaps a fear especially relevant for college students like ourselves, as we wonder if we could be doing something better with our time instead of studying for a week 9 midterm. 

But Makkai explores this fear to another extent by asking how our perception of art also shapes what is created. What we consider to be art generates the art that never gets made and the art we never end up seeing, which is another thing to grieve over according to Nora and Yale. 

“If you had to choose when, in the timeline of the earth, you got to live — wouldn’t you choose the end? You haven’t missed anything, then. You die in 1920, you miss rock and roll. You die in 1600, you miss Mozart,” says Yale. For him, this fear is eerily palpable. 

In a chapter flooded by short and direct sentences, Makai highlights all the things Yale reminisces over, but she also recounts the experiences he is unable to make: memories that could have been but were stolen from him by his disease.

Other chapters depict modern-day France. There, Nico’s sister, Fiona, is searching for her daughter who, as a teenager, ran away from home following a cult. Fiona is similarly grieving memories she never got to make with her daughter and her granddaughter like a normal family. 

Fiona battles a profound sense of loss, first with her brother and his friends’ death, and then with her daughter’s disappearance. Yet she remains hopeful to find her and make up for those memories. Fiona’s character mirrors the love Yale had for his friends. 

Although Yale’s relationship with his friends were often complicated, he remembers them “not as the sum of all the disappointments, but as every beginning they’d ever represented, every promise.” And so does Fiona. Her brother, daughter and even Paris remain for her spectacles of love despite the loss they symbolize. 

By writing historical fiction, Makai brings to life the long-lasting impacts of the epidemic, a reality covered up back in the day and mostly forgotten now. “[W]hen they stepped through a pocket of cold air, didn’t they understand it was a ghost, it was a boy the world has spat out,” Fiona thinks as she wanders through the streets of Paris, pointing out the loss of public memory of the epidemic.

What Fiona witnesses is collective dementia over the realities of the AIDS epidemic. Eight years later in 2023, the gravity of the disease in many low resource settings is still overlooked. Makai writes that letting go of memory, in this instance the memory of the epidemic, is something akin to murder. Thus, her work is a reminder that things are not to be forgotten when livelihoods remain under attack.

“The Great Believers” is bound to leave an impact on any reader. Forming a bond with this dynamic friend group and experiencing the loss with them is inevitable. But even for those of you who are hesitant towards emotional reads, “The Great Believers” still deserves a well dusted spot on your bookshelf. It serves not only as a fiction work but as a historical artifact, recollecting memories of the past with utmost detail.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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