Tag Archives: Art/Architecture

May 29, 2013 · 8:48 am

Author Interview: Don Lee [in Bloom]

CollectiveWith his eyes and body still “bleary from post-windsurfing and traveling,” Don Lee nonetheless graciously agrees to be grilled yet again – we’re going on a decade-plus of various interviews through four books! He’s tired, he’s rambling, but he’s always entertaining … and once more he’s game to talk about all manner of things, from writing and ethnicity, to blooming late and Eeyore-style lamentations.

With all that literary editing, mentoring, teaching, how come you didn’t publish until you were 41?
Oh, I could give you all kinds of excuses: that I was busy with Ploughshares (true), that each short story took me a long time to write (very true), that I never really planned or wanted to publish a book (sort of true), that I was happy writing stories once a year or so and getting them into journals (almost true), but frankly, the real reason was that I was scared shitless. I think unconsciously I didn’t want to lay it all out on the line and try to publish a book and then fail. It was easier not to try.

But then I turned 38, and I decided I’d really like to have a book, one book, before I turned 40. I didn’t want to end up thinking for the rest of my life about what could have been, and become bitter. So I wrote two new stories, revised a bunch of old stories to form a collection, and set about finding an agent to represent me, all of which took over a year and a half. Whereas the goal originally (and unrealistically) had been to publish a book by the time I turned 40, the new goal became to sell the book by then, and I did: W. W. Norton offered me a book contract the week I turned 40, and Yellow was published the following year [in 2001].

Okay, so what prompted you to write that first story? And how did that first story eventually morph into the determination to become a writer for real?
Unlike many authors, I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer at 7 years old or whatnot. I didn’t know what I’d do with my life. I was, however, a tinkerer as a kid. I would take apart things, make things. My bedroom was scattered with detritus – tools, wires, glue, balsa wood, batteries, a soldering iron, capacitors, motors, model cars and planes. When it came time to go to college, my quixotic plan was to get my mechanical engineering degree and then a Ph.D. in physical oceanography and build and pilot underwater submersibles (I watched a lot of Jacques Cousteau as a kid). I was a dreamer. I didn’t write a short story until my sophomore year at UCLA, after a comp teacher told me I had a flair for words and might enjoy taking a creative writing class.

And now four books—and oh so many awards!!—later, are you still scared shitless? Or are you finally resting a bit on your laurels?
Naw, I’m still a tortured soul who never allows himself to feel good about his accomplishments, who doesn’t really believe he’s accomplished anything. And yes, each time I start another book, I am petrified that I won’t be able to pull it off and finish it, and if I can, that I won’t be able to sell it, and if I can, that no one will like it. Why do I keep doing it, then? Because it’s a challenge, and I’m compelled to do it, and I love being inside the process of writing a novel, of thinking about it all the time and figuring out structure and motifs and themes and connections. In a way, I’m still a tinkerer, building things with words. [... click here for more]

Author interview: “Q&A with Don Lee,” Bloom, May 29, 2013

Readers: Adult

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May 27, 2013 · 11:06 am

Author Profile: Don Lee

CollectiveWhen Don Lee’s first book debuted in April 2001, he probably didn’t know that he was the forerunner of a colorful trend – literally. His collection, Yellow, had the shortest of subtitles, simply Stories. Three months later, in July, another yellow-tinted cover appeared: Yell-Oh Girls!: Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American edited by Vickie Nam, in which young Asian American girls from all over the country shared poems, essays, and stories that spoke of their bicultural roots. And then 9/11 hit … moment of silence … and the end of that fateful year seemed to be just the right time for the publication of law professor Frank H. Wu’s Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White.

Among those various shades of yellow, Don Lee’s is my personal favorite. The quirky collection of short stories is populated by the inhabitants of a fictional California seaside town, not unlike the real-life Half Moon Bay along Northern California’s coastal Highway 1. Lee’s memorable characters are convincing; as a onetime Golden State resident, I swear I’ve run into some of them!

“Late … according to whom?” indeed! Lee was 41 when his Yellow hit the shelves. After almost two decades of encouraging, editing, publishing other people’s writing for Ploughshares, at 38, hoping to avoid middle-age ‘coulda-woulda-shoulda’-reget, Lee decided to produce a book of his own by the time he hit 40. His timing was a bit optimistic, so he revised the plan to sell that first book by the big 4-0; remarkably, his birth week arrived complete with a book contract. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one playing colorful favorites: that 40th birthday sale won Lee the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Members Choice Award from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

As the son of a second-generation Korean American and his Korean-born wife, Lee is technically classified as a third-generation Korean American, although he was born in Tokyo where his career diplomat father was working at the U.S. State Department. From Japan, the family moved to Korea when Lee was four, where he had his first identity crisis: “Japanese was my first language,” he said to me in a 2004 interview for AsianWeek. “But here I was in Korea, speaking only Japanese. I was a little confused to say the least. I thought I was a Japanese kid, but now I was a Korean kid?” To add to his bewilderment, the Lee family lived on a U.S. Army base in Seoul. “Now I was an American, Korean, and Japanese,” he says. “And that’s all you need to know why I’m so hung up on identity,” he laughs.

Identity is at the crux of Lee’s first novel, Country of Origin, which came out in 2004. Not one of his characters is who he or she appears to be … not Tom Hurley, the half-Korean foreign service officer stationed in Japan, nor his photographer lover, nor her CIA husband. And then there’s Kenzo Ota, the Japanese policeman assigned to investigate the aptly named Lisa Countryman, an African-American hapa whose disappearance brings all the characters together. Country of Origin earned Lee an American Book Award and a Mixed Media Watch Image Award for Outstanding Fiction. He also won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel – the Edgar being the top literary prize for mysteries – although he’ll be the first to tell you that he never intended to write that sort of mystery: “I intended to write a sort of Graham Greene political novel, but it strongly appealed to mystery readers, for which I was extremely grateful. Mystery readers buy a lot of books. It also ended up to be my most translated book, and for unknown reasons especially struck a chord with German readers.” [... click here for more]

Author profile: “Don Lee’s Pure Stories,” Bloom, May 27, 2013

Readers: Adult

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May 10, 2013 · 8:53 am

Thermae Romae II by Mari Yamazaki, translated by Stephen Paul

Thermae Romae 2To get to know our time-traveling bather, start with Volume I. When in Thermae Romae, you need to do as this Roman does and find out how he journeys back and forth between far-spanning centuries and cultures with one thing in common – an obsession with the bath.

If the cover looks familiar, Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize-winning creator Mari Yamazaki explains how she risked marital peace to parody “one of the greatest works of ancient Roman sculpture,” Laocoön and His Sons. In spite of her husband’s angry reaction, she insists that her version of Laocoön “wearing a shampoo hat to keep the shampoo out of his eyes” is not such a far stretch: “I’m sure Laocoön washed his fair from time to time, and if he did massage his scalp, he certainly must have struck poses like the one on the cover.” You’ll find that sort of goofy humor on almost every page, all the while learning quite a bit about ancient Roman history, and modern Japanese bathing culture. Yamazaki will entertainingly convince you how such two seemingly disparate topics are actually quite related.

As Volume II begins, Lucius is a favorite of Emperor Hadrian, renowned as the innovative bath architect. In an act of potentially fatal jealousy, Senate members plot to get Lucius out of Rome with a ruse about a creating a new thermae in an area overrun by violent bandits. What happens instead is a bit of brilliant marketing, inspired by Lucius’ timely visit to a Japanese hot spring town where he wins big at a game booth, discovers kitschy souvenirs, and tastes his first bowl of steaming ramen and juicy gyoza. With further unpredictable forays into the land of the “flat-faces” (the phrase still bugs me, but not quite as much this second time around), Lucius learns to build a wooden barrel single bath shippable to the hinterlands, and how to balance the most gaudiest demands with just enough elegantly-tempered details.

Then half-way through the volume, Hadrian’s adopted heir (profligately portrayed by Yamazaki with apologies later – artistic license, right?) dies. With Hadrian’s own health less than robust, Lucius becomes determined to create something soothingly rejuvenating for his Imperator. His search magically sends him to meet “such a beautiful flat-face” as he’s never seen before … who just happens to be an ancient Roman scholar who speaks perfect Latin! Talk about back to the future … in centur-ion leaps!

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013 (United States)

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March 15, 2013 · 8:50 am

Thermae Romae I by Mari Yamazaki, translated by Stephen Paul

Thermae RomaeRome, 128 AD. Even back then architects had a hard time finding work. Poor, poor Lucius – in spite of his fancy Athens training, his designs are considered “half-baked,” and he finds himself “blacklisted out of the industry.” Instead of sulking, an old friend convinces him to go soaking … in a public bath, the ancient Roman answer to all problems.

Somehow he gets himself pulled into a mysterious drain … and pops up in modern Japan, of course in a traditional bath. Understandably bewildered, Lucius has enough wits to make mental notes, so when he miraculous time-travels back home, his next bathhouse design is a local sensation – complete with ‘out-of-the-world’ improvements including calming wall murals, weekly announcement boards, clothing baskets for customers, and refreshing milk drinks (Yakult, anyone?).

Volume I includes 10 such time-traveling ‘research trips’ for Lucius, whose growing reputation eventually gets him noticed by Emperor Hadrian. And, of course, the aging leader must have a unique bath of his own! Lucius continues to entice the public with his latest designs – from outdoor hot springs to water slides (!) – based on what he learns from the modern, bath-obsessed Japanese. Each chapter is yet another bubbly adventure.

For award-winning creator Mari Yamazaki, “Rome & Baths” are the loves of her life: “Perhaps shared nakedness in the presence of hot water is a basic principle of peace,” she muses. If only world leaders could be so easily convinced, ahem!

At the end of each chapter, Yamazaki offers an entertaining mixture of Roman history, cultural insight, and personal experiences, all about baths and bathing from around over the world. As delightful as this inaugural volume is, my one cringe-inducing complaint might be Yamazaki’s reference to “those flat-faces,” complete with occasional caricatured, stereotypical representations whenever Lucius gets sucked out of his universe. I’d like to think that since Yamazaki herself is Japanese-born, with peripatetic stopovers in the Middle East, Italy, and Portugal, and being currently Chicago-domiciled, hers is such a broad, international outlook that my discontent is merely a sign of my own oversensitive training. That’s what I’m telling myself for now, because I utterly admit I’m certainly looking forward to sharing more of Lucius’ hothouse innovations. Volume 2 debuts in May …

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

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February 24, 2013 · 9:47 am

Irises by Francisco X. Stork

IrisesFirst things first: choose the page, not the headset. Carrington MacDuffie’s voice is just too old to narrate the inner lives of two teenage sisters – no lilting resonance, no youthful lightness. Might I suggest that the better options for aurally appreciating the extraordinary Francisco X. Stork would be Marcelo in the Real World and The Last Summer of the Death Warriors. The ears don’t lie.

Kate is 18, determined and independent, with secret dreams of going to Stanford – instead of the expected, local University of Texas at El Paso – and becoming a doctor one day. Mary is 16, sensitive and thoughtful, an artist gifted beyond her years, with an other-world ability to recognize light in the subjects she paints. Their beloved mother never leaves her bed  … trapped in a vegetative state, kept alive only because of a feeding tube. One afternoon, their father lies down for a rest and never wakes again. Life suddenly shifts to fast-forward …

Mama needs her expensive medical care, the girls must finish school. Kate, as the elder, is faced with serious financial challenges. Aunt Julia arrives from California, but she isn’t exactly the helpful adult the sisters need, too busy criticizing their late father, avoiding her silent sister, and insisting to Kate that marrying her boyfriend Simon now is the sisters’ only secure choice for a future. Then the deacons of the church where Papa ministered for 20 years of his life announce that the family has two months to find a new home to make room for their father’s fiery young successor – who has inappropriate plans of his own.

While Papa was a loving provider, he was also a severe disciplinarian: “The only decision [the sisters] needed to make when he was alive was whether to obey willingly or unwillingly.” Without his restrictions, both girls grow in new ways: Mary finds a comforting new friendship; Kate reexamines many of hers. Both manage to find the strength to make impossible decisions with surprising wisdom – and always love.

Although Stork has a penchant for creating narratives populated by characters facing difficult challenges, he never resorts to easy feel-good answers or deus ex machina-solutions. His can’t-turn-the-page-fast-enough stories are ultimately reminders of the resilience of our youth, with a ringing endorsement that whatever they face, they can – and will – do so with tenacity and courage.

Readers: Young Adult

Published: 2012

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February 21, 2013 · 12:05 pm

Etched in Clay: The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet by Andrea Cheng, woodcuts by the author

Etched in Clay Absolute details surrounding the life of Dave the Potter are limited and uncertain. What remains of his life story almost two centuries later, is scattered with uncertain words, including ‘sometime,’ ‘about,’ ‘believed to be,’ ‘might,’ ‘possibly,’ and other such noncommittal qualifiers. The few surviving documents prove an enslaved teenager was bought by the Drake family, co-owners of Pottersville Stoneware Manufactory in Edgefield, South Carolina, in whose service he became a talented potter whose creations have survived, in small numbers, and become museum-worthy art pieces.

As if paralleling the sparse details of Dave’s life, Andrea Cheng replicates that sparseness in her slim novel-in-verse; she echoes the poetic etchings Dave added to his pottery by enhancing her verse with etched woodblock prints of her own. The result is a gorgeous, contemplative, artistic memorial to a creative life that survived unspeakable hardship while creating lasting, even subversive, beauty.

Dave’s considerable skill – recognized and lauded … and exploited – cannot save him from the horrors of slavery. His first wife was sold, and later his second wife and her two sons taken from him, as well. He himself is bought and sold within the Drake and related Landrum families. And yet, although literacy is illegal among slaves, Dave is taught to read and write, which enables to etch his name (his objections, his miseries, his screams) into the wet clay and the guarded words he can never say out loud: “horses mules and hogs – / all our cows is in the bogs – / where they will ever stay – / till the buzzards take them away =.”

As much as I’ve appreciated, learned from, and enjoyed Cheng‘s titles over the years (I think I’ve read all but four of her almost two dozen books), this, her latest, is clearly, undoubtedly, most definitely my favorite thus far. Here’s the irony: the subject of Etched in Clay just might be the furthest from her personal experience. Cheng has written numerous books inspired by her Hungarian heritage (Marika, The Lace Dowry, The Bear Makers), although she’s better known for her titles highlighting the Chinese American experience (she’s been part of a hapa Chinese American family since college) including The Key Collection, Shanghai Messenger, Only One Year, and The Year of the Book; Clay is definitely her first, and thus far her only, book with the history of American slavery at its core. So much for ‘write what you know.’ Every so often, talent just trumps all.

Tidbit: In the ending “Author’s Note,” Cheng credits Leonard Todd and his book for adults, Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of Slave Potter Dave, for sparking her initial interest in Dave’s story, and later for “helping me so much with this project.” For interested readers, Todd’s website is a treasure trove of further information. The Smithsonian, by the way, owns two of Dave’s pieces (!); click here to see one of his poem jars collected by the National Museum of American History.

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2013

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February 16, 2013 · 10:59 am

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

Carry the OneA couple of months ago, one of my trusty literary friends with whom I often share must-read titles told me about seeing ‘everyone’ carrying this novel around last fall. So she decided to see for herself what the hubbub was about. Once she started, she confessed, she couldn’t put One down.

“[O]n a windless night in the summer of 1983,” the accidental death of a 10-year-old girl who was inexplicably walking on a dark country road far past bedtime, alters lives forever. Nick, in the front passenger seat, is the first to see her but says nothing, cocooned in his drug-induced haze. His sister, Alice, is the one who futilely goes for help. Their sister Carmen, whose wedding the siblings have just left, is the one to witness the aftermath. “‘Because of the accident, we’re not just separate numbers. When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.’”

Over the decades that follow, “the one” is never far. Nick, a brilliant astrophysicist, will alternate between being a rock-star academic and a pathetic addict. Alice, who becomes a world-renowned artist even as she hides away her very best work, desperately cleaves to the fickle lover she met on that fateful night. Carmen, who avoided the fatal physical impact, still can’t escape the death-does-not-part haunting, as her 1983 marriage falls apart, and all her devoted activism is never enough to melt her overly-self-sufficient (lonely) shell. Named after opera characters by a father who wanted to “show off his erudition,” the siblings are seemingly predestined to play out larger-than-life fates.

Go ahead, call me a ‘me, too’-lemming’: once I started, I greedily kept the headset stuck in my ears (Renee Raudman narrates with just the right balance of gentleness and urgency). Thanks to extra (running) miles and too many loads of laundry, I only needed a day to finish, but this will be one to carry for a while yet to come.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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February 8, 2013 · 10:10 am

The Bird King: an artist’s notebook by Shaun Tan

Bird KingWhenever I open a Shaun Tan book, my face just gets a goofy grin. It’s a Pavlovian reaction, guaranteed.

Although his latest doesn’t come with a straightforward narrative, it does manage to cleverly include tidbits and reminiscences from his entire oeuvre to create a whimsical portrait of an artist as a young man. From “inspiration,” to “artist’s block” to Paul Klee, Tan explains how even though most of his work “involves exhibited projects like books, films, and finished paintings, the primary material of all these … remains largely unseen, tucked away in folios.” Culled from those “folios, boxes, and sketchbooks,” this latest title ”present[s] a cross-section of such material from the past twelve years, ranging from fairly precise drawings to scruffy scribbles.” All the drawings, by the way, were “generally completed in a single sitting of less than two hours.” Tan’s genius moves quickly, that’s for sure!

The book does, of course, have a method to its creative madness, neatly presented in four sections. Every picture in “untold stories” – “[m]y stories generally begin with images rather than words” – is a tale waiting to be discovered, or even made up, by the beholder. In “book, theater, and film,” Tan offers examples of “source energy … a wonderful, embryonic vagueness” that fuels Tan’s various projects across media. In “drawings from life,” Tan presents ”a careful study of the real world” – including a most adorable rendition of bespectacled “Dad” and chubby toddler “me.”  The final section, “notebooks,” is an on-the-road free-for-fall, with sketches both “observational” and “equivalent to daydreaming.” As an added bonus, brief descriptions are offered in a “list of works” in the book’s final pages.

Conveniently compact, colorfully intriguing, and invitingly ingenious, this delightful notebook is all about potential. For Tan, the contents here produced multiple bestselling books, an Oscar-winning film, and countless awards and honors (including the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the coveted prize known as “The World’s Largest Children’s Literature Award” for the five million Swedish krona, or $800K+, that comes attached with it!). For his lucky audience willing to invest just a bit of imagination – regardless of age! – Tan’s notebook can take you from simple entertainment to whole new worlds. Who doesn’t want to be a part of that?!

Readers: All

Published: 2013

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October 16, 2012 · 11:11 am

Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building by Christy Hale

I’m a little hesitant to tell you about this ingenious book … everyone should experience their own moment of delight at discovering author/illustrator Christy Hale‘s superbly simple yet incredibly clever format. So feel free to stop right here and just order the book …

That said, in the spirit of ‘show, don’t tell,’ click here.

Every intriguing spread follows that perfect formula: on the left, kids dream up all sorts of play in verse (using stacking cups, mud pies, blankets over chairs, sand castles, jujubes and toothpicks, popsicle sticks), and to the right, Hale shows the results of such imaginative children who grew up to be renowned architects by building those dreams into reality (Petronas Twin Towers, New Gourna Village, Yoyogi National Stadium, La Sagrada Família, Montréal Biosphère, Sclera Pavilion, respectively). Given Hale’s last title that is wholly hers (as opposed to illustrating and designing around others’ words), The East-West House, she clearly has an imaginative penchant for creative structures and their creators.

With every spread, Hale also makes sure to represent much of the world’s diverse population at play, from the multi-culti children she draws, to the internationally iconic buildings and their creators she carefully chooses. Hale reserves the final four pages to help interested young readers locate the buildings (from New York City to Kuala Lumpur to Telluride to Barcelona to Cartagena to Chengdu, and further on), and sparks further interest in their architects (including Hassan Fathy, Maya Lin, Antoni Gaudí, Simón Vélez, Shigeru Ban, David Adjaye, and many more). She even adds just the right dreamy quotes: “Space is created from lights and shadow … It needs you – your eyes, your mind – to fill it.” [Turn to the penultimate page to see who said that.]

My, my, my … talk about heights of inspiration!

Tidbit: Not to name favorites, but I must confess that Moshe Safdie‘s Habit 67 is where I would want to head first; that Safdie completed his architecture thesis project with LEGOs is proof positive of the power of play. His son, by the way, is Oren Safdie, who is an architect by training, a playwright/screenwriter by career, who catapulted his own personal stardom with Private Jokes, Public Places in which he immortalized many of his father’s views on designing and building. It remains one of the most indelible plays I’ve ever seen.

Tidbit2: Christy Hale’s book launch party for Building Up happens THIS Saturday, October 20, 2012, at Books Inc. in Palo Alto, California (one of my favorite bookstores ever!) from 6:00 – 8:00 pm PST. Pally Ally buddies, especially – please, please do go and send back a full report! Wish I could be there, too!

Readers: Children

Published: 2012

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October 8, 2012 · 10:01 am

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama

For one reason or another, I’ve taken many years to finally finish a Gail Tsukiyama novel. I’ve started a few, gotten distracted and put each aside, but this time, after noticing that she was one of the few APA authors at this year’s National Book Festival (she was also featured in the fest’s debut in 2001), I chose the audible route to push myself to the end. Of her many novels, I settled on Street mainly because the narrator is actor/comedian Stephen Park whose on-film work I’ve admired through the years.

Please allow me a quick rant: audio producers should have figured out by now that we don’t all look alike, which means we don’t all speak alike, either. Hiring Park, who is Korean American, because of his ethnic Asian face does not mean that he’ll have some linguistic magic wand that enables him to speak fluent Japanese. No, really. This is a fact. Listening to Park constantly stumble with Japanese mispronunciations shows lazy casting, as well as embarrassingly irresponsible hiring for not even providing minimal language guidance. Not all Korean American actors are like James Kyson Lee who actually speaks Japanese. I have to wonder with grave concern (and not a little disgust) if producers really do think we’re interchangeable this way.

But back to Street. Two brothers, Hiroshi and Kenji, are orphaned as young children, and raised with by loving, nurturing, supportive grandparents. Japanese expansion into China and other parts of Asia has been well underway, but war does not begin to encroach into Tokyo until years later. In 1939 Tokyo, 11-year-old Hiroshi dreams of being a sumo wrestler while Kenji, age 9, finds a renowned Noh mask maker who welcomes the young boy as his apprentice.

War looms – food becomes scarce, civilians suffer at the whims of the kempeitai (military police), violence is virtually unavoidable – then bombs and fires rain down death and destruction. Shocked to hear the emperor’s very human voice for the first time in history, the nation struggles towards recovery. Life continues: Hiroshi fulfills his sumo dreams, and marries the frail, damaged younger daughter of the sumo master with whom he trains; Kenji finishes an architecture degree at prestigious Tokyo University, but returns to his love of the Noh mask and establishes himself as an unrivaled maker. Encompassing more than a quarter century, the brothers bear witness to one of the most rapidly changing periods of Japanese history, from pre-war traditions, to the paralysis of defeat and subsequent U.S. occupation, to rapid economic growth through the 1960s.

At best, Tsukiyama’s sixth novel is a solid, historical family saga. At worst, her writing tends toward pedestrian, occasionally dragging with unnecessary plodding details, other times rushing over years as if she, too, is anxious to finish the 400+ (hardcover) pages or almost 15 hours stuck in the ears. Too many of her characters prove narrow, near-saintly in their unwavering goodness, especially the brothers’ grandparents, Hiroshi’s widowed master, and Kenji’s gay mentor. That said, given Tsukiyama’s growing shelf of titles that continue to garner awards, her loyal readers clearly appreciate the reliable, albeit predictable, storytelling – uncomplicated, straight-forward … dare I say … comfortable.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2008

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