november 2022
Hi everyone!
Life has been a roller coaster ride the past month, but I’ve managed to sneak some reading and writing in. I’ve split this post into two—the first half will be on the books/stories that have been on my mind, and I’ve stuck some writing thoughts at the end.
Reading Thoughts
The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe
What a book! Where do I start with this? This is the story of the Golden Venture, which was a ship that ran aground not far from New York City in the early ‘90s with hundreds of migrants from Fujian, China. We learn a huge deal about the movers and shakers in Little Fuzhou, Chinatown, NYC during the late 1980s and early 1990s: Sister Ping, the snakehead human smuggler) who titles this book, agreed to be interviewed by PRK.
Patrick Radden Keefe's special talent is figuring out what makes people tick on a fundamental level. He understands real-life people on a level I've only seen in fiction, and he doesn't disappoint with Sister Ping and Ah Kay, the gangster who got her into prison. I wish he spent more time with the actual passengers of the Golden Venture—we meet a few of them, but it's clear that PRK finds the world of gangsters and secret agents much more interesting than that of ordinary people (not surprising, given the subject matter of his other books and his podcast Winds of Change). I learned so much about US immigration policy in the 1990s and the roots of where some current policy comes from. This is a uniquely Chinese American story, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Chinese American history or immigration policy in the US.
Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria Dong
This book is to be released in January, and I received the ARC just in time for a plane trip :D Kirkus Reviews calls it “a fever dream of a book,” which is pretty accurate. I first heard about it via the short speculative fiction community, since I've seen Maria Dong's stories floating around. The conceit is that Katrina Kim is 24 and has many problems: she's struggling to pay the bills, works a dead-end job, and is struggling with her mental health. She sees and hears things that aren't there, and these visions are telling her that a random coworker she has named Kurt is suspicious in some way. Katarina felt very real to me while reading, and I was impressed at how Dong managed to pull off a happy ending.
Radcliffe Hall by Miyuki Jane Pinckard, Uncanny Sep/Oct 2022:
Radcliffe Hall is a Gothic/dark academia ~40k novella by Miyuki Jane Pinckard that ran in last month’s Uncanny issue. This story reminded me a little of the video game The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for its late Victorian setting. Tomoe Kikuchi is a Japanese girl who decides to study at Norcross College, a fictional women's college in New England because her father is a chemist and she spent a good chunk of her childhood in London. There is a love interest (George, a sassy redhead aspiring doctor gal), a creepy ghost, a white supremacist occultist club, and everything you need for a good Gothic story. In her author interview, Pinckard talks about how women's colleges in real life were originally founded on the principles of white supremacy—the hope was that the schools would produce educated white women to keep white supremacy going into the next generation. I had no idea about any of this, and I would put this and RF Kuang’s recent Babbel in the same category of dark academia stories critiquing what underlies the idealized picture of the Gothic dark academia bacchanals we get in The Secret History. I personally am a big Secret History fan, but love how these new takes expose academia for its failings.
The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green:
I’d seen this book floating around but decided to read it after seeing John Green’s video on how it unexpectedly became a huge hit with the elderly due to a quirk of Amazon’s algorithm. I love the concept: Green reviews little things as the pandemic rages on outside, and some of the reviews have stuck with me. The review of the photograph “Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance” and the city of Indianapolis, as a lapsed Hoosier, stuck out to me.
Writing Thoughts
“Recipe,” Fireside (Summer 2022):
A few months ago, my short “Recipe” about cooking and vampires made its way into the world. This was actually my first attempt at a 2nd person imperative tense story, and I decided to revise and send it out after early readers all found it funny. I was fortunate enough that editor L.M. Davis also saw something in it, so my first pro SFF short fiction sale ended up being in Fireside’s final issue (it sadly was one of several pro markets that closed because of the pandemic).
If you enjoyed “Recipe,” you might also enjoy the things I was thinking about when writing this:
“How to be a Writer” by Lorrie Moore
“This is How You Fail to Ghost Him” by Victoria McCurdy
“Girl” by the legendary Jamaica Kincaid (and also see this recent story in HAD for Yasmine Zohdi and Sara Elkamel’s take on “Girl” )
Also, I was super honored and excited to learn that writer Kathleen Jennings did a structural analysis of “Recipe” on her blog here (ctrl-F “recipe” and you’ll find it) using her three-mood short story breakdown. She does a much better job than I would breaking down how and why my story works.
Thanks for reading!
Tina