#aalr

[forgottenverses]

So I've been interning for the Asian American Literary Review and they sent me the latest issue on mental health and it's just so creative and emotional and powerful and I love it and ah I hope that I can one day do work that is so..... Damn good. Legit just a few paragraphs had me close to tears. "I dreamed this project to save my own life. To help others save their own lives. To help you save yours. Open in emergency, my darling child. It's an emergency. Right now."

[intervital]

#NationalPoetryMonth on the 29th, this monday, i'll be representing the asian american literary review and @lakaszine at "in her words" which will feature powerhouse WOC poets! i am honored that i get to be part of this fantastic @thinkinginfullcolor event. ive seen @_glennsus_ , wendelin, and @dispatchdena perform and they bring so much passion, strength, and eloquence to the stage. i cannot wait to witness their words. i'll be selling copies of our latest issue celebrating @asianartsphilly's 25th anniversary, featuring limited edition pop-up art by Colette Fu; a curriculum of 6 learning modules by Dan S. Wang; catalogs for two 2018 AAI exhibitions; essays about AAI's history + influence; and various fun extras, including a mixtape (flashdrive) of spoken word performances. i admit i cried a few times & laughed a bunch listening to that mixtape haha. i also have the #bookofcurses which features an advent calendar with curses against desis for trump, the english language, diabetes, and elephant poachers. I've got a few other #AALR issues too. Since we're gonna run a kickstarter this summer for the reprint of Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health (guest edited by the lovely @mimikahooch), i'll have an original copy on display for you to check out and a sign up for our mailing list so you can be notified once the kickstarter is up. In the reprint, there will be six new tarot cards, including The Crip by by leading disability justice writer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Plus several new entries for the DSM, including pieces by scholar Mel Y. Chen and poet Brandon Shimoda and a crowd-sourced set of hacked/annotated passages of the actual DSM. I'm so excited to see this happening! and if you spend $35 or more, you get a free poetry book or lit magazine of your choice from my stash! i made sure that the poetry books are by women of color, and they're mostly asian. there's even two interactive poetry workbooks available. all the AALR issues are discounted so prepare a tote bag haha. i might be bringing too much lol. but i rather be excessive than disappoint a customer with no issues left. image descriptions in the comments 💗 (at LITM) https://www.instagram.com/eintervital/p/BwlbdmEhkb5/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1hvhq9aclyht4

[andrebagoo]

Each leaf was a word Langston never said, the trees his unwritten rhymes. — from ‘Langston Hughes in Trinidad’ So honored to have an image from my visual sequence for ‘Langston Hughes in Trinidad’ on the cover of the Asian American Literary Review. The special North/South issue focuses on new poetry by Canadian, Caribbean and Latin American authors! #PITCHLAKE #visualpoem #langstonhughes #asianamericanliteraryreview #poetry #caribbeanpoetry #aalr #canadianpoetry #latinamerica

[sickwomantheory]

i’m very excited to be part of this fantastic project: Asian American Tarot: A Mental Health Project and Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health by The Asian American Literary Review. 

please donate to the kickstarter if you can!

An updated excerpt of Sick Woman Theory will be published in Open in Emergency, in January 2017, alongside these fierce pieces:

a foldout testimonial tapestry—a collectively woven tapestry of written and visual testimonials, a process-oriented art piece that reimagines community care & healing;

a “hacked” mock DSM: Asian American Edition—a new catalog of “definitions”/reflections, with alternate understandings of un/wellness and critiques of Psychology as field, discourse, and industry;

performance artist/comedian Kristina Wong reflecting on her decade of art and activism on Asian American women's suicide;

scholar Jigna Desai on neurodiversity, disability, and race;

a queer mixed race WOC self-care package by artist/scholar Genevieve Erin O'Brien;

prose work rethinking mental health by Johanna Hedva, Karen Tei Yamashita, David Mura, Sejal Shah, Kai Cheng Thom, erin Khue Ninh, Eliza Noh, Laura Uba, Aileen Duldulao, James Kyung-jin Lee, Kathleen Yep, Cynthia Wu, David Kyuman Kim, Chad Shomura, Peggy Lee, Shawna Yang Ryan, and Paisley Rekdal;

Bhanu Kapil on the psychic legacies of Partition;

"Keanu wellness memes" by Mimi Thi Nguyen;

an excerpt from Saymoukda Vongsay's play Kung Fu Zombies vs. Shaman Warriorexamining conceptions of mental illness as demonic possession in Lao communities;

an art piece by Gerald Maa exploring linkages between CIA torture and the American Psychological Association;

a photography series on fear by Julie Thi Underhill;

a “treated” pamphlet on postpartum depression—a redaction/erasure/annotation of existing postpartum depression info-literature that centers lived experience of Asian American mothers, by Audrey Wu Clark, Sharline Chiang, and Pooja Makhijani; and

a stack of daughter-to-mother letters—handwritten letters tracing intergenerational intimacies and violences by, among others, novelist Joy Kogawa, novelist le thi diem thuy, poet (and adoptee) Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, queer and trans poet Kit Yan, poet Tarfia Faizullah, and trans activist and writer Ryka Aoki.

Here’s the full lineup of major arcana cards, visual artists, and writers who made Asian American Tarot: A Mental Health Project:

Tarot Cards

Death • the Scholar • the Migrant • the Lovers • the Mother • the Patient • the Foreigner • the Fool • the Ancestor • the Farmer • the Shopkeeper • the Adoptee • the Lecher • the Survivor • the Daughter • the Model Minority • the Refugee • the Prisoner • the Desecrated Temple • the Deportee • the Hangman • the Devil

Writers

Shawna Yang Ryan • Long Bui • Sueyeun Juliette Lee • Rajiv Mohabir • Wo Chan • Maya Soetoro-Ng • Jennifer Ho • Konrad Ng • Tanwi Nandini Islam • Gerald Maa • Simi Kang • Brandon Som • Matthew Salesses • Mimi Khúc & Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis • Tanwi Nandini Islam • Aimee Nezhukumatathil • David Kyuman Kim • Mimi Thi Nguyen Margaret Rhee • Anida Yoeu Ali • James Kyung-Jin Lee • Sharon Suh

Artists

Monica Ong • Monica Ramos • Simi Kang • Camille Chew

“In the spirit of fortune-telling practices so prevalent in our communities, we’re creating a new deck of tarot cards, featuring original art and text that work to reveal the hidden contours of our Asian American emotional, psychic, and spiritual lives, as well as the systems of violence that bear down upon them. Replacing the 22 archetypes of the traditional major arcana (e.g., the Empress, the Hierophant, the Wheel of Fortune, etc.) are figures drawn directly from Asian American life--the Migrant, the Foreigner, the Shopkeeper, the Adoptee, the Model Minority, the Desecrated Temple--that we’ve asked some of our communities’ most exciting artists, poets, and writers to reinterpret.

“Because Asian American wellness fundamentally depends upon anti-racism, our deck is an anti-racist hack for the traditional deck: take out the existing major arcana, insert ours, and voila! An Asian American mental health tarot, a little self-care magic.”

in resilience,

hedva

[aastprogram]

The Asian American Studies Program at IUB is one of the proud sponsors of the AALR's Mixed Race initiative. Professor Halloran's class "Reserach in Colonial/Postcolonial Studies" is one of the almost 100 courses from across the world participating in a synchronous teaching program this fall.

[dannywhodunnit]

[superlativeofme]

Good read

making my way through the 2012 Asian American Literary Review. Taking it like 2 pages at a time because some of the commentaries are super dense (as in heavy subject matter). I'd recommend anybody interested in Asian Studies read it, at least to keep up with what's new in the field. Also check out Bao Phi (spoken word artist) and the KYOPO Project.