Currently, I’m reading Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen. I have such little knowledge of the U.S. empire's machinations in Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, and it seemed high time to correct that. I’ve learned a lot in the past six years, yet I still have so much more to learn.
This notion of learning, uncovering, and baring truths…that feeling of discomfort and seeing how little you know. Feeling like you're back in square one, did you ever leave it? Is leaving it an illusion of capitalism? Hah. Well, that's where I’m also sitting with my manuscript. On a much tinier scale, of course. Maybe I’m delusional (it’s okay, my friends laugh when I say what I’m about to write), but I want to write books that are funny. I found LINH LY humorous. I know! It wasn’t a laugh out loud kind of book and maybe all my jokes aren't funny, but one has to have aspirations.
So here I am, looking at a manuscript that’s asking me, “Am I a baguette or ciabatta?” And I’m reading literary books (not mentioned in these missives) that make me sad and sad and sad and sad. And I say to myself, I’m not a literary writer, but in the big grouping called “fiction” I don’t quite fit with the beach reads or, what’s that called, women’s fiction.
And I cringe when someone puts me in the literary bucket because I only think of institutions and cliques and knowing you’re only being invited because they want to check a box for a grant or appearances. Is it better out there now, that diversity initiatives are over? That forever question: Are you just being asked for that checkbox or because you’re you or not at all because they found someone else that fills their need who asks less questions and looks at them less judgy? Twists. Contortions. But back to my novel draft. It's like I took the bread/cake out of the oven too early and presented it as if it were done.
But I will try to turn off my doubts and disappointments and get back to editing.
All to conclude, I’m in a bit of a funky mess. I’m sure it’s just a wave. “The Process.” I have a big pile of feedback to sort my feelings through. I’m sorry I couldn’t gather myself up enough this month to say something more coherent or at least uplifting (I’m not really that funny). This is just where I am.
I hope that wherever you are, whoever you are with, that you’re safe and cool and can find a bit of joy in a coffee, spring blooms, or snuggly blanket.
With love,
Thao
Upcoming Reading
- Dumb Luck by Vu Trong Phung. Banned in Vietnam until 1986, Dumb Luck--by the controversial and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung--is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late colonial era.
- Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby. A husband, a father, a son, a business owner…And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi.
- The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. Stéphane Bréitwieser is the most prolific art thief of all time. He pulled off more than 200 heists, often in crowded museums in broad daylight. His girlfriend served as his accomplice. His collection was worth an estimated $2 billion. He never sold a piece, displaying his stolen art in his attic bedroom. He felt like a king. Until everything came to a shocking end.
- Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison. Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition.
