So many choices. This weekend’s show at the Kitchen Theatre had some interesting questions. One young Korean American woman asked whether I preferred to be considered an Asian American writer or just a writer? And as always, I come up with witty comebacks HOURS after it really matters.
Oh, I said something intelligible, but here’s what I would love to say: A good story is a good story. You can’t ignore the socioeconomic context of a character, and I do think it’s good to crank out work that describes people who do not get as much coverage as others. And I’m serious about always including a Korean American character in scripts and stories, so that someone who looks like me can play the person in the movies. I also believe how we represent people in art can impact how we treat each other in real life. I’m not interested in perpetuating stereotypes–that’s not real, they’re not human. We do need more Asian American characters who are not Chinese food delivery guys with accents, hookers, nerds, etc., but also, that idea alone doesn’t create the heart of a good story. You can’t write a story from a place of “I’m a Korean American.” It’s got to be how you feel about it — I feel alienated it, I love it, I feel ostracized from it, or SOMETHING. It’s got to be a feeling, not just a theory. And every story, swear to goodness, if it’s really good, is something anyone can all relate to.
Still, as long as we have the option of choosing which prism to see through, why not Asian American characters? It’s not like the market is flooded with them.
And to the one gentleman who requested where he could find my fiction, I will post publications on this site. I’m a little leery of sharing fiction, mostly b/c I think my fake stories are so much more revealing than my true ones.Â
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Come see My Mom Across America featuring myself, the lovely Amy Kohn on accordion, and the saucy Jesse Jou as director in Ithaca, New York this weekend — February 23 through 25th at the Kitchen Theatre.
Weird, I took the subway uptown on Monday to buy a triangle mallet, and who sits across me with his novel but the Verizon guy. Same haircut, same glasses. Very odd to be so close to him! And what I do with all famous people in my vicinity, I think about them for a short intense time, for the duration that they’re in my obrit. Why is he riding the subway? He’s like in a kabillion commercials, this guy has got to be loaded. His family in Westchester probably still remember in “Pippin” in the ninth grade and how he showed something special, but till he booked this recent gig, they still thought he should give law school a whirl. Perhaps his friends in Brooklyn still invite him for parties on Saturday which he shows up less and less for. Some will say he hasn’t changed, others will think he’s definitely gotten a little too big for the britches, but only Verizon guy will really know if he’s different or not.
Love hurts, you guys, when only one’s in love. Happy belated Valentine’s Day!
Sleep, elusive sleep. Man, there’s very little in the world I love as much as sleep. (Well, that’s not true exactly. I love sleep, I love my bed, but I also love my husband, my parents, my friends, ice cream, vacation, a $10 bottle of red wine (oh yeah, I live large) the list goes on. I’m crazy about ice cream.) But after our Philly excursion, I came back with a fever and took Thera Flu on Wednesday night and proceeded to stay up till 4 a.m.! David was out till late so he didn’t witness me lying down for thirty minutes, getting up for thirty, down for thirty, up for thirty. It was terrible. You lie there, thinking about everything you have to do in the morning, what you have to be alert for. You get angry at yourself for not being asleep. I mean, what’s the big deal? All I usually have to do is lie in bed or put my head down on my desk, and then BOOM, I’m out, sleep comes as easily as writing my novel never does.
The only thing worse than having peers who are more successful than you is having people who are younger outdo you. (My friend Jenn came up with the latter point when a young alumni from her college starred in “Carrie, Part 2.”) You know Morrissey, lead singer of the Smiths? He recorded the very peppy, sweet-sounding tune “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful,” which makes me laugh. 
My friend Becca and I traveled to Philly to visit Sung-Ji, Greg, Danny, Kirsten, and Danny and Kirsten’s brood of Simon (7), Bishop (3 or 4), and Koan (1 or so) “what is the sound of one cheek farting” Kashock. (Not my koan joke; see Katherine Min’s short story about dating a monk.) As soon as the boys arrived to Sung-Ji’s house, they hit the ground running, relaying from the living room to the kitchen and back, wrestling, using each other as horses, smothering each other. It was like being in a pin ball machine all of a sudden. Amazing how little they were and yet the entire atmosphere exploded once they arrived.
Oh man, when my folks moved to Brooklyn this fall at my behest, it was a gigantic, life-changing move — for them. They left their house of more than twenty years in idyllic, suburban New Jersey, to a smaller apartment, a more low-maintenance home near me, a total big deal. We moved them, so that the two of them would no longer have to shovel snow, drive a car, climb onto the roof to empty the gutter, or obsess over the flooding garage. But now, every time something goes wrong with their apartment, I feel an overwhelming amount of guilt. Although I really try to help their sense of well-being, I flip when things go wrong, and the transition has been anything but smooth or cheap. First of all, with any NYC-area property, you spend less time looking at it than a piece of clothing — that’s how nutty the market is. And only after living in the new pad have problems come up. The latest being the LACK OF HEAT.