Aaww Radio: New Asian American Writers & Literature

Is language adequate to describe the harsh reality of incarceration? Which words are used too often, too lazily, not often enough? We’ll hear from four people who are writers, journalists, and professors, approaching these subjects surrounding incarceration from different angles; Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza. They read and talk with AAWW's Prisons Editor Daniel A. Gross about the evolving language of 2019 and the way it shapes lives, going in-depth on subjects such as how bureaucratic prison language invalidates and harms trans people, the stigma of a murder conviction, how to use alternative language to subvert carceral language, and much more. Watch the whole event (especially if you're curious about Nicole Fleetwood's slideshow) on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9IhmEa46TQ

We hosted a reading and conversation with novelist Esmé Weijun Wang, author of the New York Times-bestselling new essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias. She was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and has won a Whiting Award. The Collected Schizophrenias, which won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, is, as NPR writes, “riveting, honest, and courageously allows for complexities in the reality of what living with illness is like.” After reading from her work, Esmé has a conversation with Larissa Pham, writer and author of the novella Fantasian. Together they discuss how to write vulnerably while maintaining boundaries, little things we can do for each other when our friends and family are going through difficult times, and much more.

For Asian American poets, what is the relationship between bearing witness to history and giving voice to marginalized communities? At the 2019 AWP Conference and Bookfair held in Portland in March, AAWW hosted a panel titled Poets vs. Community vs. History, moderated by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello with E.J. Koh, Yanyi, Emily Jungmin Yoon, & Monica Sok. These multidisciplinary writers talk about how their work as poets, editors, translators, and scholars allows them to uncover intimacies among seemingly disparate colonial histories, and contextualize narratives of intergenerational trauma. They draw on their varied practices to explore how the individual pursuits of poets can build empathy and community.   E.J. Koh is the author of A Lesser Love, awarded the Pleiades Editors Prize, and her memoir The Magical Language of Others. Koh has accepted fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, MacDowell Colony, and elsewhere. Yanyi is a poet and critic. The recipient of fellowships from Po

In March, we co-presented a series of conversations with DVAN, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. For this podcast we’ll be listening to an introduction by DVAN founder and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer Viet Than Nguyen. Following this is a conversation around the concept of Vietnamese ghost stories moderated by Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis and featuring authors Violet Kupersmith, Thanhha Lai, & Vu Tran. The order they’re listed here is the same order they answer the first question. Together, they dissect the concept of the ghost story, as a metaphor for the immigrant, a reflection of the self and one’s deepest fears and insecurities, and then broaden the conversation to talk about community and what a Vietnamese diasporic literary community looks like to them. Violet Kupersmith is the author of The Frangipani Hotel, a collection of supernatural short stories about the legacy of the Vietnam War. She is writing a forthcoming novel about ghosts and American expats in modern-da

We're featuring audio from a 2017 event collaboration with the Tenement Museum. We celebrated the launch of author Min Jin Lee’s second novel Pachinko, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2017 and National Book Award Finalist. Pachinko follows one Korean family through generations. The story begins in Korea in the early 1900s and then moves to Japan. The family endures harsh discrimination, catastrophe, and poverty. They also encounter joy as they rise to meet the challenges their new home presents. Through desperate struggle and hard-won triumph, they are bound together by deep roots that are set as their family faces enduring questions of faith, family, and identity. Min Jin Lee reads from her novel and then is interviewed by Ken Chen, the executive director of the Asian American Writers Workshop. They discuss her extensive research and interview process, how growing up in Queens, New York helped her write Pachinko, and much more. Watch the full event on our YouTube channel, as well as our other past

Gina Apostol’s latest work of fiction, Insurrecto, is a tour de force about about the Philippines’ past and present told through rivaling scripts from an American filmmaker and her Filipino translator. The book was one of the New York Times’ Editor’s Choices for 2018 and won comparisons to Nabokov and Borges for its kaleidoscopic structure. With her trademark wit, uncommon humor, layering of forgotten histories and dueling narratives, Gina tells the story of the atrocities that faced Filipinos who rose up against their colonizers during the Philippine-American war at the turn of the 20th century. Gina Apostol reads from Insurrecto and then is joined by Filipina-Australian writer Sabina Murray, author of the novel Valiant Gentlemen. Together they discuss weaving together nonlinear narratives, the uselessness of white guilt, Duterte reprising the role of the American colonizer in the Philippines through violence, and much more. Featuring the songs Ang Lupa ang Dahilan & Agit Speech by Material Support, a Fi

In 2017, we hosted novelists Kamila Shamsie and Hirsh Sawhney, both writers who released new novels about South Asian families fractured in the diaspora. Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire takes Sophocles’s classic tragedy Antigone as the starting point for her novel about political tensions in the War on Terror and the way it impacts Muslim families in the West. Hirsh Sawhney’s debut novel South Haven illustrates how grief complicates and splinters intimacy in an Indian-American family. The two authors read from their work, and talk with journalist Rozina Ali about power structures, American Empire in literature, the collective grief following Partition in 1947, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism, as well as speak to America’s complicity in the formation of ISIS, and debunk myths on the War on Terror. The authors also do a deep dive on craft, and discuss authenticity and the responsible imagination; as well as how to control (and not control) when your audience misreads your writing.

We're featuring writers Rahul Mehta and SJ Sindu who read from debut novels No Other World and Marriage of a Thousand Lies featuring complex queer South Asian characters. They have a conversation with writer and Shoreline Review editor Sreshtha Sen about writing transnational narratives, how cultural trauma affects what we write, and resisting the common coming out story. How do you come out to family members whose language you don’t speak?

We’re reaching back over a decade into our archives to 2005, when Diane C. Fujino released Yuri Kochiyama's biography Heartbeat of Struggle. To celebrate the book's release, activist and saxophonist Fred Ho invited Yuri's friends & contemporaries Baba Herman Ferguson, Esperanza Martell, & Laura Whitehorn to our space to speak on Yuri Kochiyama's legacy as a radical Asian American political activist. Afterwards Diane C. Fujino talks about Yuri Kochiyama's political awakening from her early years in a concentration camp in Arkansas during World War II, to her friendship with Malcolm X in New York City, and her years after as a tireless advocate for political prisoners and countless struggles around the world. Cosponsored by the NYU A/P/A/ Institute

How is resistance possible when reality itself is obscured? In an era of "fake news" and more facts than anyone could hope to grasp, authoritarians rely on this uncertainty to consolidate their hold on power. This episode we're featuring audio from our 2017 event Speaking Truth to Power. Legendary journalist Raissa Robles joins us from the Philippines to share her work, Marcos Martial Law: Never Again, which reappraises the era of Marcos and applies it lessons to what is unfolding today. Former AAWW Open City Fellow and journalist Raad Rahman will share her research on state repression in Bangladesh, from the Rohingya refugees fleeing attacks in Myanmar to the persecution of LGBTQ Bangladeshis, and writer and translator Tenzin Dickie will discuss writing and translating work about Tibetans navigating the ongoing Chinese occupation. Following the readings will be a Q&A moderated by Jeremy Tiang, acclaimed translator and author of State of Emergency, the award winning novel that traces leftist movements thr

We hear from Open City Neighborhood Fellows Roshan Abraham, Pearl Bhatnagar, and Huiying Bernice Chan, who have been documenting the pulse of metropolitan Asian America as it's being lived on the streets of New York right now, and our Muslim Communities fellows, Aber Kawas, Humera Afridi, and Sarah Moawad, who have been writing on the city's Muslim American communities over the past six months. They read from their recently published pieces about a donation-based sufi in Brooklyn, immigration activist Ravi Ragbir, and Nepali Working Class Women fighting for TPS Status. You’ll also learn about the BDS-supporting, pro-Palestinian City Council candidate el-Yateem in Bay Ridge  how to search for your family roots as a Chinese American, and the annual pilgrimage people take to Malcolm X’s resting place. Moderated by Roja Heydarpour.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice outlines what it means to create spaces by and for sick and disabled queer people of color. In this episode of AAWW Radio, Leah reads from her essay collection and then has a conversation with Cyrée Jarelle Johnson about meaningful inclusion of disability justice, Intersectional disability, the nuances and multitudes of the disability experiences, and “crip wealth.”

We’re bringing you another episode of Poetry Potluck featuring audio from our favorite AAWW poetry events and showcasing exciting poets of the moment. In Poetry Potluck 3, we celebrate Emily Jungmin Yoon’s debut collection of poetry, A Cruelty Special to our Species. As the Poetry editor for The Margins, Emily has cultivated a special home for Asian American poetry in all its richness, and we’re thrilled to celebrate her collection. Emily Jungmin Yoon collects testimony and confronts history in her debut collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species. The poems in this book are records of earthly and human violence—the sexual slavery of Korean comfort women, lives lost during natural disasters, and the everyday, accumulating ways that women hurt and are made to silently accept that pain. These are poems deeply invested in the minutiae of language, how one word leads to the next, connecting sound, rhythm, and meaning between languages, poets, and women. She has invited three poets to read alongside her; Wo Chan,

In Poetry Potluck 2, we have Vivek Shraya and Fatimah Asghar, who read from their poetry books I’m Afraid of Men and If They Come For Us. In Vivek Shraya’s I’m Afraid of Men, she explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl, and contemplates how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century. Vanity Fair writes, “Vivek Shraya transforms her long-festering fears of men into cultural rocket fuel … Shraya’s dispatches from the frontlines of life as a queer, trans woman of color are frequently illuminating, painfully honest, and, in spite of everything, hopeful.” If They Come For Us is Fatimah Asghar’s debut poetry collection, where she captures her experience as a Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America, exploring identity, inheritance, and healing. The Library Journal writes, “Her story sweeps wide, becoming the history of India, Partition, genocidal hatred, and timeless misogyny. In the telling, she moves freely in form.”

Has your superstitious grandma ever told you myths that you haven’t been able to forget? In this episode of AAWW Radio, we have critically acclaimed cartoonist and Last Night’s Reading creator Kate Gavino, who has invited some of her favorite writers to read short stories about Asian grandmas. Kate Gavino’s new graphic novel Sanpaku explores the Japanese myth through the eyes of Marcine, an impressionable Filipina preteen who lives for her grandmother’s eccentric stories. She is joined by The Verge's Angela Chen, Little A editor Vivian Lee, Catapult's Matt Ortile, and editor and author Rakesh Satyal-- and together they share stories about their grandmothers, and all the feelings of love, loss, and guilt that come with them.

The Incendiaries is a dark, glittering, and obsessive new novel from R.O. Kwon. It’s a fractured love story, a inside look at a campus cult, and a literary thriller. It’s also already a bestseller. The Incendiaries follows the journey of a Korean American college student who falls under the spell of grief. As she finds new love, she’s also lured to violence in a Christian cult tied to North Korea.  R.O. Kwon spoke with Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and the new essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. R.O. told him about growing up Korean and Christian, and shares an unpopular opinion: that books should be shelved with the spine facing inwards. She also talks about losing her faith, both in religion and in art.

In this episode of AAWW Radio, join us as four authors—Lee Herrick, Tracy O’Neill, Matthew Salesses, and Sung J. Woo-read from new books that grapple with the realities of adoption, broken families, and the journeys we take to find out where we belong. The authors discuss the identity politics that go hand-in-hand with having a white name and a Korean self, small victories when it comes to adoptee visibility in everyday life, and the importance of seeing your own reflection. This conversation is moderated by Shinhee Han, who teaches Asian American literature at Columbia University and has written extensively on transnational adoption. This event was co-sponsored by Also Known As, Sejong, and FCCNY.

In 2016, we hosted the New York launch of Scholar Christine Bacareza Balance’s book Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America, a vital exploration of post-WWII Filipinx literary and musical culture. In this episode of AAWW Radio, we’ll hear Christine read from her book as she asks, “How do Filipinos make music? And what else do these acts of music making do?” Opening for Christine is former AAWW Literary Award winner and Guggenheim Fellowship-winning poet Patrick Rosal, whose poetry and essays channel DJ culture, family history, and community to explore vital questions about race in America. Afterwards, they have a conversation moderated by novelist Jessica Hagedorn, author of Toxicology and former bandleader of The Gangster Choir. Together they discuss Pinoy DJs and turntabling (Shout out to DJ Qbert), the act of disobedient listening, and how immigrant parents remix their lives in order to survive.

Two years ago on this month, we celebrated the release of Solmaz Sharif's award-winning debut poetry collection Look. Her poetry bears witness to, in the words of NPR, “war in the Middle East, the war on terror, the devastation ravaged upon families in the name of freedom.” Featuring poets and artists Mariam Ghani, Cathy Park Hong, Rickey Laurentiis, and Solmaz Sharif herself, they read from their work analyze state sponsored violence through language, form poems from redacted letters to people imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, and parse what Rickey Laurentiis calls “the fault line from Ferguson to Palestine.” Moderated and introduced by AAWW Editorial Director Jyothi Natarajan.

In this episode of AAWW Radio, we’re celebrating the launch of Marianna’s Beauty Salon, Bushra Rehman’s debut poetry collection that captures the nuances and magic of growing up as a South Asian American femme in Queens. Bushra Rehman reads alongside writers Quincy Scott Jones, Sadia Shepard, and Jai Dulani. You’ll hear a hilarious story about a plane full of Pakistanis marooned in Charles De Gaulle airport, police brutality interpolated into James Brown lyrics, poetic reflections on resistance, and much more.