Closing Out 2022

It's the last day of the year. I stayed up too late last night watching season two of The White Lotus, but this morning we all slept in and woke up to a dreary December 31st. The oldest is studying her state capitals. The littlest is working on a puzzle. The partner is getting in a workout which leaves me taking stock. 

2022 has not been an easy year. This past school year was my hardest as a teacher mostly because the shutdown was so challenging for many of my students. Also, the whole family got COVID in April, but we've emerged from that relatively healthy. My own kids are adjusting well to being back to school in-person, and they have more school and sports activities than even their sports-obsessed educator-parents ever imagined. 

As a writer, I signed with Keyes Agency at the end of 2021, and having a novel out on submission has been a new kind of challenge. Still, a revise and resubmit request helped me strengthen my manuscript. The book hasn't sold just yet, but it is a better book today than it was a year ago. 

I published work I'm proud of and read some amazing books (although I'm still not back to reading like I did pre-COVID). So this morning, I updated my website and here are a few links if you're looking for something to read as we close out 2022. 

These two events pushed me back into the world and both were live-streamed so you can watch them. The first captures a powerful Get Lit performance by Venice Poets followed by a reading from Rice Paper Superheroes and tkk reading from her powerful book, Navigating With/Out Instruments. Then tkk and I sit in conversation about art, activism, and community building. The second event is with Women Who Submit, a Zoom event with WeHo Reads and Cody Sisco.

From Friday, September 16, 2022 at Beyond Baroque, I was able to read & share space with traci kato-kiriyama & Noriko Nakada. We gathered to celebrate tkk's book, Navigating With/Out Instruments, and our conversation looked at the ways art can excavate history and create a better future. 

On Wednesday, March 16, 2022 Women Who Submit presented at WeHo Reads about how we gather/ed throughout the pandemic. A healing exercise, panel, and performance of a group poem helped share how weekly check-ins with our WWS community kept us all afloat. 

While the novel was out on submission, I published a couple of essays and poems. You can read those here: 

"Night-Blooming Jasmine" an essay at Forty Fifty Women

"Poor Judgement: Remembering Japanese internment on a journey to Heart Mountain as Roe falls"

an essay at High Country News

"Marbles" part of a collection of remembrance poems on the 80th anniversary of EO 9066 at discover Nikkei. 

Recommended Reads: 

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Phillipe: This was a highly entertaining read about a young Black Canadian who moves with his mother to Austin after his parents’ divorce and his Mom’s new job at UT. The narrator is third-person close and hilarious as it following the journey of a smart-ass kid adjusting to life in a new place. 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet: The story of a town, Mallard, Louisiana, where folks marry light and these two girls witness their father’s lynching. The twins run away and one disappears into a white world while the other returns home with her Black daughter. A compelling and haunting account of the historical traumas we carry with us whether we like it or not. 

The New Kid by Jerry Craft: A graphic novel about a kid going to an elite private school. This banned book avoids Black trauma and focuses on universal issues of growing up. 

Navigating With/Without Instruments by traci akemi kato-kiriyama This is such a phenomenal hybrid work focusing on capturing life rather worrying about what genre can capture. With themes of community and intergenerational trauma, letter-writing and activism kato-kiriyama shows how we can honor our pasts by taking action in our present lives. 

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka: This third person plural novel is so beautifully rendered finding beauty in the harsh world of picture brides, early immigrant tensions, and Japanese incarceration. A beautiful capture of tragic collective trauma. 

Try Out by Christina Soontornvat  (Author), Joanna Cacao (Illustrator) A graphic novel about girls of color trying out to be cheerleaders in a conservative Texas town. I love the explorations of majority rules and popularity, girl friendships and family dynamics. 

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zaumer: this memoir explores the author’s relationship with her mother, the Korean side of her family, and her mother’s illness and death, Crying... captures the young artist struggling to find herself. With a father who is struggling with his own demons and a childhood seeking acceptance as a multiracial girl in a small town in Oregon (Eugene), the author reflections on new adulthood is beautiful to read. 

A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn: This devastating story and challenging read comes from the underworld: a spirit part flesh, part revenge. This cruel fiction exists within lives far too many experience. This book will haunt me for years and although I took several months to read it, this aswang's tale and the places and moments they brought to life force me to share space and pay my respects. 

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng: Reading his book after Chadburn’s meant I closed out the year holding my children a little closer. This tale made me want to both shield my children from the ills of the world and lean into the possibilities of what art can do to move toward a better one.