Publishing Round Up for 2017

With three days left in 2017, I'm behind on my blog posts, so I'm going to try to make these last three days count.

In 2017, I continued to work hard at getting more of my work out in the world. Women Who Submit, an amazing group of writers here in Los Angeles has been a driving force for me.

I managed to get 70 submissions out this year to literary magazines, presses, conferences, agents, residencies, anthologies, and book contests. Here is a summary of my work published online and in print this past year.

"A Short History of Insanity" an essay that is the opening pages of Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop: One Family's Battle with Mental Illness was originally published in Meridian's winter issue. It was then republished in Lunch Ticket's alumni issue for the 20th anniversary of Antioch's MFA program.

Compose magazine chose "Picture Day," an essay from Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural America which ran this past spring.

I'd been trying to find a home for "Running from the Dark" for three years and it finally made it's way to readers in Catapult this past May after editor Mensah Demary made it better.

"Geometry," a flash essay from Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural America went up at Lady Liberty Lit in May as well.

Over spring break, I had a series of nightmares. This was in the middle of National Poetry Month, so the nightmares ended up in these poems. In June, two poems I started writing that spring break went up at Rising Phoenix Review: "Sarin Nightmare" and "Mother of All Bombs."

In July, Linden Avenue published, "Final Days," a poem I wrote about losing my mom.

I finally broke into an Asian American press when Kartika picked up two poems: "Camp Stories," and "Howl."

This past fall, Sky Island Journal published "Winter Ball," an essay from my middle school memoir Overdue Apologies.

My last publication this year came in December when East Jasmine Review picked up an essay from Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural America: "Open Gym."

This year I also had the chance to read for Women Who Submit at the West Hollywood Lit Crawl and to attend a week-long residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods. Through Eyes Like Mine was also short-listed for the 2040 Prize which seemed to breathe new life into this book.

2017 was a challenging year, but I appreciate all who read my work and work by those who attempt to cut through the noise, challenge long-held silences, and use art to resist. 2018: let's do this.

52 Poems: Week 17 Henry Luke

This week I'm sharing a hapa slam poet. It hits close to home with issues of racial identity. I love how he asks his audience to stand up, to take pride in being whole. Our world might want to break us down and make us invisible but we define who we are. Take a listen because poetry is meant to be heard!

52 Poems: Week 7 Langston Hughes

It's a tough time to be a public school teacher and in Los Angeles there is a big school board race with national implications. As an advocate for access and equity in public education for ALL students (particularly those students who sit in my classroom every school day and are often unseen or cared for by those in decision-making positions of power) I am thinking about the big picture in the same way this poem is. I hope and work everyday for education policy to change course and I hope in this election, the people will let America be America again. So here is Langston Hughes with a poem that reminded me of my vision of "we, the people," the American ideals of equality, and the dream of what public education could be...

Let America Be America Again
By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!