Category Archives: Bay Area
05/16/2010: Eating Our Words, Food and Poetry
Filipino Flavors: Tradition + Innovation
Literary Reading
EATING OUR WORDS: WRITINGS ABOUT FOOD & FAMILY
Sun May 16 | 1:00–2:30 pm, with light refreshments
Local writers share their poems, fiction and essays about two of the most important facets of life: our families and our food. Barbara Jane Reyes, Rashaan Alexis Meneses, Aileen Suzara, Aimee Suzara, Lizelle Festejo, Yael Villafranca and Lisa Suguitan Melnick read from their books and works-in-progress. Oscar Bermeo emcees. [More info about the conference is available at their website.]
Some Thoughts on Teaching: Syllabus for Fall 2010
Yes, it’s also that time, where I should have a more substantial syllabus already in the works for my Fall semester class on Filipino American cultural productions. The last time I taught this course, I conducted it as I would conduct a graduate level writing workshop/seminar. I’d told my department head this, and his response was affirming; indeed, undergraduates do need to learn different styles of teaching and learning, including seminar format, in which students really have to step up and own the assigned material and discussion.
One thing I have learned more concretely from this semester of teaching the arts course is the value of being able to interact with the artist or the author, to be able to ask them questions, and here, the full gamut of questions regarding artistic communities, interpretations of the work, discussions of artistic process and artistic influence, formal and informal education/training, art as a vehicle for social awareness and even social change.
Bay Area Filipino American Arts Events (from now until the end of the semester)
Dear all, for what it’s worth, I’ve been compiling local (Bay Area) Fil Am arts events for my students, whom I’ve required to attend at least two events this semester.
These events are free and open to the public, or are affordable/sliding scale admission. I thought I’d share these here, in case folks are interested in checking these out:
Continue reading
Curating a PAWA Eth-Noh-Tec Happening: Upcoming Interdisciplinary Event
I’m rather pleased with myself today, as I’m curating the June Eth-Noh-Tec salon, and this is who I’ve got lined up:
- Nara Denning, filmmaker, who recently spoke to my Fil Am Arts course earlier this semester after I showed her black and white silent film Madalien the Small.
- Aileen Ibardazola, poet whose first book is traje de boda, published by Meritage Press.
- Ron Quesada, the multi-instrumental musician behind Kulintronica.
- Sean San Jose, actor and co-founder of the theater company Campo Santo.
In addition, Eth-Noh-Tec’s Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo and Nancy Wang will perform. So, each artist has 15 minutes, then the conversation/Q&A with the audience. It’ll be a very good evening.
Continue reading
Identities and Influence: A Panel of Emerging Asian American Women Writers Thursday, April 22, 2010
Identities and Influence: A Panel of Emerging Asian American Women Writers
Two novelists, a short story writer, and a poet discuss what influences and inspires their writing and how they negotiate their identity as Asian American Women writers.
Anita Amirrezvani was born in Tehran, Iran, and raised in San Francisco. For ten years, she was a dance critic for newspapers in the Bay Area. She has received fellowships from the National Arts Journalism Program, the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institute for Dance, and the Hedgebrook Foundation for Women Writers. Amirrezvani’s first novel, The Blood of Flowers, skillfully interweaves culture, romance, and art.
Kathryn Ma’s stories have appeared in the Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Southwest Review, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Ma won the 2008 David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction for her title story and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. A lawyer and a Bread Loaf Scholar, she has taught Creative Writing in the MFA Program at the University of Oregon. All That Work and Still No Boys is her first book.
Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and her MFA at San Francisco State University. Reyes is the author of Gravities of Center and Poeta en San Francisco, which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her third book, entitled Diwata, is forthcoming in 2010.
Shawna Yang Ryan was born in Sacramento, California, the child of parents who met during the Vietnam War when her father was stationed in Taiwan. Ryan graduated from UC Berkeley, and received an M.A. from UC Davis. In 2002, she was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. Her novel Water Ghosts was a finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award.
Marianne Villanueva (moderator) is the author of the short story collections Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila and Mayor of the Roses. A third collection, The Lost Language, is forthcoming. Villanueva currently teaches writing and literature at Foothill College and Notre Dame de Namur University.
Co-sponsored by the USF Asian American Studies Program and the USF Center for the Pacific Rim
Call 415.422.6066 or email mfaw@usfca.edu for details and parking information
Thursday, April 22, 2010
7:30 pm Program
University of San Francisco
Fromm Hall
Free and open to the public
7:30 pm Program
University of San Francisco
Fromm Hall
Free and open to the public
04/02/2010: Transnational Poetics Panel at UC Berkeley
The Transnational American Studies Working Group and the Xican@ Culture Working Group present a reading and conversation with
Arturo Dávila
Barbara Jane Reyes
Javier O. Huerta
TRANSNATIONAL POETICS
Friday, April 2
Barbara Christian Room, 554 Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley
3-5 p.m.
PAWA Arkipelago Reading 03/29/2010 at 6:30 pm (SF)
[Please forward widely and share via your social media networks!]
Hi all, Please join us for our next event:
Gina Apostol will read from her new novel, The Revolution According to Raymond Mata (Anvil, 2009).
She will be joined by
Arlene Biala, author of Continental Drift (West End Press, 1999).
Vangie Buell, author of Twenty-Five Chickens and a Pig for a Bride (T’Boli, 2006).
Niki Escobar, poet and finalist for the FIlamore Tabios Sr. Memorial Prize for her manuscript, Loved Letters: Mailed Without a Scent of Home.
Monday March 29, 2010 @ 6:30 pm
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street (@6th Street), San Francisco.
FREE and open to the public.
International Women's Day at Bird & Beckett 03/08/2010
Publishing Thoughts for the End of the Year and Decade
I’m inspired, or touched, or feeling warm fuzzies in general about Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor’s and Veronica Montes’s recent blog posts. With Growing Up Filipino II, Bec is now experiencing her first publication in an anthology (as she notes, an actual book), feeling “less a could-be writer and more a in-fact writer.” Inspired by Bec’s post, Veronica, who is reading for the PAWA-sponsored San Francisco book launch, is remembering her own first anthology publication. In both of their cases, Cecilia Brainard was the editor responsible for selecting their work for publication.
I am moved to think back on my own first anthology publication, which was Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000), edited by Nick Carbó and Eileen Tabios. Years later, as Eileen came to speak on her work as a poet and editor at SFSU for Justin Chin’s class, I remember her saying that there were some newbie or emerging poets who’d submitted work, and whom she chose to include in the anthology because she believed publication would encourage or propel these poets to continue with their poetic work. Sitting in the lecture hall audience, I thought to myself, “She must mean (poets like) me.”