MERRILY

AWP Panel Proposal Submitted!

Just minutes ago, I submitted my AWP panel proposal for next year’s conference in Chicago.  It’s called “Where Veganism and Writing Intersect: A Reading and Discussion,” and includes three amazing writers: Adam Gnade, Ocean Vuong, and Monica Wendel.  Stay tuned for whether or not it gets accepted!

My Turnstyle Reading is tomorrow!

Dear Turnstyle Fans,

This is a quick reminder to attend the FINAL reading of the Spring 2011 Turnstyle Reading Series.  The reading will take place on Thursday, April 7th in the Segal Theater at the Center for Humanities, located at 365 5th Avenue at 34th Street in Manhattan.  The readings start at 6:30pm sharp, and tend to be very well attended..  We welcome you to come and to invite all of your friends.  (Please note that due to security issues, you may not be able to get into the reading after it starts.  Please let your guests know to come early or on time!)

Turnstyle is a Mixer designed to bring together the talented MFA students from CUNY’s four creative writing MFA programs: Queens, City, Hunter, and Brooklyn.  Each night, two students from each campus read alongside two members of the faculty.  The series is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Affiliation Group, The Center for the Humanities, and the Office of Academic Affairs.  Turnstyle is now in its third year.

The readers will be:
 
Victoria Brown, 
Jessie Male,
Sonia Valdiviezo, 
Jessie Chaffee,
Gracie Leavitt, 
Dana Collins 
Jolie Hale,
Lysette Simmons

Robert Viscusi, 
Kathryn Harrison

We hope to see you there!

All best,
Anne Hays

AWP!

Here is a photo of me reading my poetry.  

Seated to my right are my fellow adoptee poets, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs & Lee Herrick.

What a wonderful event!

AWP

Please come to my AWP panel today:

Finding Identity in Cultural Margins, A Reading and Discussion on Transracial Adoption

Featuring: Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Lee Herrick, and yours truly!

Lantern Review recommends you go in their guide to AWP, so now you have to!

Amazon Review

Amazon Review on Outsiders Within that 3 of 3 people found helpful!:

I am an adult Korean adoptee and I am so grateful for this book. It doesn’t explicitly pronounce judgment on adoption, but instead it represents its history, consequences & controversies through anecdotal evidence by adoptees themselves. These adoptee writers are diverse, representing countries from Korea to El Salvador, and professions from clinical psychology to poetry. The juxtapositions of critical analysis to poetry to personal essay is truly complimentary in that the factual is not favored hierarchically over the mythological and imaginative narrative. Adoptees’ constructions of such narratives are often more revealing of the “reality” of adoption than any well researched account. 

From experience, I know that as an adoptee it is often difficult to convey the experiences of immigration and assimilation-an obstacle that is compounded by attitudes from more traditional immigrant communities (I am Asian American, but not quite) and the attitudes of the social infrastructure that considers the Asian adoptee archetype as “well-adjusted” and “practically white”-which is why this book is so important. It represents the adoptee experience in all its multi-faceted joy and sorrow and offers a voice when one’s own feels stifled. 

I have recommended this book to all of my immediate family and I believe that it should be required reading for any potential adoptive parent. This book has taught me how tragically lax prerequisites to adopt are and how important global consciousness and race education should be in the decision making process. It also stresses the need to redirect the adoption debate to its core by fixing the political and social systems leading to adoption rather than fretting about the ethical/unethical aftermath. This book is a crucial component for changing the tide of current attitudes towards adoption.