Wierd

So I'm idly browsing some stories on the announcement by 15-year-old golf prodigy Michelle Wie that she's going pro when I start to notice some oddities about the way her nationality and ethnicity are being described.

The first story, from the Rocky Mountain News:

Wie, though born in Hawaii, is of Korean ancestry and speaks fluent Korean. The straight-A student also is learning to speak Chinese and Japanese and figures to be a bigger draw in Asia than she has been in the United States.

Emphasis added, obviously: so what's with that "though"? As if her being American-born was an afterthought, secondary to her ethnic origins?

And there's another theme that I started noticing in all the articles--the idea that Wie is going to be a huge hit in Asia. But again, this story seems to make slightly too big a deal of this: why would she be so much more popular overseas than in her own country? Are Americans going to have a problem with her?

So then I see this AP story in the SF Chronicle:

But her marketing appeal is above any other woman in golf — a 6-footer of Korean heritage who was raised in Hawaii, has loads of charisma and power and a captivating smile to boot.

This avoids the question of nativity altogether--indeed, it implies that Wie is not American-born but was just brought up in Hawaii.

More on the Asian theme from Sports Illustrated:

Her heritage -- both of Wie's parents are Korean-born -- suggests that she will be embraced by Asian golf fans.

Go on, I dare you: "Tiger Woods's heritage--his father is black--suggests that he will be embraced by African golf fans."

Of course the Tiger Woods comparisons are everywhere, but without any of the "breakthrough" rhetoric that accompanied the perception of Woods as the breakthrough black golfer (even though Woods is, of course, part Asian); Wie's ethnicity is all gravy, pure marketing pleasure:

She's a Tiger-like blend of promise, magnetism, ethnicity (a Korean-American from Hawaii) and glamour.

Well, at least that guy knows the term "Korean-American."

Maybe the oddest piece is a long feature in Fortune that hauls out pretty much every stereotype of the model minority family you can think of:

Up to this point it has been the three Wies—Michelle, BJ, and Bo—vs. the world. As first-generation Americans who speak English as a second language, BJ (short for Byung-Wook) and Bo (short for Hyun Kyong) have guided their daughter's every move through the fierce world of high-stakes golf.

I'm curious about the relationship between that "As first-generation Americans..." and the rest of the sentence: just an oddly dangling modifier? Or (as I suspect) a implicit reflection of the inward-looking, controlling Asian immigrant family? (Compare the characterization of Wie's parents to, say, that of Venus and Serena Williams's father, who's usually portrayed as a raging tyrant.)

The bottom line, of course, is that Michelle Wie is (exotically) hot:

Over six feet tall, with creamy skin and black sloping eyes, Michelle Wie is a knockout.

Black sloping eyes? Oh no you didn't.

Don't worry, though. Michelle Wie is still a good all-Asian American girl.

She stresses about the SATs and getting into college. (Her top choice is Stanford.)

Look out.

Susan Wheeler at UChicago

POEM PRESENT Reading and Lecture Series

SUSAN WHEELER
Reading: Thursday, October 6
Classics 10, 1010 E. 59th Street
5:30pm
A reception will follow the reading


Lecture: Friday, October 7
Wieboldt 408, 1050 E. 59th Street
1:00pm


Title: "Mutant Vernaculars!"

Susan Wheeler is the author of four collections of poetry, Bag ‘o’ Diamonds (1993, University of Georgia Press), Smokes (1998, Four Way Books), Source Codes (2001, Salt Publishing), and Ledger (2005, U of Iowa Press); and of Record Palace, a novel (2005, Graywolf Press). Her awards include the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, two Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work has appeared in eight editions of the Scribner anthology Best American Poetry, as well as in The Paris Review, London Review of Books, Verse, Talisman, The New Yorker and many other journals. On the creative writing faculties at Princeton University and the New School’s graduate program, she has also taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, Rutgers, and New York University.

Recent interviews w/ Susan Wheeler:
http://www.bombsite.com/wheeler/wheeler.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/29/AR2005092901777.html

Susan Wheeler's reading is funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc

This event is free and open to the public.

Myopic Poetry Series: October

MYOPIC POETRY SERIES -- a weekly series of poetry, fiction, and occasional talks

Myopic Books in Chicago -- Sundays at 7:00 / 1564 N. Milwaukee Avenue, 2nd Floor

OCTOBER EVENTS

Sunday October 2 - Chicago Noir hosted by Adam Levin

Sunday October 9 - Melissa Buzzeo and Amina Cain

Sunday October 16 - Raymond L. Bianchi and Jennifer Karmin

Sunday October 23 - Matvei Yankelevich and Anna Moschovakis

UPCOMING

Sunday November 6 -- Phil LaMarche & Chris Fink

Sunday November 13 - Andrew Zawacki and RM Vaughan

Sunday November 20 - Tyehimba Jess and Krista Franklin

Sunday November 28 - NO READING THIS WEEK

Sunday December 4 -- Stefan Kiesbye & Jeff Parker

Sunday December 11- Simone Muench and Barry Silesky

Sunday December 18 - Matt Hart and TBA

Sunday December 25 - NO READING THIS WEEK

Realizing the extent to which Sau-ling Wong's theory of Asian American literature relies on an analogy between texts and persons:

Just as the Asian American ethnic group is a political coalition, Asian American literature may be thought of as an emergent and evolving textual coalition, whose interests it is the business of a professional coalition of Asian American critics to promote.

It's an elegant conception, simple to the point of brilliance, possibly the only coherent theory of how Asian American texts work together I've seen. Reading the rest of the book, I can't argue with the results.

But I'm still trying to decide whether, on some more fundamental level, I buy that basic move. It's a way around the thornier word "tradition"--acknowledging that the usual lines of influence and direct allusion that might define, say, the tradition of British or American letters simply won't suffice to hold together a diffuse and emergent canon. It's also a way to avoid a conception of Asian American literature that uses an extratextual prop--say, the (fictious) unity of "Asian American history" or "Asian American experience"--to give the category coherence.

Comment box spammers seem to have found me over the weekend; I came back to a good two or three dozen junk comments. I may have to suspend commenting if it continues, despite the devastating impact I know that will have on national poetry discourse.

Long absence over the past month largely due to general start-of-term busyness, I guess. I'm again teaching an undergrad course on Asian North American literature (this week: Carlos Bulosan; next week: Asian American poetry from the 1970s), as well as (for the first time) a grad course in Asian North American studies. Two things I've concluded from the latter so far: Frank Chin is a much better and more nuanced critic of Asian American writing than you'd think from his over-the-top rhetoric; and the most intelligent and sensitive reader of Asian American literature I've seen is Sau-ling Wong, hands down. Reading Asian American Literature is just good. (I guess it's that Stanford Ph.D.)

In other news, I did make it to the Toronto Film Festival for at least a couple of showings; given the overwhelming schedule, I picked more or less and random, with predictably random results. The closet thing to a big-ticket experience I had was Breakfast on Pluto, for which I waited in the longest line I've ever seen: well over three city blocks long. I enjoyed it in an antic sort of way, although the weird stitching-together of queer-coming-of-age story and IRA violence was jarring and even clumsy at times (e.g. the slow-motion explosion of a disco ball in a bombed nightclub), and Cillian Murphy's performance was compelling despite the occasional Mrs. Doubtfire quality to his breathy falsetto. Still, I got to see Ralph Fiennes shamble up to the stage for the Q&A and Murphy hiding behind his hair as he murmured responses to audience queries.

I also took in an hour-long sampling of films by Ernie Gehr, silent street scenes filmed in New York in the 1970s and recently edited onto digital video: screamingly dull for the first twenty minutes or so and then there was that breakthrough that you sometimes get in the midst of boredom, where the abstract shapes of shadows passing rapidly over a paving stone seemed compellingly beautiful. Not so rewarding was the program of Canadian short films I saw: some hideously pretentious animations; an entertaining visualization of a poem by Al Purdy; and some videos made on a cell phone.

Meanwhile, what you should all be doing instead of reading this silly blog is buying this. If you already haven't.

Hello, Toronto! (II)

Oh, and can someone please tell me what the heck a "German sausage" is?

Hello, Toronto!

Did you miss me?