Clever Words

I think we can all blame this one on me. I'm the one who suggested that my mother order the Taiwanese cable channels. Then she got hooked and she discovered the DVD store in Chinatown. By that time it was all over.

Before we moved to Brooklyn, one of the biggest bones of contention between my mother and my husband was the television. My mother is obsessed with Chinese-language dramas and commandeered the television because there was only one in the apartment. Then we moved, J. got a fancy new HDTV, and peace reigns to this day. Except my mother watches lots of television. She went through an associate's degree program and earned both her G.E.D., and associate's degree. While doing this (with plenty of *help* from the family) she vastly improved her spoken English. She improved her reading as well, but she's still not completely literate in English, but believe me, her vocabulary has expanded immensely. I'm really proud of her, but since she's started watching all this Chinese-language television we worry that she might start the regress. Then again, I feel guilty about worrying about that because why shouldn't she participate in culture in her native tongue? She's basically retired, and she's not hurting anyone. I also think that part of this new obsession is because she hasn't visited Taiwan or seen a single member of her family in 10 years. I can't imagine not seeing my sister for that long, but my mother's lived this sort of life ever since she moved to America. She's the only one who was able to come to America (and not because she didn't try to sponsor her relatives) and that's because she was married to my father, an American citizen. I think she's dealing with tremendous homesickness and watching Chinese-language TV helps.

She's still curious about English though. The other day I said she was clever and she asked me to define it for her. I said it meant she was smart, which she liked, but when I added that it had an element of sneakiness to it she didn't like that. She said, "sneaky is bad". And really, my definition doesn't hew exactly to the dictionary definition, but that's the meaning I was assigning to the word when I called her clever. This was an enjoyable exchange because it showed me that she's still interested in learning more English.

I've discovered that the best way to get my mother to stop doing something is to suggest that that particular action I don't want her to do causes cancer. I was sick of seeing plastic forks in the sink so I said, "Hey, ma. Did you know that using plastic forks causes cancer?" She demanded to know how this happened. So I made some shit up and said, "The plastic gives off chemicals that can give you cancer." Well, that caught her attention and she told me to chuck the forks in the garbage. Mission accomplished. I've now scared her off of plastic utensils. I thought that this was a fool-proof method of manipulating my mother.

Then my sister tried this tactic, but she used it against the one thing my mother will risk illness for: television.

My sister said, "Mom. I read an article that said that it's not good to watch too much TV because it makes you lose your memory. You might get Alzheimer's." Well, we were having a great dinner. I'd made braised pork with kale, polenta, and acorn squash. We were all digging in and then I noticed that my mother was wearing her trademark sour expression. My sister said, "I just don't want you to forget how to speak English. If that happens, how are we going to speak to you?" This didn't sit well with my mother because it touched several raw nerves for her. One thing my mother hates is the idea that her freedoms are being infringed upon. You'd think my mother hailed from New Hampshire, with their motto- Live Free or Die- because that's my mom's motto. She wants you to let her live the way she wants to live (unless it causes cancer, but apparently she's willing to risk Alzheimer's disease). The other thing that ticked her off is that it was coming from my sister. She thinks my sister likes to stick her nose in her business and she doesn't like it one bit. "You always sticking your nose in my business!" They fight- a lot. Knock-down, drag-out, cat-scratching, vicious fights. They spar with words and fists. Well, my mother uses her fists, my sister just tries to deflect the blows. But since we've moved my mother's trying. She told her, "I don't want to fight with you." Then she said, "TV is my hobby." That just tickled me. Her saying that TV is her hobby is a direct result of her getting that associate's degree. She never would have said that years ago, and she would have been extremely frustrated that she couldn't say what she was thinking (in a much more barbed and eloquent way) in Taiwanese or Mandarin. I loved the fact that she called television her "hobby".The third thing that bothered my mother was my sister's suggestion that my mother's English was slipping, or in danger of slipping. It would be a loss of communication if she couldn't speak English anymore because my sister and I don't speak Mandarin or Taiwanese. I studied Mandarin in college, and I still understand some words, and phrases, and I can distinguish between Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Cantonese, but I can't communicate in either language. My sister is worse off because she never studied Chinese and she never spoke the language at all. I spoke it until I was five and then my father panicked because I came back from Taiwan having temporarily forgotten how to speak English. So my dad told my mom not to speak with me in Taiwanese or Mandarin, and then I remembered English, but promptly forgot Chinese. By the time my sister started speaking, we didn't speak any Chinese languages at home. I still resent my father for making that decision. And my mother, normally so headstrong, didn't think that her language could co-exist with English, or was afraid to displease my father. So, language is a sensitive subject with my mother. I think it has always been a sensitive subject for my mother's family. My grandmother and oldest aunt lived during the Japanese occupation and my grandmother wasn't literate in Chinese, and my aunt still understands Japanese. My mother is self-conscious about her English, and I know that it bothers her that her daughters don't speak Chinese. She is especially angry about the fact that my father didn't make much of an effort to learn how to speak Chinese. This stings now because he learned how to speak Spanish for a woman, after he and my mother divorced. Granted, Chinese is much harder to learn than Spanish, but they were married for about 20 years. He could have tried.

So this little comment about how she should watch less television didn't sit well with my mother. I think she should read the Chinese language newspaper more, and practice reading English, but I also know that she's very home sick. She's going to go to Taiwan for at least six months, if not longer, as soon as my sister files her taxes for her. I'm happy she's going, and I think she'll be too busy visiting with relatives, and sightseeing, to bother with TV while she's there.

All of this has renewed my resolve to study Mandarin again. It will most likely take me years to become anywhere close to fluent, but hey, I have an iPod app for that. I just have to use it.

James

James. Just James.

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And the Living is Easy

Well, we finally moved to Brooklyn. It took all summer for us to work out the mortgage, and then last minute problems that prevented us from closing, but we finally closed and moved into our new apartment Labor Day weekend.

We moved into a new 3 story townhouse condo. For those who don't know, a condo doesn't mean over priced glass tower in Williamsburg. It's just a means of ownership, like a co-op. Anyway, we don't live on that side of Brooklyn. We live on the Southern end of Prospect Park, a few blocks east of the park. We're in a heavily West Indian Caribbean neighborhood. We also happened to move in on Carnival weekend. Heard lots of thumping bass from the reggae and what-not playing.

We have a 3 bedroom, and the whole family moved to Brooklyn. Mom, sister, husband, and myself. My mom is always a given, and my sister was an afterthought. It's actually quite nice to be living with my sister again. She and I have good times laughing and talking in our own shorthand. The apartment isn't the most spacious, but then again, we own this thing and will be paying a 30 yr mortgage. It's great for the price and what we could afford. If it was 2 feet wider it would be perfect. That said, we had to really finagle the space issue. Basically we still have too many books. Plus mom's Buddha altar puts restrictions on use of space.

That said, it's coming along nicely. We'll get the last of our furniture tomorrow and then when we clean up and make everything sparkle I'll take some pictures. My dad's really eager to see the place. (He just bought a plot of land in Louisiana for a trailer).

Besides moving into a great home, I started a new job that I really enjoy. It's not easy to manage a library that 6 schools use, but I really love managing a library. I'm on my own and I have to figure out priorities, but I'm enjoying making the space work for teachers and students. So far so good. I had my first experience helping a teacher get research materials for students. That was great.

Then, Pavement announces a tour! You better believe I got tickets for all the NYC shows. I am sure this is a one time thing, so I'm going to go all out. It's Pavement. They've been my favorite band since I was 16 years old. It's my contention that a favorite band doesn't have to be the best band, they just have to make you feel a certain way. They make me feel that something special that makes a band a beloved band.

So, life is pretty good. Maybe I'll get a response from one of the lit mags I submitted to saying they want to publish my story. A woman can dream, can't she?

Welcome the Shelving Cart

I started a sister blog: 5redpandas Shelving Cart
This is where I will write reviews or thoughts about books. Don't ask me why I couldn't just do that on good old Tally Ho Sulky: Redux. I just felt like it.

Anyway, this space will be reserved for long anecdotes of the humorous nature, and the occasional rant.

Carry on friends. Carry on.

Prose Anxiety

\Many of the issues I highlight are probably cause for concern to writers to a higher degree than to readers.

1) Literary publishing is contracting. Some say there are more writers out there than readers. That's a problem for writers who want to publish.

2) Literary publishing seems to be getting desperate. A lit mag recently told me they rely on writers like myself to keep them afloat (even though they won't publish me). They are desperate for subscribers, and I really want my stories to be published so people can read them. But, if I won't subscribe, then who will? (Though it does smack a bit of "pay for play" in a way.)

3) Book trailers strike me as desperate. You could argue that they only advertise, or supplement the book, but I ask- why does this book need to be supplemented in this way? Why isn't it good enough on its own? It also strikes me as a way to make prose seem sexier. But when you do this, doesn't the potential reader just ask themselves, "Well then, why can't I just watch this as a movie?"

4) Book soundtracks strike me as an intrusive supplement. When I write, I shape as much as I care to. Then I trust the reader to get things out of the writing what they will or can, as well as things that I might not have even intended. That's part of the enjoyment of having your writing read. A book soundtrack seems to me a way to further control how a reader experiences the prose. It's almost didactic.

5) I like movies because they can do certain things that prose alone can't do. Still, I like prose better, more often, because it does certain things that movies don't do as well. I explained the psychology/introspection/character study aspect earlier. Those are the main things I'm interested in. Plus, my brain may just be wired to enjoy reading prose more. But, when films do the above really well, then I'm really satisfied.

6) No, really. I do like movies. I didn't always, but my sister, a screenwriter and former film student, taught me how to watch films. She does things in screenwriting that I don't do in prose. I don't write dialogue as much. She probably has a better ear for it than I do. Still, I'm more often disappointed with a movie than a prose piece.

7) I like pretty pictures, and comics and graphic novels! I do. I even like pretty covers. I guess I feel like they don't highlight the things that prose can't do, as much as a book trailer does. They just sort of stand on the side and don't steal the show. It feels more seamless to me.

8) That said, some graphic novels should have just been prose. You know who you are. The images didn't add to the text. If there are images, they should add to the text and do things that text can't do.

9) I really like technology, hence this blog, and other tools I use. I'm not threatened by e-readers, though I probably wouldn't use them often. I abuse books and I flip back and forth, and look at all aspects of it from the author photo, to the reviews, to the illustrations, to the blurbs, to previous chapters. I think doing so on an e-reader would give me a headache and hurt my eyes. I tried reading the New Yorker in digital format but I found that it took me longer, and I couldn't sit there for very long, as opposed to how I read the print magazine. It's also harder to browse an electronic format. Sometimes I want to browse.

10) I had actually conceived my novel as being novel in stories with illustrations. I was all for it, but it turns out that I'm not entirely happy with what I wrote. I no longer have a desire to publish it, or have people read it. I'm starting over again with some of the same ideas/stories but writing it from 3rd person, without illustrations. If I added illustrations now, it would be completely gratuitous and not be of any service to the story. Still, I don't think I would be opposed to writing a prose piece with illustrations one day. And I'd love a pretty, eye-catching cover.

11) I could see myself collaborating with my sister on a screenplay one day. Like I said, I like movies. There are certain types of stories that I think work better in film. I also think certain novels should have just been films.

12) Finally, my ego is hurting a bit. When prose writing isn't seen as dynamic enough, that seems like a criticism of the very thing I've spent most of my life trying to get good at. It's depressing to think that prose writing just isn't valued very much any more. It's kind of like discovering that you've spent your life learning how to make something that is completely irrelevant and obsolete. Especially if it's the only thing you know how to do, or the one thing you were any good at. I guess when a writer gets their back up about a book trailer, what they're really annoyed about is the idea that what they did simply wasn't good enough on its own. Their prose voice is no longer the center of attention, and the only authority. The ego is a big thing when it comes to writing because if you didn't have one you wouldn't be delusional enough to think that the story you're writing was worth writing, or reading.

Why Write a Book, Anyway?

You know what bothers me, on a philosophical level? Book Trailers. Like a movie trailer, the book trailer gets you excited about the book. And like a movie trailer it gives you video images related to the plot or essence of the book.

So, why do I hate this? Well, because, if this is where we're going, then why should anyone write a book anymore, anyway? Why aren't we all just writing screenplays? Now, I know why I don't write screenplays, namely because that's just not how I think, or write. Films are generally driven by dialogue and action. I think about the psychology of characters- dialogue is one way of expressing a character, but I also have the liberty of getting inside a character's head in a way that most films can't do unless they use voice over narration- something that should be seen as a crutch if you're trying to make a good film. Leave the narration to the page. That's where it belongs. Psychology and introspection are the things that I have over screen writers. An image on a screen will be more immediate than any metaphor that I can write (though may not be as thought provoking if its a damn good metaphor). Yet there are all these book trailers now. I guess I'm not bothered by book trailers with authors speaking about a book, but ones that animate the book, or come up with visual representations of the book, well that's just one step removed from declaring prose completely unnecessary. Why bother?

It's really kind of depressing if you think about it. Is this the only way we can get people to read books? By packaging them like they're movies? We're screwed.