It’s time for WWS’s publication roundup to celebrate all of our fantastic members who published in September. I’m awed by the talent in this group and the number of people who are consistently–and persistently–submitting and publishing their writing.
Congratulations to these WWS members who worked so hard to have their words heard and let’s celebrate them for their publication achievements!
Congratulations, Maylin Tu, on publishing the article “Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ Taught Me How to Surrender to My Anxiety” in EQ Magazine.
My coronavirus meltdown happened Memorial Day weekend when my roommate was out of town. Overwhelmed by the knowledge that no one would be coming home, I felt trapped and desperate.
Sometimes you have a good pandemic day and other times you just want to cry and listen to Taylor Swift’s new album.
Maylin Tu also published the article “If a Famous Model Can’t Control Her Own Image, How Can I?” in EQ this month.
In a groundbreaking movie of my youth, A Walk to Remember, high school bullies paste Jamie Sullivan’s face onto the body of a bikini-clad supermodel with the words “Virgin Mary?” and distribute the image on flyers all over school. Humiliated, she runs into the arms of popular rebel, Landon Carter. The message is clear: No matter how many ugly sweaters or buttoned-up flannels you wear, you can be sexualized and shamed without your consent.
A congratulatory shout out to Thea Pueschel for publishing her essay “Frankincense and Myrrh: A Promise to Live Fully” in Abstract Elephant.
My apartment in Northridge was still warm from the heat of the day, as it often was in September in the middle of the San Fernando Valley. I was a fresh film school graduate up late writing a screenplay taking the occasional internet chess break when a friend in Sweden messaged me on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) to ask if I was okay. It was three in the afternoon in Sweden, nine in the morning in New York, and three hours earlier in Los Angeles. I was confused about what danger might be lurking. I did a quick internet search (as quickly as one could on dialup) to see if I missed an earthquake. I hadn’t. My apartment was on stilts above the communal carport. Even a small quake felt like a big one in that place.
Also check out Sybilla Nash’s article “MC Lyte Made Hip-Hop Take Notice” published by The Gumbo.
Before there was Megan, Nicki, or Lil’ Kim, there was MC Lyte.
It was 1988 when Lyte, born Lana Moorer, made Hip-Hop take notice with her debut album Lyte as a Rock. At the time you could count the number of solo women emcees on one hand, and when she came on the scene, she kicked down doors and paved the way as the first woman rapper to drop a solo album. Lyte accomplished a lot of firsts. She was the first Hip-Hop artist to perform at Carnegie Hall, first woman Hip-Hop artist to have a gold single and solo Grammy nomination for her 1993 track “Ruffneck,” and first solo woman rapper to be honored/inducted on VH1’s Hip Hop Honors.
From Désirée Zamorano, the interview “Now Is the Time: An Interview with David Heska Wanbli Weiden” published by LA Review of Books.
DAVID HESKA WANBLI WEIDEN, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is set to break out this fall with his stunning debut novel, Winter Counts. Weiden, a former lawyer and current professor at Metropolitan State University at Denver, is poised for a powerful second act as a writer. In his novel, we meet Virgil Wounded Horse, a paid vigilante. Along this swift and thrilling ride, we also get insights into some ugly realities about reservation life and politics.
Kudos to librecht baker, who published the poem “You Are Who I Love: Number Two or You Are Who Makes My Heart Rebel (Part 1)” in Cultural Weekly.
after Aracelis Girmay
You, Black people, Black Queer people, Black global people pulsating this struggle’s fulcrum
You are who I love
You are who makes my heart rebel
Congrats to Li Yun Alvarado, who published the op-ed “Please Help Today’s Welfare Babies” in the New York Daily News.
Papi used to call me his “welfare baby.” The nickname was never an insult in his mouth. Instead, it was a nostalgic memory, a sign of how far they’d come, a fact of life. I was their “welfare baby” because welfare paid the medical bills for my delivery. My brother was their “housing baby” because health insurance from Papi’s job with the NYC Housing Authority paid their medical bills for his delivery.
Please celebrate Jessica Ceballos y Campbell’s poem “Tonight, I’m both at home, and far from it. or We leave and we stay, all at once, or not at all or The seven things I learned from my father.” It appears in the 5th anniversary print edition of Dryland.
Let’s also celebrate Lituo Huang’s poem Contrapuntal Divine, which also appears in the 5th anniversary print edition of Dryland.
Also from Lituo, the poem “Leftovers” appeared in Middle House Review.
Watch these Americans, my father says to me.
How wasteful they are. We are Chinese.
We use everything.
Kudos to Mary Camarillo for her poem “How to Write” ( a book spine poem), which appears in Tab Journal.
How to write an autobiographical novel:
First, catch
the mirror and the light,
night blooming jasmin(n)e,
lost in the city.
Check out Amy Ma’s humor piece “Warner Media Job Openings at The Ellen Show” that appears in How Pants Work.
E-commerce Customer Service Rep
- Process a high volume of “Be Kind” merchandise returns.
- Ability to defuse angry customers.
- Must be willing to work overtime.
Congratulations to Amanda L. Andrei who published the short story “Lolo’s Diner” in Hip Mama.
It’s hard to make loco moco, even now, because I’ll be pouring gravy over the burger patty and rice and suddenly, I start thinking of the blood.
The caution tape, the silent red and blue lights, the white cop in my face and the black cop standing outside the door. I don’t want to include loco moco on our delivery menu, but Rita says it’s one of our best sellers, since no one out here really knows what it is and it’s so simple to make.
There’s also Norma Mendoza-Denton, whose book Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies was published by Cambridge University Press. Says the book’s description:
Early in his campaign, Donald Trump boasted that ‘I know words. I have the best words’, yet despite these assurances his speech style has sown conflict even as it has powered his meteoric rise. If the Trump era feels like a political crisis to many, it is also a linguistic one. Trump has repeatedly alarmed people around the world, while exciting his fan-base with his unprecedented rhetorical style, shock-tweeting, and weaponized words. Using many detailed examples, this fascinating and highly topical book reveals how Trump’s rallying cries, boasts, accusations, and mockery enlist many of his supporters into his alternate reality. From Trump’s relationship to the truth, to his use of gesture, to the anti-immigrant tenor of his language, it illuminates the less obvious mechanisms by which language in the Trump era has widened divisions along lines of class, gender, race, international relations, and even the sense of truth itself.
And to Arlene Schindler, congratulations on publishing her review of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” with Watercooler Picks.
In an era (approx. 1958-1962) when women were expected to marry up and shut up and definitely not be funny (especially not funnier than men), Midge Maisel defies cultural norms, big time, by trying to be a stand-up comic. Recently divorced, she juggles being a good mother with working nights in smoky clubs trying to hone her comedy act, where she talks about her struggles as a single mother.
And another review by Arlene, this time of “Drunk Parents,” also published by Watercooler Picks.
On a night when I’d felt as though I’d seen everything on my streaming services, I came across a film that I knew absolutely nothing about: Drunk Parents. I looked at the stellar cast, and thought I’d give it a try, because, I said to myself, “Alec Baldwin always delivers.” It turned out to be a gem of very dark humor, political incorrectness and imaginative situations.
Be a lookout for an online discussion with the Deschutes Public Library and Noriko Nakada on September 28th from 6 pm – 7 pm PT entitled “Know Us: Through Eyes Like Mine,” during which Noriko will discuss growing up multiracial in Bend in the 80s.
Kudos to Carla Sameth whose poem “Pandemic Pacing: 20 Steps in the Early Days and Each Day” appears in Mutha Magazine.
asking myself is it
Happy Hour yet? Today, only 3:50 pm
and I couldn’t quite get those 16th notes right.
Take it to the ninth* my trumpet teacher tells me
and when you don’t know if you’ll be wearing a mask
or hoping for a spare ventilator or simply scrounging for the right
ingredients, faring much better than those folks living
in the tent cities your wife steps around each day on the way
to work to her shit job–it seems we might all take
it to the ninth. And yet the lips tire out and the breath
gets short too short to hit the high notes, anything above an E,
really, let’s be honest.
Congratulations to Tanya Ko Hong, who was interviewed about winning the 10th Ko Won’s Literary Award ( Article in Korean). In addition, she was also interviewed by The Lunch Ticket in “The War Is Still Within: An Interview with Tanya Ko Hong.”
What is your approach to writing multilingual poetry? How do you choose the exact words?
I work hard to find equivalent words. I started writing in Korea. After immigrating to America, I continued to write in Korean. Poetry was an intimate language for me, and my American friends wanted to know what I was writing about, but I thought poetry could not be translated, because it has rhythm, sound, emotion. How do you deliver that in another language? I thought it was impossible. My friends wanted to read my poems, so I felt compelled to translate them, but the words could not be translated exactly. I had to find emotional equivalents and use sensory words, the six senses. Finding the right word is like a treasure hunt, an experiment. Sometimes, I have to think in two minds, Korean and English, but one at a time. And sometimes the two languages are melded in my mind. It’s a paradox.
Congrats also to Gerda Govine Ituarte, whose poems “Bloom,” “Crows,” “Early Morning in Jamul,” “Grit & Grief,” and “Momma Momma” appear in the anthology When the Virus Came Calling: COVID-19 Strikes America, edited by Thelma T. Reya and published by Golden Hills Press.
And to Valerie Anne Burns, congratulations on publishing her personal essay “Venice Vision” on HerStry.
All the colors I most cherish drifted by as I floated down the Grand Canal. Rich but worn shades of orange, pink, golden yellow and blues meandered by, one after another. The water I floated on was a Caribbean aqua. It wrapped me in moist, balmy warmth. I viewed beautiful architecture while swimming beneath a vivid sapphire Italian sky. I felt released from struggle, free to spread myself far and wide. All my senses filled with wonder.
Admiring the city, suspended atop the Laguna Veneta, swimming in its resplendency, I reached my arms out wide in front of me, graceful as a sleek mermaid. Unaware of my body being ravaged, I was shapely and confident in my swim attire. I could feel the ripples of the sea swirling as I pushed forward in a breaststroke.
Congrats to Crystal AC Salas, whose poems, “Nieta Heaven,” “triolet for bad news,” & “Clarita speaks to Serafin while pacing the house alone” appear in PANK.
Nieta Heaven
after “Pocha Heaven” by Sara Borjas
In Nieta Heaven, no one goes hungry because there is always some rice on the stove that perpetually refills itself so abuelita doesn’t have to break her relaxing to get up to feed everyone who walks in. She says mija, I love it and this is the truth but sometimes this is also bullshit because Love is a panza stuffed with mole but it is also exhausting and in Nieta Heaven, we don’t have to pretend like it isn’t anymore, that it costs nothing because it does.…
Also, to Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, congratulations on publishing the article “Not Quarantine Food” in Gastronomica.
On April 1, I texted Becca a photo of roasted pasilla chiles stuffed with quinoa, carrot, onion, and Queso Oaxaca.
“That doesn’t look like quarantine food!” she responded. Maybe she thought I was foolin’.
“Why not?” I texted back.
She recounted our conversation two weeks prior about people stocking up on canned goods, frozen food, and things we ate in college like peanut butter and jelly and Cup o’ Noodles.
I haven’t eaten those foods in more than 20 years. Why would I start now? Even on a grad student budget, I have standards. And I’m using this time to get creative in the kitchen.
Check out Stephanie Yu’s short story “Steak Diane,” which appeared in Carte Blanche.
She knew what they called her when she wasn’t there: Steak Diane. They were calling her that right now, as Diane imagined they had done countless times before. The barmaid began in a low whisper directly into the bartender’s ear, as if to a lover in a shared bed. “Steak Diaaaaaane.” Suddenly called to duty, the bartender tied a mottled bar rag around his head and began to limp theatrically around the bar. As if she actually looked like that, thought Diane, as she readjusted the knot of her scarf, which rested—tight as a noose—at the base of her chin.
And let’s celebrate for Jenise Miller, whose the essay “Hermana, Tu Nombre Lo Llevo Grabado” appeared in Dryland.
I landed in Panama’s Tocumen International Airport, not sure I would recognize my sister’s face. She was fourteen years older than me and we had only met and learned about each other three years earlier. That year, Panama celebrated one hundred years of independence and Panamanians who lived abroad journeyed back to the beloved country they had not seen in decades. For my parents, it meant reuniting with distant relatives and loved ones, hair full of “las hojas blancas” El Gran Combo and Rubén Blades sang about. For me, it meant visiting their home country for the first time and meeting the sister and brother I didn’t know I had. It felt strange, being introduced as adults, by our father who left Panama and didn’t return for thirty years. That short meeting would be the only time I saw them.
A shout out to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, whose poem “Battlegrounds” appeared on poets.org.
Motorcycles and white tour vans speed
between behemoth granite shafts, shove
my body by their force, leave me roadside
and wandering fields. Little is funny
when you’re Chicana and walking
a Civil War site not meant for walking.
Regardless, I ask park rangers and guides
for stories on Mexicans soldiers,
receive shrugs. No evidence in statues
or statistics. In the cemetery, not one
Spanish name. I’m alone in the wine shop.
It’s the same in the post office, the market,
the antique shop with KKK books on display.
In the peach orchard, I prepare a séance,
sit cross-legged in grass, and hold
a smoky quartz to the setting sun.
