The Conversation
- “But he hit me back first!” (50)
- Eurasian Sensation: @ N: Why, because I’m half white I want to defend European colonialism?
- Raguel: JStele, you’re right about intermingling and contributing to communities. It should be an option, not...
- N: @ES No mention of the great deeds the Dutch had done in Indonesia? (Similarly the English in Malaysia). I love how...
- Jeremy Lin: Our Generation’s Joe Louis (16)
- N: I hope Davis understands he should be winding down his career and is happy to enjoy the party. I personally think...
- gar: Coverage of him has been interesting; I think some folks don’t know what to make of him still or even how...
- bigWOWO: He did it again! http://www.usatoday.com/sports /basketball/nba/story/2012-02- 11/Lin-takes-Knicks-into-Ta...
- Seeking Asian Female (10)
- Amy Chua: Chinese Conceit, Chinese Ignorance, and the $24,000 question (247)
- bigWOWO: Not sure if you’re a “bot” or a real person, Andre, but I know lots of Chuas. Only...
- Andre M. Smith: Further on Chua as a Chinese surname . . . My wife, a gyn surgeon, hails from a family of...
- The Other-Directed Personality (1)
- Siegfried: Mitt got Obama worried. He is shaking in his boots. It’s over for Obama because Mitt is going to...
- Holy Jesus, Jeremy (9)
- N: @TD Good pick up on that one.
- trolldetector: @Colin I love how whites keep trying to troll their divide tactics Asian blogs under different guises.
- Eurasian Sensation: @ Colin: I’m pretty sure Jeremy Lin and his supporters are not the same person.
- Jeremy Lin shines (21)
- trolldetector: GO JEREMY LIN
- N: @danny You should youtube his college games. The two against Boston college and the one against UConn. Lol, he can...
- Lingyai: @Ben Efsaneyim Why would it be surprising a non Asian crowd cheering for Lin? Most of the NBA fans going to...
- What Cultures Value (22)
- trolldetector: @Colin. Dont you belong on a Lord Of The Rings filmset? Thats where most white trolls dwell isnt it?
- colin: A bit late to this, but bigwowo, you grossly underestimate the anti-work and anti-intellectual ethic here in...
- bigWOWO: Yeah, I could go for that.
- About A Boy by Nick Hornby (6)
- bigWOWO: That’s a really good point, Raguel. Like it or not, TV executives control everything (including what...
- Raguel: I could be wrong but the distribution windows for media and especially film seems very hierarchical. If you...
- bigWOWO: Illegal streaming? I had no idea anyone did that! Well, I really should check out some movies one of these...
- Superbowl Recipe and Xenophobic Superbowl Ad (22)
- Raguel: Time to get your concealed carry licences, folks!
- Eurasian Sensation: Jeff Yang has a good article about this ad: http://inamerica.blogs.cnn....
- Raguel: I haven’t even gotten to why the ad really is so offensive to us, ROFL
- Stop SOPA and PIPA (9)
- Raguel: ^ Nice one Byron! I’m reading through the NYT picks, they’re good!
- bigWOWO: The Times had an Op-Ed by the President of the RIAA, and I commented. My comment was picked as a...
- Raguel: Found a great website, take a look at this: https://www.cdt.org/ Why should privacy be important, in an age...
- The Perversity of Human Biodiversity, a.k.a. “Scientific” Racism (402)
- bigWOWO: Here’s an interesting suggestion coming out of MIT: Connectome by Sebastian Seung...
- Battle Hymn of the Kitten Daughter (36)
- Raguel: You know Andre, you and me, I think we and a lot of other folks may have gone through some pretty harrowing...
- Andre M. Smith: Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew....
- Two podcasts that address racism in the military, and Danny Chen the person (9)
- Raguel: The origins of racism in the American military as described by loudestfuckingazns is accurate. Very recently,...
- bigWOWO: Sorry, Larry, just noticed that the spam robot junked your comment. Approved!
- bigWOWO: Agreed. It just has more weight if you include your name. Not that the ideas are any less valid, but it just...
- Facebook IPO (5)
- King: Actually WOWO, I bump into plenty of Asians up at the Art Center College of Design http://www.artcenter.edu/a...
- bigWOWO: Agree with King. This might not be a bad thing for Asian Americans to hear about. We can jump off the STEM...
- Raguel: People are too accustomed to thinking about value only in terms of money. Even artists are guilty of it. Some...
- Activism is as activism does (10)
- trolldetector: Brooks also goes onto say ‘You should attach yourself to a counter-tradition and school of...
- bigWOWO: By the way, speaking of activism, there was a great David Brooks column recently. He talks about how people...
- Raguel: I have no experience whatsoever with activism. I simply do not feel safe participating in it. There is always...
- How to Win a Streetfight (18)
- bigWOWO: No worries. I feel the same way. Nothing against her, but just doubtful.
- Raguel: Hi Byron! I’ve been occupied doing a lot of reading and thinking recently. I suppose its just another...
- bigWOWO: Hey Raguel, What about your comments on ASSK?
I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
- UFC 117 Sonnen vs. Silva Recap (1)
- bigWOWO: I think Michael Bisping solved the Chael Sonnen puzzle today, even though he lost a controversial decision....
- 6 on 1 Beatdown of Asian Man (36)
- King: “I mean I look around me and 99% of the time there are no women that look like or dress like Adriana Lima...
- SWR: Apparently the girl in the second video was not the girl who filmed the fight. It was probably unwise of her to...
- Raguel: I mean I look around me and 99% of the time there are no women that look like or dress like Adriana Lima in...
- Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids by Bryan Caplan (Review) (6)
- bigWOWO: Jeff, You called it! They were (if I recall correctly) 7 (twins) and 2. He’s still in the honeymoon...
- jeffat8asians: “Overpaying?” With the possible exception of college tuition (and even that is arguable),...
- Hitler: Kids suck lol.
- The Asian Rock Thread (16)
- ben: I’ve been getting into Asian rock music recently so thank you all very much for uploading all these videos.
- Simple Pickup on ABC News (132)
- Tommy: I think I’m coming here more for Moro’s comments than BigWoWO’s posts.
- “Lazy” Americans and the Decline of the American Middle Class (6)
- bigWOWO: But kobu, how can we have literature and art without money to support artists and writers? About...
- “But he hit me back first!” (50)
Category Archives: books
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris (Review)
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris is a book about Tim Farnsworth, a family man with a successful law career who develops a sickness where he sleepwalks at random times. His sickness is beyond the grasp of his doctors or the experts they recommend; he can start walking at night, during trial, or during the day, and he won’t remember when he started walking or where he went. The disease begins to destroy his life, his career, and his family. One day he decides to just up and leave. The story is about his struggle with the disease and how he manages his family life with his wife Jane and his daughter Becca.
Do You! by Russell Simmons (Review and Analysis)
bigWOWO rating: Strategy Gold
My sister-in-law brought this book to Malaysia, and since imported English-language books in Malaysia are uber-expensive, and since I had finished my other books, I decided to check it out. I started and finished in just a few days. There were a good number of reasons not to jump into the book–a foreword by Donald Trump, a title like Do You!, another “12 laws” to remember–but I finished, and I’m glad I did. It’s actually one of the better “strategy” books that I’ve read. The book is exactly what it says it is–12 “laws” that Russell Simmons used to build up his media empire. The laws are:
Chinese Girl in the Ghetto by Ying Ma (Review)
bigWOWO rating: Memoir Gold
I found out about Chinese Girl in the Ghetto at GASP (from 8Asians.com), but I’ve known of Ying Ma for much longer-she and I graduated the same year at Cornell, and I had read many of her opinions in the Cornell Review, which was (and probably still is) the conservative newspaper on campus. Ying was an electrifying figure, as her writing about affirmative action galvanized the liberal parts of campus against her paper. She wrote like a dude, and I didn’t know she was a “she” until my senior year. I still remember reading an article about how her family set an example through hard work, humility, and dignity, and why other minorities could learn from her parents’ example rather than begging for government handouts and racist admissions preferences. I think it was the first time I had read an Asian American so eloquently write against the racism of affirmative action.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (Review)
I had been putting off reading Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” for a long time. I had read a review a while back that said it was about medication and how people are addicted to medication these days, and it didn’t seem (from the review) to be my cup of tea, since I know only a few people addicted to meds. However, after reading article after article canonizing Franzen as the quintessential Great American Novelist of our time (see a related WOWO post here), I jumped in. And I have to agree with the fanfare–it’s a great novel.
Strangers by Taichi Yamada (Review)
bigWOWO rating: Literary Fiction Gold
I saw this book at the library and picked it up on a whim. If you’re looking for a suspenseful literary story with metaphysical themes of family and love, check out Strangers by Taichi Yamada. The story is about Harada, a middle-aged, working TV screenwriter in Japan who is coming off of a bitter divorce. He descends into loneliness but finds two outlets that seem to be helping him escape–a beautiful younger woman who lives upstairs in his apartment building, and a man from his hometown who bears a striking resemblance to his dead father.
Chinhominey’s Secret by Nancy Kim (Review)
bigWOWO rating: Popular Fiction Silver
I needed an Asian American literature fix, and so I saw this one at the library: Chinhominey’s Secret by Nancy Kim It was written in 1999, before the big AA internet explosion. It was a story about the Choi family, a man and a woman who immigrated from Korea with one daughter and gave birth to another in the States. The story focuses on Chinhominey, the man’s mother, who comes from Korea to the United States to visit the family because she wants to make peace with the youngest daughter, whom a fortune teller once told her was cursed. The first daughter is a beautiful young 24 year old teacher who is in an abusive relationship with a White dude, while the younger daughter is a chunky and rebellious college student who has a crush on a White dude. The mother is dissatisfied with her marriage, and the father contemplates having an affair with one of his office workers. The story is about how Chinhominey brings the family together and chooses life over superstition.
Ghostwriters and Celebrity Novelists
Snooki’s a bestselling novelist, and the Kardashian sisters are releasing their novels soon. Michael Bloomberg’s daughter also just wrote a novel, based on her life and his. But one of the not-so-secret secrets in the industry is that celebrity novelists almost always have ghostwriters. It’s a good payoff for everyone–the celebrity extends her own footprint in the public dialogue, and the book publishers make lots of money. Everyone wins–except for maybe the ghostwriter. But hey, the ghostwriter can always say, “I wrote that…and nobody knows it but me.”
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau (Review)
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau is one of those must-read books that describes society while focusing on only one aspect of society: parenting among different social classes. Lareau’s book focuses on parenting and how social class affects parenting philosophies and parenting styles. I got the recommendation from commenter Cassie J.
Non-White Heroes in the Commercial Literary Marketplace
Thanks, NH, for sending this link: Non-White Heroes; the Kiss of Death in the Marketplace. In the article, Tess Gerristen, who is perhaps the most widely read Asian American fiction writer in the country today, writes about her experiences with racism in life and in publishing. She tells why she has never had an Asian American main character :
So why have I never written one? My three-word answer: fear of failure.
Posted in Asian American, books, media
Tagged Asian American literature, Tess Gerritsen
Leave a comment
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Review)
bigWOWO rating: Literary Fiction GOLD
I need to begin by apologizing the Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian author of The Slap. Although I didn’t mention him or his book by name, a few posts ago I described his book as a great book but one not written in literary style, even though it was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. I made that evaluation while being less than halfway through the book, and my reason for making that evaluation was that the language was straight-forward, there were lots of pop culture references, and I couldn’t yet see any deeper meaning. I said that I loved his book, and compared it to Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, another book that I love. Let that be a lesson–never judge a book by its first 200 pages (and I say this even though I LOVED the first 200 pages).
But here is an...