A dash of M.S.G. (Macho Sino Girl)
January 9, 2009
- I was asked by my editor, Alane, at Norton, a few days before Christmas, to create a couple of images for the jacket by mid-January. I told her, I am hyperventilating. I thought I could wait till the entire graphic novel manuscript was finished to consider this aspect of my book. She said to not to panic, this was not going to be the last say in jacket art. We had time. The images would ...
- Continue Reading » 18 Comments
January 7, 2009
- Much I have learned about life and death in the last three months of 2009.The past fall, because of my trusted doctor's error, I was given medicine for three weeks longer than was necessary. My red and white blood cells fell, as did the platelets, to life-threatening levels. And there were complications, which I won't bore you with. I couldn't rage against my doctor, because he was the ...
- Continue Reading » 20 Comments
January 1, 2009
- I was always a bug, mud, tadpole, spider, turtle lover, plant identifier as a child, turning over rocks for crickets, putting tuna in a glass jar to catch beetles. Some how as I grew taller, I no longer stooped to exploring the earth and began reaching for airy, prosaic things, such as career.I rarely make New Year’s resolutions, but I somehow ended up with one: find more fungi. After the ...
- Continue Reading » 8 Comments
November 2, 2008
- In the early 1950s, my father was teaching the Bunun aboriginal mountain people, whose land had been taken away over the centuries by Chinese onslaught from the mainland. The Bunun people farmed peanuts and descended to the flatlands to trade herbs and deer antlers, which were considered to have medicinal properties. They were were a matriarchal society, whose ways had not changed in seven ...
- Continue Reading » 7 Comments
October 16, 2008
- My mother complained of sleeplessness and obsessing in the night, so the doctor recommended taking Paxil, an antidepressant. After two weeks on the med, she started to smile as beautifully as a boddhisattva. "My body aches have disappeared," she declared. This was the good news. The bad news: she began talking or shouting while napping or sleeping. Worse news: Mom has taken up ...
- Continue Reading » 7 Comments
October 12, 2008
- Please don't merely read newspapers and magazines. They do NOT give us the full scope of what this economic crisis means. (And using facts selectively in short pieces become lies or distortions.) For history, a comprehensive picture of the PAST and for real plans to bring us out of this crisis and into a socially responsible future, we must read authoritative books Once instance of ...
- Continue Reading » 13 Comments
October 11, 2008
- I’ve finished two-thirds of "Forget Sorrow: A China Elegy" and mailed the Xeroxed pages to WW Norton. I’ve never worked on a graphic novel before and neither has Alane, my editor. I was worried about her notes, wondering if the fixes will be easy without having to draw a quarter of the book. Gaaaack!Typed words are obviously easier to correct, but hand-drawn art? When I ...
- Continue Reading » 13 Comments
September 28, 2008
- I am one of the few weird people on Earth who likes to prolong the wait for rewards. One of the best to come to me after 9 months was the visit from my first Redroom friend, Jessica Barksdale Inclán, and her main squeeze, Michael. I started to really pay attention to her posts in Redroom when she wrote about listening to the frogs while stuck in a traffic jam with Michael in the Caldecott ...
- Continue Reading » 15 Comments
September 26, 2008
- In 1960, the year I was born on the island of Taiwan, my father, the dean of a private school and my mother, a teacher of Chinese literature at the same, jointly made the equivalent of 60 US dollars each month.My baby formula consumed a third of their income, another third went to cafeteria fees and household goods, and the last third was exchanged for a single 20 USD bill, obtainable on the ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
September 15, 2008
- “Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others”- Carl Fox, “Wall Street” (quoted after Black Friday 1987) This is my day's production as I listened to the news of Lehman Brother's evaporation.Art is real, tangible. I am grateful I can create with my mind and ...
- Continue Reading » 3 Comments
