Weekly Recs Roundup
Prom, Queer Ephemera and I've been meaning to call
Hi!
Back in the day, the way I used to be able to tell it was a start of beautiful situation-ship was the moment when a guy told me their favourite book was Norwegian Woods.
And so it is with great trepidation, I have been revisiting Murakami for the Books, Baby pod episode and seeing if distance from that epoch of life has change my distaste for cats, jazz records and young men eternally hoping the world will suddenly make sense through a mysterious feminine catalyst.
Big week for thinking about translated fiction as I also make my way through the international booker which I have enjoyed the past three years more than the flagship Booker.
📰READ
The Aggressive Commodification of Cozy Asian Lit Okay so I was not imagining things when it felt like the new release section was overfilled with cats and bookshops. I loved reading Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop but some good points here about “Orientalising, not disorienting’ sums up the aesthetic marketing pull of cosy lit to Western audiences”. Thanks to Fi for this link. Always be suspicious!!!
How I learned the truth about young, open-minded readers of translated fiction In the same vein, Anton Hur who wrote a great essay on The Mythical English reader. This was published in 2023 but I think still recent enough to be relevant to the conversation. About who you are translating for and what publishers to change to appeal to the “Mythical English Reader”.
Queer Memory in Practice “Queer ephemera—matchbooks stamped with the names of long-gone gay bars, ticket stubs from a drag show, protest signs hastily scrawled before a march, voicemail tapes saved long after a lover has left—are fleeting by design.” Following on their last piece on zine making as resistance, another thoughtful exploration of how personal archiving in queer history has and will continue to shape collective memory. Especially as more and more of it is consistently destroyed, preserving queer ephemera can be a radical and necessary act. It reminded my of coming across Queer Reads Library in Hong Kong who has been tirelessly documenting queer print culture through the ages in Hong Kong.
Our Beautiful Life in the Wilderness is Over. How Can I Do This to My Kids? Taking the should I move to suburbia question a little bit further. I don’t have kids and may not ever have them but I am almost always in awe when I think about my parents who have heaved themselves back and forth from Australia to Asia in their 20s, 30s and 50s. I think they honestly asked less questions but alas, who can ask the anxious millennials not to question every move. I thought a very compassionate answer from Polly about leaving a dream way of life, uprooting small kids who will hate you for 2-3 years and the actual afforded wisdom of adulting.
Prom “By resolving in coupling without resorting to marriage itself, the prom plot delivers on perhaps the most satisfying catharsis in the Western literary tradition sans its customary sacrifice: possibility.” Honestly, it is pieces like these that keep me on the internet when we could all run into the woods. What starts off as a self serious analysis of Prom Plot ventures into the hazy twilight of teens pretending to be adults, being a brat at 17 and the damned embarrassment of realising you’re the subject of someone’s kindness when you are being a fool.
Saying Goodbye with the Song of Roaming Over Tianmug This week from Hyun Woo Kim, a poem by Li Bai who wrote one just to say goodbye to his friends. Very Sweet.
What I’ve Learned from 20 Silent Meditation Retreats Went into this one skeptical but an unnerving peaceful ending that made me think, I should be meditating. “These are moments that I can’t graph on a life-optimization app or put on a resumé or meaningfully document on Instagram. Probably most of the time, no one notices except me. People tend not to see what is absent: the time I didn’t snap at my husband, the time I didn’t send a nasty email to my colleague, the snide remark I left unsaid.”
My publication rec of the week is Still Alive Mag.
I cam across of Still Alive mag by way of a personal essay Paris By Night written by Terry Nguyen on the variety show that united generations of Vietnamese diaspora. I can’t put my finger on its running theme, only that it often features lovingly written essays about people whether famous or not. There’s this one lately about Smokey Robinson and ofcourse the social and literary analysis of Prom plot by A. Natasha Joukovsky linked above.
📺WATCH
The only thing I have watched this week is White Lotus. This has been my favourite season so far in terms of being able to analyse character. The guest spot by Sam Rockwell was used extremely well with a monologue that had me both laughing and gasping at the audacity. Also I thought suchhhh good editing of a A, B, and C plot. It’s crazy, but I think sometimes people forget how to do that anymore.
🎵LISTEN
For Melancholy Brunettes (and Sad Women) by Japanese Breakfast. Your honor, I am wrecked.
Bye!
Bev