Blog

I need to work on ruthless, but in the meantime artless will have to do. If you’re in the UBC vicinity tomorrow evening, I’m reading and speaking as part of a series put on by Patricia Robertson, the writer-in-residence at Green College. The series is called “Is Fiction an Endangered Species?” I feel very honoured…

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Little Pear Garden has just put out a trailer for the Salt Fish Girl theatre piece. I’m really excited about it! Check out their website: http://www.saltfishgirlshow.com/Salt_Fish_Girl_Home.html

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If I can get away from work, I’ll check these events out: No One Is Illegal and neworldtheatre present… Storytelling Our Lives: Stories of Migration and Displacement Featuring: Sindy Angel, Adriana Contreras, Gurpreet Kambo, Amal Rana, Ghassan Shanti and Carly Teng Sunday, September 21, 2008 Doors at 2 PM 2:30pm – 3:30pm sharp Chapel Arts…

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Eleanor Ty and Chrystl Verdun’s Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography is out! There are pieces by Smaro Kamboureli, Paul Lai, Kristina Kyser, Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Joanne Saul, Christine Kim, Ming Tiampo, Tara Lee, Eva Karpinski, Mariam Pirbhai, Christine Lorre writing on the work of Shani Mootoo, Fred Wah, Hiromi Goto, Suniti Namjoshi, Ying Chen, Ken Lum,…

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Back in town. Went to see The Tempest at Bard on the Beach last night, in preparation for teaching it later this term. Enjoyable and fraught. Or enjoyable because fraught? Race issues neatly skirted through calculated casting. I’ve been watching the remakes and retakes too– a hilarious version from the 80s featuring John Cassavetes and…

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In Toronto now, and have had the good fortune to attend The Movement Project’s production “How We Forgot Here” which sends audience members on an interactive theatre journey on Ojibway Air. Who counts as a legitimate migrant to Toronto and why? Where is home? The piece was really moving for the ways in which it…

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Just back from the ISEA conference in Singapore and a side trip to Thailand. What bliss to step from the hamster wheel to the wheel of Enlightenment. Or at least the freewheel of capital. Our panel, “Mediated Hauntings,” was fun. I realize how much I miss working with old colleagues whose thinking has so much…

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Enjoyed listening to Michael Franti tonight, while sitting on the beach outside the Vancouver Folk Festival. I was too late/disorganized/cheap to buy a ticket, but it was nice to watch the water and listen to songs about peace, love and revolution. Sometimes I do wish the 60s back. There’s a mother spider nursing two huge…

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After all these years of trying to teach myself to complicate and nuance, I’m in a position of really learning to clarify and simplify for the purposes of first year teaching. One of the things I want my students to learn is that language is not transparent. But how do you teach that without exercising…

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If you’re here, then you’ve discovered my new website, courtesy of Bontano.net. It’s been an intensely busy few weeks, between David Khang’s How to Feed a Piano at Centre A, and Tracing the Lines: A Symposium on Contemporary Poetics and Cultural Politics in Honour of Roy Miki. A few cool ideas/instances to emerge out of…

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