“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson A tireless champion of the abolition of slavery, of equal rights for women, and of those of Native Americans, Ralph Waldo Emerson began a long American tradition of looking to … Continue reading Ralph Waldo Emerson, on his birthday May 25 2026 revision
Hawai’I seizes me with an immediacy and vividness in the context of Asian American literature and history, for it embodies both the terror of our racist and imperial-colonial history and our hopes for a better future as a diverse and inclusive United Humankind in which all human beings are truly equal. Between the systemic evils … Continue reading Hawai’i: a reading list
There are some boxes which like that of Pandora contain mysteries; ambiguous truths which are both curses and gifts. If we listen very carefully to the great silences and empty places, we may discover such things of our very own, lurking within us and waiting for the moment to awaken. In the stories … Continue reading Angela Carter, on her birthday May 7 2026 revision
Of William Shakespeare one can say, how many people have reinvented their language and what it means to be human? And are still relevant more than 400 years later? For guides and companions to his works, there are two beyond compare; Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20942.Shakespeare?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=FO5JefVHmY&rank=1, and Shakespeare and the … Continue reading William Shakespeare, on his birthday April 23
A Russian mystic and Surrealist who railed against the formal authoritarian power and depersonalization of both organized religion and government, an aristocrat whose father had been assassinated by the communists, then driven into penniless exile, a vendetta he pursued through all his writing and the source of his magnificent critique of the failure of … Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov, on his birthday April 22 2026 revision
“Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified” Kathy Acker Punk icon and social revolutionary, model for the character of Delirium in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels, rebel and figure of the Goddess of Liberty; I celebrate Kathy Acker and her reimagination of our … Continue reading Kathy Acker, on her birthday April 18 2026 revision
Alienation and the pathology of disconnectedness, inequities of gender and systemic patriarchy, identity as a projection of others fears and desires, the ephemeral and transitory nature of time and being, the self as a function of memory and history; these are the themes which animate the works of Eva Figes. Among the first … Continue reading Eva Figes, on her birthday April 15
I too once bore the icon of Saint Beatrice of the Absurd as did he, following the tracks of Dante through a blighted and ravaged series of otherworlds, bereft of dictums, of referents, a journey in which all the signs had been switched so that self-referential language led outward to realms unknown and the … Continue reading Samuel Beckett, on his birthday April 13 2022 revision
“Only poets are innocent enough to invent such monstrosities, everything seems possible!” –Charles Baudelaire A visionary aesthetics and poetry of beauty, fragile and exquisite, crafted with delicacy and imagination, a Romantic who saw himself as aligned with Byron and who pioneered Symbolism; such was Charles Baudelaire the poet, novelist, and critical essayist. To … Continue reading Charles Baudelaire, on his birthday April 9 2026 revision
“Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and moving you to answer them for yourself.” — Barbara Kingsolver Her work an explicitly Socratic project, a narrative activism exploring themes … Continue reading Barbara Kingsolver, on her birthday April 8
Dollhouse Park Conservatory & Imaginarium 