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Angel Island
Angel Island is a patch of grass and woodland flung into the middle of San Francisco Bay. The native Coast Miwok once used it as a fishing and hunting site. The United States government chose to deploy this bit of land variously as a Civil War garrison, a 19th century quarantine station and a processing…
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Truth or Consequences
The people of Thebes are dying. They beseech King Oedipus to save them, as he had once freed them from the clutches of the Sphinx. The oracle promises the plague will pass if Thebes finds the murderer of old king Laius. So Oedipus Rex vows: I will begin again; I will find the truth. Last…
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The Low Countries
When I moved to the Netherlands, my Dutch husband and I had just married. I promised to stick it out for a year. He promised, if I still hated Amsterdam, to go back to the States. My husband did all he could to prepare me for the transition. He gave me books to read before…
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Model Minority
I have been a minority all my life. As the only girl in a neighborhood of boys, a downtrodden East Los Angeleno in a fancy-pants law school or a Chinese-American expat in the Netherlands. As minority experiences go, however, I can’t really complain. My kind doesn’t make trouble and so trouble rarely rains down on…
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Say It Ain’t So, Joe
The 1919 World Series pitted the Cincinnati Reds against the Chicago White Sox. The Sox were heavily favored to win but lost 5:10. Rumors soon circulated that players like “Shoeless” Joe Jackson threw the games. The ensuing Black Sox Scandal resulted in a grand jury indictment of Shoeless Joe, 7 other White Sox players and…
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The Art of War
Sun Tzu is the name given to the author of the military treatise The Art of War. No one knows when the book was written or whether Sun Tzu is its true author. The name in the book is Sun Wu. He was a general and military advisor active during the Spring and Autumn period…
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Labels and Charlottesville
last week I ran into an article by Lan Samantha Chang entitled Writers, Protect Your Inner Life. Sam’s day job is director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. When school’s out, she gives writing workshops in Paris (2014) and Napa (2016). At Napa, Sam gave a craft lecture on the interior life. She gave us a…
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Mine mine mine
For me, writing is a series of synapses: firing, sparking, veering off into places unknown. I connect a newspaper article with a podcast with drinks last night with an incident in the park this morning. Writing is both an act and a release. The deliberate use of my imagination in order to drive the train…
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The Five Stages of Trump
The day Trump was elected, I wrote a piece that ended up on the OpEd page of the Dutch national newspaper. I was in denial. If this was the outcome, I didn’t want to be an American. Then I got pissed. My husband and I donated money to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the Southern…
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Fear of Failure
We all fear rejection. To be the last kid picked for the kickball team or the only wallflower at the school dance. We long to be popular, wildly so, or at least to seem that way. This human desire predates likes and followers, obsession with crowd sizes or the invention of money as a measure of…