Her by Khanh Ha: Book Tour/Guest Post

 
Book Tour/ Her: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

"The magnificent red poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance"

Publisher:  Gival Press, (October 1, 2023)
Category: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Vietnam
Tour dates: January 16-Feb 23, 2024

Publisher:

Her: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha is a love triptych that sweeps through the rich panorama of two generations of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. The hopeless love of a young eunuch for a high-ranking concubine is one of this novel’s three stories that illuminate the oriental mystery of Vietnam, as epic as it is persevering,  Framed between 1915 and 1993, the book begins in Huế, the former imperial capital of Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.

The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.

Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.

Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her. 

My comments: 

I was amazed by the book's background history of the ancient city of Hue and its Imperial dynasty that existed before 1945.  I found "The Imperial City was built in 1362 and in 1993 was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Between these two periods of time, the city even served as the capital of Vietnam from 1802 to 1945 during the reign of the Nguyen dynasty." (from Backpackers Wanderlust).

The book focuses on stories of Phuong, the adopted daughter of a eunuch of the Imperial Court of Hue. Her father, the grand eunuch for 63 years, and the emperor's last concubine, An-Phi, had a love story that ended sadly. An-Phi, as a civilian in later years, roamed the streets, mad, giving away her jewels. 

The book tells, through the stories about the adopted daughter of the eunuch, Phuong, the history of Vietnam from the Imperial times through the French occupation. The other main character is the American Vietnamese boy, Jonathan Edward, who had come to Vietnam to find the parents of his deceased girlfriend, a half Vietnamese-half French girl, only to fall in love with Phuong and die tragically in her arms.

The book is long and approaches this portion of Vietnamese history in an indirect way, by telling stories of different people and their lives affected by the country's history. It's a book to savor slowly, and worthwhile to capture the flavor of the country, old and new. 

 Guest Post by the Author 

On Death Scenes

©Khanh Ha

It happens. Somebody dies. Death can occur in the middle or the end of a novel. Someone’s death could spin the story around. It could be the protagonist’s death.

Each writer writes his death scene with trepidation. How much should he write it without overwriting it?

Some death scenes are so memorable they never leave your memory as long as you read books. Here is the scene in the ending of A Farewell to Arms (Earnest Hemingway) that captures the moment after the death of the protagonist’s lover in a hospital. The doctor then offers to take him back to his hotel.

“Good night,” he said. “I cannot take you to your hotel?”

“No, thank you.”

“It was the only thing to do,” he said. “The operation proved—"

“I do not want to talk about it,” I said.

“I would like to take you to your hotel.”

“No, thank you.”

He went down the hall. I went to the door of the room.

“You can’t come in now,” one of the nurses said.

“Yes, I can,” I said.

“You can’t come in yet.”

“You get out,” I said. “The other one too.”

But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

To date, I have always thought that the best prose ever written in the English language is found in the opening and the ending of A Farewell to Arms. And if you are keen enough as a reader, you will notice its influence on Cormac McCarthy’s prose especially in his award-winning novel All The Pretty Horses.

That brings us to Cormac McCarthy whose hero in All The Pretty Horses meets his death in Cities of The Plain, last book of the trilogy. In this scene, John Grady Cole lies dying from a knife wound and his friend, Billy Parker, goes out to get Cole a glass of water. When he comes back, death has taken his friend away.

When he got to the packingcrate the candle was still burning and he took the glasses both in one hand and pushed back the sacking and crouched on his knees.

Here you go, bud, he said.

But he had already seen. He set the waterglasses slowly down. Bud, he said, Bud?

The boy lay with his face turned away from the light. His eyes were open. Billy called to him. As if he could not have gone far. Bud, he said, Bud? Aw goddamn. Bud?

Aint that pitiful, he said. Aint that the most goddamn pitiful thing? Aint it? Oh God. Bud. Oh goddamn.

When he had him gathered in his arms he rose and turned. Goddamn whores, he said. He was crying and his tears ran down his angry face and he called out to the broken day against them all and he called out to God to see what was before his eyes. Look at this, he called. Do you see? Do you see?

In Her: The Flame Tre, I wrote a novel whose ending witnesses the death of the main character. He is shot and dies in his lover’s arms.

He fell. The lights glared beyond. He got up, fell, and got up again. He saw lights wildly searching the darkness and heard voices descending on him.

She cradled him, weeping. He woke as if to a whitewashed memory and in that moment he knew all that he had lived through. He saw her eyes and her face as if he had never left her, as if nothing had happened or changed, like the smell of the earth.

“Jonathan! Speak to me, Jonathan!”

She turned him on his side so her warmth would keep him awake.

“Hold on, Jonathan. Just hold on.”

Red hot pain dimpled his back, so hot his breath seemed to flame. He felt her hands touching his back and saw they were red when she covered her mouth.

“Wrap him. Stop the bleeding,” someone said, hovering over him.

A monk. He knew the face, but the name didn’t come. Hands touching him. His body no longer seemed to belong to him. He felt an energy shrouding him and a deafening commotion without sound. He saw a young girl who smiled as she walked hand in hand with him through a valley yellow and red with autumn. He saw cranes sleeping in the lagoon at low tide, and among their mirrored white bodies he saw himself cloaked in white.

She pressed her cheek against his. “Jonathan.”

He closed his eyes; the scent of the earth came to him. He saw her eyes very close to his, then his head fell against her chest. The dimple of pain went away.

About Khanh Ha

Author Khanh Ha is a nine-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for The Ohio State University Fiction Collection Prize, Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, Prize Americana, and The Santa Fe Writers Project. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, and The Red Hen Press Fiction Award.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com
Blog: http://authorkhanhha.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/khanhha

Thanks to the author, Khanh Ha, for a review copy of this book, and for his guest post on writing death scenes, including the one in his book. 

Enter the Rafflecopter sweepstake, hosted on the blog tour, to win a copy of the book. 

Guest Post by poet Fran Abrams: Arranging Words: Dec. 3

 Guest post arranged by Poetic Book Tours

Thanks to Fran Abrams for sharing her background and how and when she began to write poetry. Her poems, Arranging Words, was published by Quillkeepers Press in October 2023. 

Excerpt from a few of Fran Abrams' clever and witty poems with their word play:

 

 from "All Ears"  

 She had a reputation

 for being a good listener. 

 What her friends 

 didn’t know is that she had

ears all over her head.,,,

from "Arranging Words" 

Tell me you find solace

when you slip into a poem, find joy

 as you button a poem around you.

 

Author Post:

I began writing poetry in 2017 at the age of 73. Before that, I earned an undergraduate degree in art and architecture and a master’s degree in urban planning. After graduate school, I worked for ten years for the Montgomery County, Maryland, government in jobs related to my formal education. After rising to the position of department head, subject to appointment and dismissal by the County Executive, I left when a new Executive was elected who wanted to place his own appointee in the position. That experience played into my first book of poetry titled I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir, although at the time, it never occurred to me I would be writing poetry later in life. 

I spent the next 31 years working in nonprofit organizations, the last 10 years at the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, as Director of Grants responsible for making roughly $4 million in grants each year. Some of those grantees were poets. I still had no thoughts of writing poetry myself. 

Through those 41 years, I wrote reams of legislation, zoning regulations, grant guidelines, memos, and reports. I love writing and enjoy getting words on paper that were valuable to the mission of the organizations for which I worked. If readers understood what I was trying to say or, in some cases, were persuaded by what I was writing, I considered it a success. 

After I retired in 2010, I wanted a change of focus and worked as a visual artist, pursuing an earlier part of my education. I joined a cooperative, nonprofit gallery in Washington, D.C., and, in part because of my more than 30 years’ experience in managing nonprofits, became president of the organization. 

One day, a large chunk of the plaster ceiling in our gallery fell to the floor. We already realized the building was old and we might need to move, but this was a sign we could not ignore. As president, I appointed a committee to search for new space. We found it in a building under construction in a livelier part of town where new apartments were being built all around. The only catch—the landlord issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to find the best creative tenants. I wrote the 25-page response to the RFP on behalf of the gallery. And we “won” the space. 

That was the volta, the change that made me realize I missed writing. But I didn’t want to keep writing in the vein that business demands. No more memos, reports, or responses to RFPs. What form of writing, I wondered, would be different, but still satisfying. I thought it might be poetry. Happily, the gallery rented its space to earn additional income and a poetry reading was scheduled in our new space soon after we moved in. I assigned myself to be the onsite staff member that evening and, when the reading was over, I knew I wanted to try writing poetry. 

Not too far from where I live is a nonprofit, a grantee from my earlier life, called The Writer’s Center, that offered numerous classes on a wide variety of writing forms. I began taking poetry writing classes there and, over time, I took every class they offered about the craft of poetry. My instructors said I had a knack for it. I wrote. I revised. I submitted. And my work began to be published. 

Reflecting on my life growing up in the 1950s, I decided to write a memoir in poems that became the book titled I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir. Around the time it was published, Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court and the struggle for the rights of women again came to the forefront. The book is timely as it talks about my life in the context of all that occurred during the second wave of feminism.

Since then, I’ve written two chapbooks that have been published by two different small publishers—The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras from Finishing Line Press, and this book, Arranging Words, from Quillkeepers Press. 

So how did my early interests and college studies influence the direction I took in writing poetry? As the Bard wrote, “What’s past is prologue.” All of my past interests and experiences are brought into play when I write poetry. My poems are in narrative form that tell stories. For example, I have always enjoyed math. It has a sense of certainty that few things in life do. So, when I wrote a few poems on math topics, including one about Pythagoras, an instructor encouraged me to expand the topic into a book. 

Arranging Words grew out of my desire to make letters, words, and idioms relatable and meaningful while recognizing that the English language is a slippery beast, and sometimes it’s hard to say what we mean. From my perspective, one of the ways to reveal the trickiness of words is to use humor. Many of the poems in Arranging Words are intended to be funny. Feel free to laugh. 

And that’s the bottom line. After being on this earth for almost 80 years, having experiences both good and bad, I like to write poetry that I hope makes readers think about life from an uncommon perspective, and, at times, laugh.  

About the Author:

Fran Abrams lives in Rockville, MD. Her poems have been published in literary magazines online and in print and appear in more than a dozen anthologies. In July 2022, the title poem of this book, “Arranging Words,” was a finalist in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. Her two previous books are: I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir (2022) and The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras (2023). Learn more at www.franabramspoetry.com and Connect on Facebook at Fran Abrams, Poet. 

Available on Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes & Noble.

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves.

A Shinobi Mystery Novel/Guest Post: Fires of Edo by Susan Spann

 Shinobi Mystery Series #8

Fires of Edo by Susan Spann

Seventh Street Books (February 15, 2022)

Book Beginning:

  "Fire!"

  The cry rang out from atop a nearby tower.

  "Fire! Fire!" Other voices echoed the alarm.

On the tower a bell began to toll. 

  "Where is it?" Father Matheo craned his neck to search the roofs of the wooden buildings that lined both sides of the narrow street. "Can you see it?"

  Master ninja Hattori Hiro searched for signs of any smoke or flames,...

My comments: This is the eighth in the Shinobi Mystery Series by the author, who has set her books in Japan in the 16th Century, when the shogun ruler allowed and even welcomed Christian priests into the country. The main character, Hiro Hattori, is a ronin, or rogue samurai without a master, who serves the priest Father Mateo while the priest is living in Japan, but Hiro is secretly a samurai of the Iga ryu ninja clan who has been charged with protecting Father Mateo and looking for dangerous spies from an enemy clan. In Fires of Edo, Hiro and Mateo solve a crime in the town of Edo. Two book shop fires have resulted in the deaths of the book seller owners, deemed accidents. The third fire, subject of this book, seems very suspicious as the body of a samurai has been found in the ashes. The owner of the shop, Ishii, and his 10-year-old apprentice, Kintaro, become suspects in the fire and death and face swift execution. Hiro  then risks his life several times, in action-packed, suspenseful scenes, to find the truth behind the rash of fires, all the while on the lookout for hostile rival shinobi/ninja assassins.  Descriptions of fire fighting techniques and methods, and details of city life immerse us in the culture of Edo and the officials who oversee them. The rules and rights that both govern and protect the samurai class apply. The priest's servant Ana and their cat Gato accompany Hiro and Mateo on their journeys and add some lightness to the plot. I really enjoyed the suspense in the novel as well as the village setting, the food and hospitality of the inns, the rituals used in a public bath house, and other aspects of the life of those times.  I am very impressed with the historical research that the author has done for this and other books in the series. Page 56 excerpt:   "I have experience with investigations," Hiyoshi told the magistrate. " I understand fires and how they start...."                                            Edo Period Fire Pump   Edo Period Bookshop (model)  Guest post by Susan Spann The Tiny Spark That Ignited Fires of Edo  Inspiration is like fire: it often starts with a tiny, random spark, which smolders quietly for a while before bursting into flame. That’s definitely true of my newest Hiro Hattori mystery, Fires of Edo, which owes its initial, early inspiration to a humble artifact I saw in a small museum, several years before I set the first words on the page. In November 2016, while hiking part of an ancient travel road through Japan’s mountainous Kiso Valley as research for an entirely different book, I spent two nights in the preserved, historical post town of Magome, in Gifu Prefecture. The town consists of a single, steeply-sloping street that winds up the side of a mountain; traditional inns (called ryokan) and shops line both sides of the narrow, stone-paved road. In its heyday, Magome was one of the major stopping points on the Kiso-kaido, later known as the Nakasendo, a mountainous route that connected the ancient capital of Kyoto with the growing city of Edo—now called Tokyo. The special inn where high-ranking samurai once spent the night in Magome is now a small museum filled with artifacts that relate to the history of the town and the Kiso Road. Most of the displays relate to domestic life or business: a woman’s cosmetic case, a portable scale, and an early clock that used burning incense to mark the passing hours. Tucked away in a corner, a small, glass case held a display dedicated to the victims of one of Magome’s many fires; near the front, a simple, wooden device was labeled “龍吐水” (Dragon Spout) and “Water Pump” in English and Japanese. Bilingual text on the display identified the object as an Edo Period (1603-1868) fire extinguisher, a surprising and much-welcome technological advancement over the water buckets Japanese people had used to fight fires for centuries before. As a long-time student of Japanese history, architecture, and culture, I was well aware of the devastating impact fire on Japan. In fact, if you visit (or read about) almost any major historical or religious site in Japan, you’re likely to see a reference to it burning down or being rebuilt after being destroyed by fire. However, this fire extinguisher, and particularly the text—which said nothing about how it was used, but instead discussed the surprise and joy with which it was received—started me thinking about the impact of fire, and firefighting, on the lives of ordinary Japanese people in the past. After all, it wasn’t only historical sites that burned; the fires that swept through Edo and other towns impacted common people too. Three years later, when I finally began outlining the book in which my ninja detective, Hiro Hattori, and his Portuguese Jesuit sidekick Father Mateo, arrived in Edo, that fire extinguisher instantly sprang to mind. Books played an important role in Edo’s history, and I knew I wanted to set the story in the world of the men and women who made and sold books in Edo—which was then little more than a fishing town ruled by samurai. Normally, once I decide the cultural setting in which a book takes place, I spend a little time considering how a murder might take place there. With this book, for the first time ever, I already knew. It was time for the spark ignited by the simple fire extinguisher in Magome to become a flame. The story, which involves a suspicious murder-by-arson in a book binder’s shop, also features the fledgling fire brigade (sadly, still working sans extinguishers) who tried to keep the city safe from its many fires, which were so common that residents called them “the blossoms of Edo.” In fact, Blossoms of Edo was the original working title, which eventually changed to Fires of Edo—although I did manage to sneak the original saying into the story. Keep an eye out for it when you read the book! Susan  Spann スザン  スパン Author of CLIMB (2020)  & the Hiro Hattori (Shinobi) Mysteries   2015 RMFW Writer of the Year http://www.susanspann.com           Magome at Sunset Susan Spann is the award-winning, bestselling author of FIRES OF EDO and seven other books in the Hiro Hattori mystery series, as well as CLIMB: Leaving Save and Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan. She lives and writes in Tokyo, and is always looking for her next adventure; she shares stories and photographs from Japan at www.susanspann.com and on Facebook at /SusanSpannAuthor.

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves

Guest Post: Matthew Dunn, author of The Spy Thief - Sunday Salon

 

Matthew Dunn

Guest Post for Harvee Lau, Book Dilettante

When I wrote The Spy Thief I had certain objectives, all of which were secondary to my overarching desire to tell what I believed was a gripping tale. I am, after all, a storyteller. But the secondary objectives were real and as follows –ground the story in an espionage realism not seen elsewhere in current spy fiction; make it a completely immersive experience across all the senses; give the reader more than he or she expects or needs; and provide a motivation for my antagonist which has hitherto not been seen in fiction before.

I’m a former spy who spent many years working for Great Britain’s MI6 – the equivalent of America’s CIA, France’s DGSE, Israel’s Mossad, and Russia’s SVR, although MI6 is the oldest truly global overseas intelligence service and created the foundations for the secret world. For many years, I covertly travelled the world, confronting highly complex and fraught matters pertaining to the national security of my country and its allies. The term “spy” is often misused. Despite protestations to the contrary, there aren’t that many spies, at least not in accordance to the professional definition of the cadre. And the number of former spies writing books is miniscule. In Britain, I’m the only ex-spy writing fiction. I suspect that in America there are only a handful of former CIA officers writing stories. So, there are a tiny bunch of ex-spooks out there crafting fiction and it would be understandable to imagine that we have the monopoly on writing spy novels. We don’t and nor should we. Being a former spy means that I have a steady hand when it comes to writing about all matters espionage. But, all good authors have imaginations, are intelligent, and these days have easy access to openly-available research material. One doesn’t have to have been a spy to write a cracking spy novel. The late and great John le Carré was an MI6 officer before becoming a renowned author. But, Alan Furst is also a magnificent spy author, and he never spied in his life.  

Where I do have something to say on the dreaded word “realism” is that I’ve seen, heard, touched, smelled, and felt the secret world. I know from first-hand experience what it’s like to deal with the human condition when it’s tested to the limit in the shadows. In The Spy Thief I portray a raft of emotions, and they include those that are reactions to the most extreme events. I would hope that my readers can tell such scenes are written by an author who has manifold memories cascading through his head as his fingers tap the keyboard. The Spy Thief allows the reader a glimpse into my head. But it’s not just a “look”. I want all of the reader’s senses engaged. Thus, I’ve written the book in a certain way and with key content that hopefully ensures the reader is in the secret world and all that it contains.

The starting point for The Spy Thief project was a photograph. In 1965, my father was fresh off the boat from his last voyage, in a fifteen-year globe-navigating career in the merchant navy. He gravitated to London which, at the time, felt like “spy-central”. The Soviet Union was having an impact on British fiction, fact, and fashion. That year, cinemas were showing The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, The Ipcress File, and Dr Zhivago; the Cold War was at its peak; in London and elsewhere, people wore clothes that made them look like they were about to stab someone with a poison-umbrella. My father took his photo while strolling through a London park with his flatmate. By his own admission, the shot was a fluke. But he thought, and I concur, that the photo really captured the feel of a spy story. For years I wanted to use the photo on the cover of one of my books. The challenge was marrying the photo with the right story. Finally, I created the right story. The result is The Spy Thief.  

I’ve always set myself the highest standards and am my biggest critic. That applies to my work as an author. I constantly tell myself that readers deserve better than what I’m doing, better than what others are doing. I’m a perfectionist, and make no apologies for being that way. That doesn’t mean I always achieve what I strive to accomplish. But, I relentlessly give it my best shot and am never complacent. In The Spy Thief, I believe that I have achieved what I set out to do. In my opinion, it is my best work and I’m proud of the story. I want to test my readers, take them away from the norm, and give them a wholly unexpected and captivating odyssey.

I sincerely hope that my loyal readers and new readers enjoy the novel.

 Matthew Dunn

August 2021   

 

The Spy Thief (Ben Sign Mystery #5) by Matthew Dunn, August 2, 2021, ebook

The most vital secrets of Great Britain are being stolen and sold to hostile foreign agencies. The perpetrator is a ruthless high-ranking British official, code name The Thief.... Brilliant strategist and former MI6 spy Ben Sign is commissioned to investigate the security breach and neutralise The Thief. Sign realises he is facing the most formidable opponent he has ever encountered.(publisher)

Author Bio

Matthew Dunn is a former MI6 British Intelligence officer. He spent many years operating in deep-cover alias roles in overseas locations, often in hostile territories. His work as a spy required him to obtain secrets from hostile regimes, agencies, and individuals. He specifically targeted the highest echelons of rogue states and in doing so supported and directly influenced the national security effort of Great Britain and its allies. He retired from MI6 ten years ago and became a bestselling author. To date he has written 14 published novels, including the “Ben Sign” spy series and “Spycatcher” series. His latest novel is The Spy Thief, the 5^th standalone novel in the Ben Sign series, exclusive to Amazon in e-book and paperback format. 

 

Author Social Media Links

THE SPY THIEF:

https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Thief-Sign-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B09BT5HTK1/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+spy+thief&qid=1628170906&sr=8-1

 AMAZON:

https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Dunn/e/B004EHL8EM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

 https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMI6

 https://www.instagram.com/matthewdunnauthor/

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-dunn-30731a17/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5395765.Matthew_Dunn

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/matthewdunnauthor/_created/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmjGu6yrTlQp9uvzaABzHxQ

https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/matthew-dunn

Thanks to the author, Matthew Dunn, for giving us a look into the writer's mind, with his British intelligence background and  intimate knowledge of the people in the world of international espionage. 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon

Guest Post by Sherry Quan Lee, author of Septuagenarian

 A poetic memoir

Poetic Book Tours presents a guest post on writing, by poet and memoirist, Sherry Quan Lee. 

Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die is a memoir in poetic form. It is the author’s journey from being a mixed-race girl who passed for white to being a woman in her seventies who understands and accepts her complex intersectional identity; and no longer has to imagine love.

 It is a follow-up to the author’s previous memoir (prose), Love Imagined: a mixed-race memoir, A Minnesota Book Award finalist.

The Writing Process by Sherry Quan Lee, guest post

 A student once said to me that she appreciated me telling the class to keep everything.  Keep each and every draft of your writing, your manuscript.  Did I say that?

 Actually, I save nothing.  Okay, next to nothing.  When did I start letting go? It’s not about keeping what brings me joy.  My writing isn’t joyful.  Although, someone once said it had sass.

 I have always decluttered.  Every two or three months I purge-this includes not only things, but sometimes people (sometimes they purge me).  But since the Pandemic, actually even before, I started a momentous purge—maybe it was when I turned 70 and knew any day now could be my last and why make my children go through my things, things they wouldn’t want. 

 My office files are fairly pristine.  Sorted, labeled, shelved:  insurance, taxes, car, condo, publications—mine and those of my friends.  Yet, as the piles of my essays and poems thin, I am heart struck to notice a journey of words that repeat, that sail forth, that bring me to my writing/life today at the age of 73.

 Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die was published March 2021. Now that’s a scary title if not understood as a metaphor.  The mock-up of the cover has the sub-title in small font size.  What does that mean?  Are we afraid of death?  Actually, the title came from a poem within the manuscript and it stuck, the line in the title, not the poem.  It’s a metaphor.  Clarissa Pinkola Estés said What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? I say, what must I let go of to generate love, be love, give love, get love.

 As I fumble through boxes of what I have not yet been able to discard, I discover a few poems that haven’t yet found their way to the trash.  One poem in particular, but there are others, starts out like this:

 

“I woke up knowing I was dead.  The first thing I’ve been sure of all my life.  The marks stretched, some visible and some invisible.  Stretched past cardboard boxes.  None of them empty,  Each box filled with an arm or a leg.”

 

The two-page poem contain boxes each labeled by a decade. It ends with:  “This was love.  She had finally gotten what she wanted.  But she was no longer who she was. She didn’t recognize herself….”

 The poem was dated October 15, 1999.  Only three years after I earned an MFA. There are hand-written revisions.  There is a short version printed in red.  A note says Vulva Riot.  There is a chorus that reads:  “Stretch marks, mark time, highway marks, passing marks, remarks, earmarks, market, marker, question marks, magic markers, grave markers, stretch marks.”

 Sometimes we don’t know why we say things, do things, save things—write things.  But there is significance to our actions.  I am glad I saved this poem. If I had come across it earlier, it would be in my book.  It would be the Introduction, the Foreword.  I am going to edit the poem.  This poem will not be discarded.  There are no rules I told my students.  Save all your drafts or don’t.  Discard everything so future generations won’t be bothered, or save what has been your life line and hope someone will embrace it.

 WRITING EXERCISE:  choose a word, such as mark and explore it and all related words by sound, by meaning, or both.  Create a chorus/a short verse.  Let it be the pattern that emerges.  How do you fill the empty spaces in-between?  Are they boxes marked by decades such as:

 “One box, marked 1953-1963, contained Hostess Cup Cakes.  Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.  Barbie dolls.  Captain, May I.  Sorry.  Sugar and Spice.  Axel and His Dog. Captain Kangaroo. Nancy Drew. Bobbsey Twins.  The Little Engine That Could.  Pop Beads,  Roller Skates.  Crinolines. Hula Hoops.  Red Rover.  Pony Tails.  Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. Kool Aide. “Go Tell Aunt Rhody the Ol’ Gray Goose Is Dead”. The Salvation Army Book Store on Nicollet Island. Government Surplus.  A metal Grocery Cart.  Trading Cards.  Air Raid Drills.  Standish Elementary School.  Woolworths.  Wonder Bread.” 

I probably did tell the student to save all of her writing.  I probably meant it.  Much of my writing, however, my former life was left behind when I made, yet another relationship move.  This one sudden.  Sometimes things aren’t saved because we can’t take them with us.  But sometimes, a book authored and signed by you to another poet will show up on a Google search and you know not everything is lost, it just might have found a new home. 

Sherry Quan Lee

June 26, 2021

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon