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i don't normally publish recommendations and reviews, not formal ones at least, but russell leong is one of the inspirations for this site and for me, so i thought i'd share:
los angeles times wednesday august 23, 2000
west words southern california living
by jonathan kirsch, special to the times
russell charles leong, the poet and filmmaker who serves as editor of amerasia journal and the publications of the asian american studies center at ucla, offers his own take on the asian experience in america in phoenix eyes and other stories (university of washington press) a collection of startling and unsettling short stories that are mostly set in the landscape of contemporary california.
some of leong's rich and evocative stories confront us with the horror of what might be played for cheap exoticism in less skillful hands. "daughters," for example, introduces us to a woman at work in a suburban brothel in the san gabriel valley and shows us how she was forced into a life of prostitution at 14 by her own a father, a fate that followed her from asia to america. abruptly, the tale shifts from the mundane details of a prostitute's life--the norplant implants, the can of lysol spray in the bathroom, the tic tacs that are chewed three at a time to conceal a recent meal of "fish paste and garlic and sweet oyster sauce and ginger and black beans and chili"--to an almost mythic scene of crisis and redemption.
"now the moon was full and her blood was flowing freely," writes leong of the prostitute called haishan at the very moment when both body and spirit fail her. "unable to avert her eyes, she saw everyone whom she had known as if in a waking dream. for an instant, she even saw herself as a nun. she would shave her head as she had threatened to do long ago and toss the filaments into the burning temple oven."
other stories in the collection are more restrained, but leong always shows us how memory and identity persist even in the melting pot of america. "bodhi leaves," for example, is a fable that focuses on the efforts of a pious monk from vietnam to transform an orange county tract home near little saigon into a proper buddhist temple, a project that relies on the exertions of mexican day laborers, the concrete status of buddha on sale at a korean nursery in hollywood, and the efforts of one young vietnamese artist who works to the strains of jay z's "hard knock life" and another who spends more time surfing than at prayer. the monk is thankful to be out of the refugee camp in thailand, but he is not entirely at ease in his new homeland. "he did not feel as liberated in america as he had hoped," leong sums up with a deadpan shrug.
"to see life as it happened, and to imagine other possibilities," is how leong describes his own mission as a writer. both of these qualities--his acute powers of observation and his poet's gift for capturing the experience of transcendence--are given full expression in the pages of "phoenix eyes."
on an unrelated note, use my new search engine (found below left/sinistra) to find the naughty bits.
posted August 24, 2000 in art, print. 2002