American Book Review: Current Issue is on “Essential Asian American Literature”
Here’s the list of articles (introduced by Sue-Im Lee): Shirley Geok-lin Lim on Maxine Hong-Kingston’s The Woman Warrior Donald C. Goellnicht on Joy Kogawa’s Obasan Pin-chia Feng on Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone Rocio G. Davis on Chitra Divakaruni’s The Word Love Well, self hopes this is an abbreviated list, for she finds the pickings rather skimpy, to say the least. There aren’t even any Asian American men on the list.  But perhaps she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mout

Movie Highlights of Yester-Year: Featuring a Selection of Gross-Out Chewing Scenes
Self stumbled home from an expedition to Best Buy with hubby, who was interested in purchasing a Sony laptop. Afterwards, exhausted from this strangely strenuous and yet thrilling activity, self resorted to her most relaxing internet experience, browsing Chowhound. And, as usual, the site did not disappoint. The first interesting post was about iconic Thanksgiving movies. But almost everyone mentioned the same movie (“Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”), so that was not much fun. Shortly, however, self stumbled upon a post by a film-maker, requesting nominations for the “most gross-out chewing scenes ever in a movie.” (Self

Thanksgiving: The Upside and the Downside
First of all, now that self knows that she is capable of herself roasting a whole turkey, she can face the world with much more confidence. Which may even end up translating (hopefully) into her being more aggressive when pitching her writing. Second, self now knows she is capable of teaching an on-line class, even while engaged in preparing aforementioned fowl for roasting (Although, self’s multi-tasking skills should have been apparent long, looong ago — just look at how she managed to keep her blog up, even when she was teaching five classes in three different places, last fall!) Third

Shame 2
They dug the huge holes a month before. After the massacre, into these huge holes they put not only the bodies of the 57 victims, but their cars and the trucks, the bodies still in them. Then they brought in bulldozers to tamp down the earth over these huge pits, thinking to hide the evidence of their crimes. In other words, they planned everything. Obviously, the perpetrators were none too smart. As any one who has studied mass murder can tell you, the Katyn Forest did give up its grisly evidence eventually. As did Babi Yar. * * * * Dearest Mum went to Anvil Book Festival at Glorietta 3, Nov. 29. She saw several of self̵

Post-Thanksgiving (2009), a Round-Up
So, the holiday is over. The bird is safely stowed in the fridge. The kitchen counters are free of mess (for self cleaned them around midnight, immediately after watching Wes Craven’s craven Last House on the Left). Here are some Thanksgiving resolutions self made yesterday: She’s going to return to the parking lot of Draeger’s in Menlo Park, and if that man collecting money for wounded veterans of Iraq is still there (Self saw not a single person give him a donation: for shame, Menlo Park matrons!), she’ll give him something. She has to figure out what to make of the left-over turkey — p