tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22606899299343315872024-03-12T21:59:05.177-07:00Same Worlds, Other WorldsMonica Mody's WebSpaceMonicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.comBlogger215125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-60735656005436029292019-04-26T11:58:00.001-07:002019-04-26T12:02:56.386-07:00New Website Coming Up<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Hello friends,<br />
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You can find me for now <a href="http://www.monica-mody.com/">www.monica-mody.com</a>. Please have patience as the website morphs into a more complex ecology!<br />
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In the meantime, you can find me on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/monica.mody/" target="_blank">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/monicamody" target="_blank">Twitter</a>!<br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-68500369508406438152017-11-28T17:09:00.001-08:002017-11-28T17:09:10.457-08:00Ancestor Writing Circles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Stories can change our lives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">To be a keeper and teller of stories is considered a sacred “job” in cultures that recognize a closeness with nature.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">It is a job with repercussions on the long memory of self, family, culture, planet, and cosmos. Every telling gives the storyteller an opportunity to reenter the living stream of memory: to re-story in deep collaboration with our ancestors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Awakening ancestral consciousness means continuing to come into awareness of how we are interacting with—and part of—this living stream. We are not the boxed-off, rational entities that civilized modernity tells us we are. Our ancestors have come before. We have come before. We have always been a part of nature. Our ancestors have always been a part of us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">I invite you to join me in a process of recovering our natural connection with the ancestors of our world. I invite you to explore telling stories in relationship with the ancestors. I invite you to explore that deeper level of engagement with memory, story, language, creativity, and art that is in service to our human and nonhuman ancestors—our human and nonhuman worlds.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">These writing circles are for you:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">• if you have been wanting to attune to the ancestors</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">• if you have stories from your family, lineage, or culture asking to be received and told</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">• if you would like to approach writing as a ritual</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">• if you have wondered how an ancestral perspective might change your patterns of relationship, health, financial flow, and connection to the mystery</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">• if you would like a community to connect with as your stories emerge</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">With deep respect and an open heart, each month I will guide you into a place of listening, receiving, and mutual support. All ages, beliefs, genders, genres welcome.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">The circle will meet in person at a private residence in San Francisco. You can also participate online via Zoom (please pre-register by noon of the day). Suggested donation: sliding scale $15-30 pre-register, $25-40 doors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">WHEN</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">• Sunday, December 3, 3-5pm PST</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">• 2018 dates TBA</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">REGISTER HERE: <a href="https://goo.gl/forms/OMB37Hx98cy7QAVL2">https://goo.gl/forms/OMB37Hx98cy7QAVL2</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Email ancestorwritingcircles@gmail.com with questions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: cantarell;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/125856251437085/" target="_blank">Find us on Facebook.</a></span></span></div>
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-61355404756006265902017-09-26T23:58:00.000-07:002017-09-26T23:58:11.612-07:00Thank you for visiting!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
You can find out about my upcoming <b>events and appearances</b> <a href="http://www.modymonica.com/p/events.html">here</a>. A list of my <b>journal/magazine publications</b> is <a href="http://www.modymonica.com/p/poetry-becoming-genres.html">here</a>, and I link to <b>essays & reviews</b> <a href="http://www.modymonica.com/p/articles-reviews.html">here</a>. To be directed to <b>Kala Pani</b>, click <a href="http://www.modymonica.com/p/kala-pani.html">this</a>.<br />
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For my <b>divination/sacred offerings</b>, go to <a href="http://artofdivinations.com/">Art of Divinations</a>.<br />
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Also, you can follow me on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mody.monica/" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/monicamody">Twitter</a> or <a href="https://instagram.com/monica.mody">Instagram</a>.</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-4407117541063184542017-09-26T23:57:00.003-07:002017-09-26T23:57:49.443-07:00The Borderlands Feminine: A Feminist, Decolonial Framework for Re-membering Motherlines in South Asia/Transnational Culture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Am honored to have <a href="http://integral-review.org/issues/vol_13_no_1_mody_the_borderlands_feminine.pdf">this paper</a> published in <a href="http://integral-review.org/current_issue/vol-13-no-1-jul-2017/"><i>Integral Review</i>'s Special Issue on Integral Education, Women’s Spirituality and Feminist Pedagogies</a>, edited by Bahman Shirazi.<br />
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"This paper uses Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands framework to resignify and recover the marginalized, forgotten sacred feminine and, thereby, South Asian motherlines. The borderlands is conceived of as a new consciousness, an alternative to that which is written in history. It offers a radical synthesis of spiritual healing with anti-oppression work. Creating self-affirming, complex images of female identity, and making revisionist myths—while engaging the self in relation to culture— constitutes a decolonial practice. It enables South Asian women—as the Others of colonial modernity and brahmanical patriarchy—to renew their relation to an episteme of the sacred that liberates their voices, vitality, and authority. The post-secular sacred locates as essential a critical interrogation of all forms of oppression. The researcher enacts her decolonial recovery at the edges of her South Asian/brown postcolonial feminist subjectivity. The borderlands framework makes possible a profoundly relational, integrative onto-epistemological praxis that forefronts the grandmothers, the foremothers, and the experiences of women of color on their own terms."<br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-19744605440251722582016-07-14T00:16:00.000-07:002016-07-14T00:16:26.474-07:00Saturday July 16 // Beast Crawl & MFA Mixer Present: Un Re-Mixing Tied Tongue <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoFeCr0BZSf0CTTEBf7HAOyzoFJwzbwSGwvgMPL0F4KJ51UHzJ5Dygr1G-Z0N8cuE5DdhsrepuHcttvZ-nEZHJVGJWo_BUFBwsnfc3HlPash_-QX6aqdLIaxC6UbDfV_2CQN4zTp-d_4DW/s1600/beastcrawl.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoFeCr0BZSf0CTTEBf7HAOyzoFJwzbwSGwvgMPL0F4KJ51UHzJ5Dygr1G-Z0N8cuE5DdhsrepuHcttvZ-nEZHJVGJWo_BUFBwsnfc3HlPash_-QX6aqdLIaxC6UbDfV_2CQN4zTp-d_4DW/s200/beastcrawl.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Uptown Oakland's </span><a href="http://beastcrawl.weebly.com/" style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;" target="_blank">Beast Crawl</a><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;"> is an annual free literary festival featuring more than 150 writers in a single night, spread out over three hours and nearly 40 local galleries, bars, restaurants, cafes, and storefronts. Its fifth year, and Beast Crawl is going strong!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Mixer-20-A-San-Francisco-Bay-Area-MfaPhd-Reading-Series-144145442319552/" target="_blank">Mixer 2.0</a> brings the multilingual, mother tongue, split tongue, code-switching, cross-cultural punning, the translated, the approximation, the affirmation because often English struggles and fails as speech... to the stage; the legacy of the languages we carry from home, the languages crossing the borders, and the languages by which we communicate here in these United States. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;"><a href="http://beastcrawl.weebly.com/mixer-20.html" target="_blank">Leg Three</a> | 8PM-9pm | <a href="http://beastcrawl.weebly.com/stork-club.html" target="_blank">Stork Club</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/479655345571532/" target="_blank">The Readers:</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Ani Tascian, Saint Mary's</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Ani Tascian was born in San Francisco, but didn’t learn English until she was four years old. She is VONA (Voices of Our Nation’s Arts) alumni and has her M.F.A. from Saint Mary’s College of California (2015). She is currently working on memoir that explores her family history of illness and her roots in the Armenian Genocide. Her work can be found in Buddhist Poetry Review, Citron Review, Bird’s Thumb and Cahoodadoodaling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Monica Mody, CIIS</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Monica Mody is a writer and poet from India currently living in San Francisco. Kala Pani, her book of cross-genre writing, is out from 1913 Press.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Aura Maru, UC Berkeley</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Aura Maru was born in Moldova. She has recently published a collection of poetry in her native Romanian tongue, entitled "du-te free" (Moldova: Cartier Publishing, 2015). Currently a PhD student in the Comparative Literature department at UC Berkeley, she is focusing on her projects in the English language.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Jacob Walse-Dominguez, SFSU</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: -0.24px; line-height: 18.76px;">Jacob Walse-Dominguez is an expat living in the Bay Area. He writes about issues of LGBT rights as well as income and housing inequality, and the homeless youth. He lives with his husband and their imaginary dog.</span><br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-28494155991953391112016-06-14T13:49:00.002-07:002016-06-14T13:49:31.528-07:00Poetry/Performance at THE HUNDY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/488265344713184/" target="_blank">Wolfman Books will host The HUNDY for a second time</a> between June 18th and July 2nd, with readings every day 7pm onwards.
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I will be doing a poetry/performance ritual on Friday, June 24. I am listening as to what needs to happen! My fellow readers/performers include Julian Brolaski, Lara Durback, Melissa Mack, and Raphi Gottesman—this should be a good evening. Join us!</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-89839380000809782932016-06-14T13:41:00.001-07:002016-06-14T13:41:24.096-07:00Movie Recommendation: Embrace of the Serpent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Go watch the astounding <i>Embrace of the Serpent</i>—on the big screen if you can!<br />
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The movie has been widely hailed for its mesmerizing black and white cinematography and two-journey mythic narrative structure, both of which prove to be apt vehicles for its central theme: conflict between worlds and spiritualities and how to know worlds and how to use this knowledge. It depicts colonialism-propelled changes in and destruction of biodiversity along the Amazon river, which were accompanied by profound human and cultural losses—the decimation of entire communities and knowledges.<br />
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What I appreciated even before I went to watch <i>Embrace of the Serpent</i> was how it was filmed in ways that were consonant with sacred indigenous worldviews the movie juxtaposes against the destructive impulses of western logic...<br />
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<b>Read more <a href="http://www.artofdivinations.com/blog/movie-recommendation-embrace-of-the-serpent" target="_blank">here</a>.</b></div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-66887979323421839962016-04-16T11:36:00.002-07:002016-04-16T11:38:06.389-07:00Lantern Review Reads at American Bookbinders tonight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Join us tonight at a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/853779041416224/">reading at the American Bookbinders Museum</a>! I will be presenting new and old work, along with poets Barbara Jane Reyes, Brynn Saito, Candy Shue, Debbie Yee, and Jason Bayani. We have all been past contributors to <i><a href="http://www.lanternreview.com/">Lantern Review</a></i>, an amazing online journal of Asian American poetry and art, which is back after a two-year hiatus. LR has asked us to read work that explores themes of printing, thread/stitching, paper, community, and the Bay Area itself. What a glad opportunity to celebrate National Poetry Month!<br />
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(As D.A. Powell <a href="https://twitter.com/Powell_DA/status/720335553024004097">tweets</a>:<br />
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"one month is simply not enough<br />
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for all the poetry you'll need<br />
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to get you through this year")<br />
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A shout-out to Iris Law and Mia Malhotra whose labor of love (and so much love!) this is. The care and generosity they bring to every aspect of the journal and blog and associated events are obvious.<br />
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There will be a follow-up <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/487867964756592/">Third Thursday event on April 21</a> that I will have to miss due to a prior commitment.
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I hope to see some of you there. Please note that admission is $5 for adults, $2.50 for students, with children under ten admitted free. The museum assures that no one will be turned away for lack of funds.<br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-77673818612582735412016-02-23T18:23:00.001-08:002016-02-23T18:23:07.446-08:00Mitski, Phoebe Bridges, Jay Som, Poetry by Monica Mody @ Noise Pop 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am very excited to be reading poetry at Noise Pop 2016 tomorrow! If you still need tickets to the show, <a href="http://schedule.noisepop.com//events/2016/2/24/mitski">get them here.</a><br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-89684184625311016912015-02-08T02:14:00.001-08:002016-02-23T18:41:17.403-08:00When great directors turn upon their films<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I so loved Werner Herzog's 1984 indictment of extractive modernity, <i>Where the Green Ants Dream</i>. Then I heard his director's commentary recorded twenty years after the film, where he repeatedly decries the "righteous tone" of the movie.<br />
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I felt a little sad at coming across once again--and that too from Herzog--the belief that good art cannot take a moral stand, or that a moral stance is necessarily reductive.<br />
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This is such a white Euro-American perspective on art!<br />
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I would like to argue that sincerity does not necessarily simplify, that <b>there is nothing simple about sincerity</b>. Sincerity is necessarily, naturally, contrapuntal. Contextual. Always, already strange, particularly in periods typified by reified aesthetic gestures of irony, nihilism, and intellectualism.<br />
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*<br />
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Werner also, in the director's commentary, blames the abuse of alcohol and drugs among indigenous communities on indigenous folk being thrown into a civilization that is thousands of years "ahead" - not understanding (not caring? ignoring? forgetting?) that the "shock" the "primitive" people suffer from erupts not from <i>being behind</i>, but at finding themselves in a modernity that is so far behind: in empathy, mutuality, interconnectedness, participation, love.<br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-70231902893789846772015-02-05T11:19:00.000-08:002016-02-23T18:32:28.530-08:00A Midwinter Reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Hosted by the gracious Melissa Mack: be invited! </div>
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(Email me for directions)</div>
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-30837530883527324862015-01-23T13:44:00.000-08:002015-01-23T13:44:54.769-08:00THE HUNDY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I love the Bay Area. The Bay Area is mad for poetry! There are 100 poets reading at Oakland's <a href="http://wolfmanhomerepair.com/">E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore</a> as part of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/919316398087810/">THE HUNDY</a>, a 15 day daily poetry extravaganza, and you will agree with me that it is quite excessive and marvelous!<br />
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I am on tomorrow, in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/374691589371609/">double-header curated by Carrie Hunter and Andrea-Abi Karam</a>. Come one, come all!<br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-7082092164957452742015-01-19T14:31:00.000-08:002015-01-19T15:06:41.495-08:00on sensing and honoring the waters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The first issue of <i><a href="http://quietlightning.org/vitriol/">vitriol</a></i> includes a poem where I call in and celebrate the <a href="http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs012/1101454195791/archive/1107860009119.html">waters</a>...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6FAJOeuzVMjL4P-VkWjBIdcjm4i0OgkP3jXpZjR5dCTwjgWiWHr9YlWel8gdhYV7xnv1f2tblLxwvZQrEnYhO9Ftwaup1lQNF6GSxl1R3CZp0n4VlmukiZsyWB_IxSOMMHvEgwxo76cnd/s1600/3716_001-page-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6FAJOeuzVMjL4P-VkWjBIdcjm4i0OgkP3jXpZjR5dCTwjgWiWHr9YlWel8gdhYV7xnv1f2tblLxwvZQrEnYhO9Ftwaup1lQNF6GSxl1R3CZp0n4VlmukiZsyWB_IxSOMMHvEgwxo76cnd/s1600/3716_001-page-001.jpg" height="97" width="100" /></a><br />
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...and awesome illustrations of contributors by <a href="http://tabuenafrolli.com/">Cal Tabuena-Frolli</a>!<br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-70016488348225208092015-01-19T13:46:00.000-08:002015-01-19T14:30:50.717-08:00Conundrum for a Community<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As we come to know ourselves and each other as a community, how can also allow ourselves and each other to be unknown, so there is space to be new, to renew? So waters of love and possibility and renewal and connection and forgiveness can flow and continue flowing?<br />
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And if we think we know each other, will that thinking stop us from really knowing each other in this moment? Will that stop us from extending love to each other?<br />
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If love is openness and willingness to know - holding the other not to an image but to the emerging (of spirit, of healing, of love) that is budding in them - how may we love each other?<br />
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How may we see each other?<br />
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If forgiveness is a remitting of debts - what will allow the debts we collect (or impose) in community to be remitted?<br />
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And what of the ego's desire to be right, to defend its stand, to know, to be certain (before or so that it can trust)?<br />
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Is there a way to stay tender towards each other's becoming as we continue to come together and take a stand together and build and create together? - as village, as community?<br />
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And what of our beloved relationships in other spheres of our lives? What of our other communities?
How can we cultivate a beginner's mind to relationship even as our deep wounds get triggered that seek safety and certainty, that permit us to offer only so much openness or conditional trust?
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Sometimes I notice my own tightening - and ask for healing - and ask to meet that deep well of love that I may know you in your spaciousness - and allow myself to be known in mine - continually.</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-79566398574183738752014-12-02T14:54:00.000-08:002014-12-02T14:54:13.898-08:00Quick notes: Nico Peck's The Pyrrhiad<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The taste of bloodgriefrage still with me<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">—</span>selkies still singing<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">—</span>by way of this sly, multi-voiced elegy where, amidst the violence in our cities, thoughts, language, we are injected with possibility<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">—of</span> play<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">—</span>in word & world<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">—</span>that is both guile & guilelessness.<br />
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And the living are taught we may speak to the dead, milk between us.<br />
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<i>(<a href="http://dirtyswanprojects.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/nico-pecks-the-pyrrhiad/">Nico Peck's The Pyrrhiad</a> has been published by Dirty Swan Projects, 2014)</i><br />
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-42985681039822702212014-11-23T11:07:00.000-08:002014-11-23T11:07:52.129-08:00Tonight with Hearts Desire & Dirty Swan Projects at The Omni Commons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Nico Peck and Sara Larsen launch their first full-length collections tonight, and I will be joining them at this exciting reading/event:<br />
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Nico's <a href="http://dirtyswanprojects.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/nico-pecks-the-pyrrhiad/">THE PYRRHIAD (Dirty Swan Projects)</a><br />
Sara's <a href="http://all%20revolutions%20will%20be%20fabulous%20%28printing%20press%29./">ALL REVOLUTIONS WILL BE FABULOUS (Printing Press)</a><br />
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7-9pm, @ Omni Oakland Commons, 4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland, CA<br />
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More info:<br />
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https://omnicommons.org/calendar/events/hearts-desire-and-dirty-swan-projects-presents-nico-peck-sara-larsen-and-monica-mody/<br />
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https://www.facebook.com/events/543223275812387/</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-87461260373394386552014-11-04T07:19:00.000-08:002014-11-06T22:34:58.649-08:00AAWW's TO DO list for you this Friday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://aaww.org/curation/awesome-poets-night/">1) Travel to the colony of world travelers. 2) Code-switch. 3) Get vulnerable and fluctuate. 4) Come to our wild reading with some of our favorite emerging poets: <b>Jenny Zhang</b>, <b>Wendy Xu</b>, <b>Monica Mody</b>, and <b>Monica McClure</b></a>. Rookie contributor <b>Jenny Zhang</b>--possibly the poet most mentioned when we get internship and job applications--is “a 21st century Whitman, only female, Chinese, and profoundly scatological" (Elizabeth Robinson). Ruth Lilly Fellow <b>Wendy Xu</b>--whose You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2013) was one of Poets & Writers's picks for top poetry debuts--"plunder through our lives, collecting the oddest and most significant things, turning our thoughts toward things we couldn’t have known before she turned us toward them" (Dara Wier). Take a dive in the black waters of <b>Monica Mody</b>’s shamanic-futuristic Kala Pani (1913 press 2013), the best bonkers, ritualistic-bureaucratic, anti-imperial, terraforming poetry book ever written about lentils. Latina gurlesque poet <b>Monica McClure</b>’s new book Tender Data (Birds LLC 2014) offers a hash-tagged, slippery, code-switching take on gender-making, class warfare, and vexed relationships--that’s 100% chiflada.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Asian American Writers' Workshop </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">112 W 27th Street, 6FL, New York, NY 10001</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Friday, November 7, 2014, 7:00pm</span></td></tr>
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<b>Monica McClure</b>’s debut poetry collection Tender Data (Birds LLC) comes out in the spring. The curator of the Atlas Reading Series, she also wrote the chapbooks Mood Swing (Snacks Press 2013) and Mala (Poor Claudia) and co-edited with Brenda Shaughnessy the anthology Both and Neither: Biracial American Writers. Read an interview with her here.<br />
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<b>Monica Mody</b>’s first book, KALA PANI, just came out from 1913 Press. Bhanu Kapil calls her “a poet of sacrifice” who writes “to us from the space behind the sun.” Monica has worked with Breakthrough, the global human rights organization, on their program areas, as well as with the Centre for Feminist Legal Research as a film festival coordinator. Her engagement with social justice and feminist/queer issues draws on her citizen/alien selves as much as on her evolving ideas of spiritual participation. Through 2007-08, Monica curated Open Baithak, a multilingual poetry in performance series in Delhi. Check out her conversation with Cathy Linh Che here.<br />
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<b>Wendy Xu</b> is the author of You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2013), which was profiled by Poets & Writers Magazine as one of the year’s best debut books. A Ruth Lilly Fellow, she is the co-editor and publisher of iO: A Journal of New American Poetry / iO Books, and former curator of the jubilat / Jones reading series. Here she is at the poetry foundation.<br />
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<b>Jenny Zhang</b> could be the poet most mentioned as their favorite when we get internship applications. Her poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find (Octopus Books, 2012) has become a sort of classic. Hear her talk about how she became a ghoul here! She’s a regular contributor to Rookie, curates Stain of Poetry, a monthly reading series in Bushwick.<br />
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<b>Save a seat <a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/awesome-poets-night-jenny-zhang-wendy-xu-monica-mody-monica-mcclure-tickets-14051296807">here</a>!</b></div>
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Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-86994427850860890372014-10-20T17:38:00.000-07:002014-10-20T17:38:25.947-07:00Capable of miracles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Even a short stay in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">kingdom</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Monsea</st1:placename></st1:place>
puts you at the risk of being in
the range of <a href="http://sevenkingdoms.wikia.com/wiki/King_Leck">King Leck</a>’s lies—and you don’t have to hear his voice for the lies
to take hold in your mind. Contact with someone exposed to him, or even someone
exposed to someone else who had contact with him, could affect your sanity—your
ability to discern, question, and resist. The lies spread insidiously and
virally, and soon, we are all in a state of trance, unable to see things for
what they are. We ignore the small animals mysteriously injured and unable to
heal. We ignore the indigenous communities, farmers, fishermen, workers, and
homeless displaced, forced to migrate, impoverished, criminalized in the name
of development. We ignore the deaths and beatings, the abuse and the
institutional disrespect. We ignore communities living in fear and mistrust. We
ignore the polluted waters and the disappearing species. We ignore the floods
and the landslides. We ignore the signs, and we stop hearing and seeing
everything that does not fit into the narrative that Leck wants us to hold.<br />
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It is easy to want to believe in the goodness and rightness
of Leck’s story. For who really wants to hurt others? Who really wants their
lives to be built on a foundation of lies?<br />
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We want to believe in love and
goodness and honesty and fairness and equality—that there is compassion and
soft landings and courage and joy and vitality and tenderness in the world. For this is who we
are. Deep down inside, this is what matters to us. </div>
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Perhaps this is why, in spite of the trance, it could be that we have slipped back into remembrance, across the
always fuzzy borders of stories and consciousness—perhaps someone we love
(the earth, ancestors, goddess) has been hurt or is in danger and that has jolted us
back to wakefulness—to being able to see beyond Leck’s stories, and the pain
in our heart is tremendous. How <i>could</i> we have allowed ourselves to be duped—to
be taken over by the lies, illusion, trance—so utterly? What happened to
everything that we have held dear about ourselves: our values of love, justice, truth, fairness, mutual respect, empathy, and grace? What happened to who we believe ourselves to be deep down
inside—good people, good citizens, courageous humans? </div>
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And what can we do now? What can we do to make sure that we
are not pulled back and made instruments of a socio-economic-imaginal-moral
order so completely unmitigated and vicious that it sees humans (and, indeed, all of nature) merely as chess
pieces to be moved around and—in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘development’—kicked
off the board? What can we do to ensure that those we love and care about (all
of humanity, all of the earth, all of the cosmos) stay safe, cherished, thriving?<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is clear that those of us who can must continue to remember and speak the new story, birth it into existence, foster its interconnections. We must keep singing the sacred songs and trust that other voices will join us,
that someone will hear us across the mountain and be moved or comforted, or lit
up or ripped ablaze.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">This conviction must be held in the face of all odds. </span></blockquote>
It
must be held in the face of all doubt, all uncertainty, all fear, because
possibilities open up when we are able to stare the impossible in its face. As
Marianne Williamson says, “miracles are summoned by conviction. Conviction can
be seen as an attitudinal muscle that gives us strength to see beyond
appearances and invoke the possibilities that lie there.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let us invoke the possibilities.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
And one day, the newold story of love—as too the wings of
our collective conviction—will become so sturdy, so strong, that together we will be able
to lift the hunter’s trap-net with our courage, our love, and fly. <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-80044592042010164442014-10-18T13:55:00.002-07:002014-10-18T13:56:48.709-07:00Reading tonight at Lit Crawl San Francisco<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am absolutely looking forward to the reading tonight -- <a href="http://www.litquake.org/events/seas-islands-five-first-book-authors-spd">Seas & Islands: Five First-Book Authors from SPD</a>. 8:30pm at <a href="http://www.adobebooks.com/">Adobe Books</a>, with Meg Day, MG Roberts, Alana Siegel, and Zoe Tuck. Hope to see you there if you can make it! </div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-47213796720714458532014-08-23T02:48:00.000-07:002014-08-23T02:48:17.496-07:00On Kim Hyesoon's Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I wrote this short piece for a feature on Kim Hyesoon being brought out by <a href="http://www.actionbooks.org/">Action Books</a>/<a href="http://aaww.org/">Asian American Writers' Workshop - The Margins</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmgGgf0Zbd4BJ6dw8AN7wbPFGro9bTdT5gzDOtlaYATwMxcKIMzeVem_U8wtYjPJpprj1yWIPffl_SWAKsj5-Iht_QkVjxGv4VAppMw6LebhCjufaYm8SxUsDYSs9fPLDdDN38Jg46CTiT/s1600/10_kim_hyesoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmgGgf0Zbd4BJ6dw8AN7wbPFGro9bTdT5gzDOtlaYATwMxcKIMzeVem_U8wtYjPJpprj1yWIPffl_SWAKsj5-Iht_QkVjxGv4VAppMw6LebhCjufaYm8SxUsDYSs9fPLDdDN38Jg46CTiT/s1600/10_kim_hyesoon.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a>Kim Hyesoon's <i>Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream</i> is a companion for grief. It startles the wounds out of your own soul and you find yourself rubbing your collarbone in a spot a white bird has appeared. And rain.<br />
<br />
The poet/translator/text/reader takes into her own body the wounds of the world or shoves her feet into the wound, small ribs break off, yet she continues to walk. The small pieces of cloth that make up the garbage quilt of this poem are never quite enough to cover us, and they are. "Are you vacant? I'm vacant." These "dirty writings" hold the urgency of shadow, cold sweep of desolation, broken glass. How many are brave enough to stay in this room of loss outside modernity's schedule, getting licked all night long? How many are brave enough to let these things enter them?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipsLjwE7W89vFcS8aSLU8deJpbbzm58KNEaL4VJ42WWuBG3DpCQU091mYnXEBbDC3Rv73oYY1DNq8UTUdBgoM2SsefK3VrCX8Bxq6eP7XuRiODeaLbp-uJht5qZ6EdySAqP9R-28HCvVkN/s1600/sorrowtoothpaste.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipsLjwE7W89vFcS8aSLU8deJpbbzm58KNEaL4VJ42WWuBG3DpCQU091mYnXEBbDC3Rv73oYY1DNq8UTUdBgoM2SsefK3VrCX8Bxq6eP7XuRiODeaLbp-uJht5qZ6EdySAqP9R-28HCvVkN/s1600/sorrowtoothpaste.jpg" height="200" width="157" /></a>Hyesoon brought to us via Don Mee Choi is willing to take the ice, the media of seeing into her mouth, and this lending of herself is what makes rain, water, sea, salt, so necessary to cry, this barking water that holds both our past and our future.<br />
<br />
While you were typing<br />
I couldn't stop the rain<br />
<br />
As Sobonfu Some puts it, grieving is a matter of life and death. Open to grieving and read <i>Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream</i>.</blockquote>
</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-62792374423443145972014-08-22T13:43:00.000-07:002014-10-18T13:57:20.675-07:00From Trauma to Catharsis: Performing the Asian Avant Garde<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1407834506161157/">symposium</a>, <a href="http://www.ciis.edu/Academics/Graduate_Programs/MFA_Program/MFA_Events/From_Trauma_to_Catharsis_Performing_the_Asian_Avant-Garde.html">hosted by the MFA program at CIIS</a>, begins today!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoRDQyFccPXgBhFJgdwpGY9JvhAFQX_8vsQfzg2Cwx_erxl62EE4ewP_81mOZr9kkhZFwtQLXl1kOzVNDJKDWqE0HVOtrtwp94FcrRwXXFYknrV6VGWcCtSFjp7FlUMdnE63YN4jjtTjdc/s1600/AAG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoRDQyFccPXgBhFJgdwpGY9JvhAFQX_8vsQfzg2Cwx_erxl62EE4ewP_81mOZr9kkhZFwtQLXl1kOzVNDJKDWqE0HVOtrtwp94FcrRwXXFYknrV6VGWcCtSFjp7FlUMdnE63YN4jjtTjdc/s1600/AAG.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
I perform tonight and present on Sunday.<br />
<br />
Also in attendance:<br />
<br />
Bhanu Kapil<br />
Cheena Marie Lo<br />
Ching-In Chen<br />
D'Loco Kid<br />
Geneva Chao<br />
Jai Arun Ravine<br />
Jason Magabo Perez<br />
MG Roberts<br />
Margaret Rhee<br />
Ronaldo Wilson<br />
Pireeni Sundaralingam<br />
Sean Labrador y Manzano<br />
Soham Patel<br />
Truong Tran<br />
<br />
& YOU?<br />
<br />
The full schedule is <a href="http://www.ciis.edu/Documents/AAG_Event%20Schedule.pdf"><span id="goog_629459172"></span>here<span id="goog_629459173"></span></a>!<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-11687177348314895972014-07-21T23:31:00.000-07:002014-07-22T01:07:45.172-07:00Growing up in the Sea of Stories, that is India<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When <a href="http://chalquist.com/">Craig Chalquist</a> asked me to write a few words about myth and story in India to share with his students at CIIS taking the <span style="color: yellow;">Archetypal Mythology</span> course, I wrote this in January, not knowing that in just over two weeks, Penguin will withdraw Wendy Doniger's <i>The Hindus: An Alternative History</i>, and we will once again find ourselves at the perplexity of a present bullied by cultural vigilantism or the threat of it in the name of purity of the past. <i> </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl5_m3n7CX27TaAtyXvBqIwoJacroZCQlIBpRjfqmt95z6e08bBdERPTricbjLuGfpZAAPn9HWiaKAP3yBnR6buBBCN1yV0HVnZzlxOBPUmBhrM9vC-97ehb1t2L9U00plsbs9dajZkV_1/s1600/11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl5_m3n7CX27TaAtyXvBqIwoJacroZCQlIBpRjfqmt95z6e08bBdERPTricbjLuGfpZAAPn9HWiaKAP3yBnR6buBBCN1yV0HVnZzlxOBPUmBhrM9vC-97ehb1t2L9U00plsbs9dajZkV_1/s1600/11.jpg" height="287" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>“</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sweetness of my childhood was contained in tales told, retold,
unraveled, re-dressed in books. In lieu of grandparents, I had
storybooks, and magazines—<i>Nandan</i>, <i>Champak</i>, <i>Parag</i>, <i>Chandamama</i>, <i>Amar
Chitra Katha</i>, <i>Tinkle</i>, and <i>Bal Hans</i>, to name only a few. Through them,
I encountered myths, folktales, fables, legends, and history—with
them, I lived in a continuum of realities and temporal structures.
Imagine a world where the moment that is cohabits with the moment that
has always been, or never was. Imagine when a moment, swallowed,
reappears in another story, even as that story spits out other,
stranger moments. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the imaginal world of my childhood, differences, though not equal,
were possible: a polymorphism bid by the range of linguistic,
regional, religious, caste-based, gender-based traditions of mythology
that had, over time, evolved in India. Further, tales from other parts
of the world (especially, at the time, from Britain and Russia) were
never far from the emotional, intellectual, and fantastical matrix of
this postcolonial, ever-swirling navel of the world. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was jarring, then, to find myself growing up in a modern India
where fundamentalist forces demanded a single unified Hinduism
tethered to a monolithic mythology. Myth, I learnt, can be the terrain
of cultural wars. To stake your claim over culture, your cultural
practice, you have to tell your stories. Ultimately, mythology is
about place and belonging. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those living at the brink of the mainstream Indian imagination, those
interested in bringing social/narrative justice into mainstream Indian
imagination, are today trying to give voice to indigenous, dalit,
women’s, non-brahminical, nontextual, local storytelling traditions
though publications, performances, film, and other media. Storytelling
in India also always raises the question, “In which language?” With
cultural globalization, the diversity of worlds and worldviews
signified/created in each language has shrunk, but the intricate
streams of mythologies that flow into and are the “sea of stories”
that is India may be both too old, and ever-renewing, to disappear.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>”</b></span></span></blockquote>
</div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-69814670098604974932014-04-24T10:49:00.000-07:002014-04-24T11:25:19.354-07:00On NPM Daily: Living with Language<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Let’s say nature is sentient & alive, & that everything in nature is also sentient & alive. </span></i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stone River Genome Abrasion<br />Flight path L&fill Stigmata OS<br />Laughter Erhu Dreams Fibula<br />Sun Lozenge Radiation Terror </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Animists would also say:
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>Let’s say all parts of the natural world are interrelated—that we are kindred. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
Language, then? </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Is language alive & sentient?<br />Is language kin to us?</span></blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://npmdaily.tumblr.com/post/83690732120/monica-mody">Read the rest here on NPM Daily.</a> </div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-7897578882868321172014-04-24T10:17:00.002-07:002014-04-24T10:17:42.914-07:00Review of Kala Pani on Rain Taxi <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The gracious Elizabeth Robinson wrote a wonderful <a href="http://www.raintaxi.com/kala-pani/">review of <i>Kala Pani</i> on <i>Rain Taxi</i></a>!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Every moment of this book is a testament to resourcefulness and insubordination. The detours and proliferations of <i>Kala Pani</i>, along with its embrace of absurdity, become a means of survival that jumps over the limitations of the rational. There’s a sense of suspension, of process—“cursor in internal disorder”—that beguiles the intrepid reader to follow chaos into constellations that make order as we know it irrelevant.</blockquote>
Thank you, ER! </div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2260689929934331587.post-53158978558426634792014-04-16T21:07:00.000-07:002014-04-16T21:07:06.797-07:00Three poems in VAYAVYA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Am so pleased to be in the current issue of <a href="http://www.vayavya.in/">VAYAVYA</a>, a lovely journal edited by Mihir Vatsa!<br />
<br />
Read "Red," "Myth of Knowing," and "Myth of Light" <a href="http://www.vayavya.in/monica-mody.html">here</a>. </div>
Monicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16918009458719403138noreply@blogger.com0