writing

Friends with Books

Get thee to a book store. A handful of friends have books out this spring — and I have work in two anthologies.

Open Studio

I traded some email recently with a magazine editor. I was pitching stories that I’d  posted here. The editor wasn’t having any. “You bloggers. You devalue your best work by publishing it for free.” I had to think about that for a while. It’s extremely rare that I publish work for free. I’ve said yes …


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Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales

When we think about Asia, it’s really easy to romanticize the life, the people there — I think. It’s easy to be aggravated by the Starbucks even while we’re heading there to get Frappucino because good lord, it’s hot and I’m jet lagged and there is nothing that would be more reassuring right now than caffeine and air conditioning and yes, I am speaking from experience, this means YOU, Singapore.

I think it’s also nearly impossible to create any kind of real picture of the young woman who’s making your coffee, to imagine where her family is from and how maybe, this is a really good job for her or hey, maybe not. And maybe a little too much cable TV has made it possible for people who have no idea what California looks like to aspire to a life that has no rice paddies or water buffalo or arranged marriages. I think it’s easy to be annoyed by the culture clash we perceive as outsiders, but there’s no way we can get inside the head of the guy who built my Nikon so he could send a kid to college, for example.

This rambling mess of thoughts is what I took away from reading Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales by Eleanor Bluestein. Yup, I got a review copy and I really enjoyed it. It’s a collection of short stories about the people of Ayama Na, an imaginary country that’s maybe Cambodia, maybe somewhere else, maybe cobbled together out of bits of Southeast Asia. Though I had the opportunity to ask the author about this imaginary place, I passed on that intentionally, I didn’t want reality to color my vision of what Ayama Na looks like, though I did patch it together in my own head, using pieces of Vietnam and Cambodia.


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My First Guidebook Credit

Well, I’d forgotten all about that. But in yesterday’s mail, I got two copies of Travellers Vancouver & British Columbia. The cover credit still goes to the original writer but whaddaya know? That’s my name on the flyleaf. And somehow, it’s even more fun to flip through the images and say, “Hey, I took that …


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On Writing About Place and Authenticity

For some time now, I’ve been meaning to write to the editors of my favorite magazine, National Geographic Traveler to say this: I love you, but could you quit throwing the word “authentic” around? Nitpicky, obsessively literal, and probably very annoying, I know. But stick with me.

Here’s the definition of authentic from Webster’s via Dictionary, trimmed for the etymology and pronunciation details):

1. Having a genuine original or authority, in opposition to that which is false, fictitious, counterfeit, or apocryphal; being what it purports to be; genuine; not of doubtful origin; real; as, an authentic paper or register.

To be avenged On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire. –Milton.

2. Authoritative. [Obs.] –Milton.

3. Of approved authority; true; trustworthy; credible; as, an authentic writer; an authentic portrait; authentic information.

4. (Law) Vested with all due formalities, and legally attested.

5. (Mus.) Having as immediate relation to the tonic, in distinction from plagal, which has a correspondent relation to the dominant in the octave below the tonic.

This is my deal: I don’t think you can describe a place as authentic as though it could be real or fake unless you’re talking about an actually facsimile of place, like the Venetian in Vegas or the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu. These are reproductions of places that exist in the real world as real places. The Venetian and the Cultural Center are freaky fake. The “authentic” places aren’t so scrubbed; the canals of Venice are stinky, Oahu has crazy traffic. There’s no Starbuck’s in Venice, but seven bucks for a cappucino? And the real Hawaii is covered with food chains, they’re everywhere.


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