Anna Wang

An amazing experience!

I like the line “I’m coming sideways my love.”

I started writing an essay on Eileen Chang today, a task I’d been putting off on the reason that I hadn’t done enough research. With a first draft of a research essay due for my nonfiction workshop in 10 days, I had no choice but to begin. Such is the benefit of schooling.

“If you’re ambitious, write letters on good-quality paper, even when you’re still young.” While compiling the correspondence between Eileen Chang and himself over 30 years, C.T. Hsia discovered that some were fragile and crumbled at the slightest touch. Hence the advice in 1997.

At what point do you feel the urge to check the author’s bio when reading a book? Today, I realized it’s something worth paying attention to. On page 16 of Maggie Nelson’s essay collection “Bluets,” it struck me that this might be a deeply disguised autobiography and therefore, I checked her bio.

"Syzygy, Beauty" is a slim book composed of short lyric prose pieces, but the reading doesn’t flow easily. The breadth of cultural references requires research. The mention of Mary Tyler Moore prompted looking up for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Half an hour on just these 14 lines.

True! And I bet there are other horses in our cohort because most of the class of 2024 students are born in 2002.

Sandra Cisneros and I share the same Chinese zodiac sign—the Horse. According to these beliefs, being born in 1954 (Cisneros) isn’t considered particularly unlucky. Girls born in 1966 (me) are thought to have the worst luck. This idea is explored in the Canadian film “Eve and the Fire Horse. “

I’ve been struggling for hours to secure a book—a collection of letters by Eileen Chang to her friends and literary agents. The shipping cost from Taiwan is steep. A Malaysian website provides online reading but refused to take my credit cards. The UCSD library has a copy but it’s checked out.

Can we make Sunday disappear from the calendar?

Saskatchewan!

Fascinating

My first read of 2025: “The Rouge of the North” by Eileen Chang. I believe her work fits into the genre of the novel of manners. She deserves to be measured alongside writers like Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Edith Wharton. Unfortunately, she lived in a wrong time.

Thank you! What a lovely morning!

Happy New Year!

Well said

Write every day, read Bible every day, memorize one page of a dictionary of phrasal verbs every day and exercise every day. How long do you think I can last? 🤣

I make New Year's resolutions every year, but I’ve never lasted more than two weeks. Still, working toward my goals for 14 out of 365 days is better than nothing, and I’m going to make NYR again this year.

“i am running into a new year” by Lucille Clifton i am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that i catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what i said to myself about myself when i was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six even thirty-six but i am running into a new year and i beg what i love and i leave to forgive me

Lucille Clifton, always.

My daughter is now living the eco-friendly lifestyle she always wanted. In metropolitan Chicago, she doesn’t drive a car and relies on shuttles to get to and from school. However, visiting me in the suburbs this holiday season, she often exclaimed, “The sound of a highway!” or “The good old I-5!”

In the 1960s, Eileen Chang rewrote "Jing Suo Ji," a 1943 novella originally written in Chinese, in English, aiming to break into the American market. I suspect that the visual detail of "a silver Mexican dollar" reflects her effort to cater to this new audience.

Yes, that’s a tiered rejection!

I see!

Wow, you know of her!

That’s a good one.🤣

Why Subway?

No. They don’t do that, but I wish they did.

Nothing can be worse than a rejection.

I agree

I must spread this message.