READ WATCH PLAY FEAST (MARCH EDITION + OFFICE HOURS)
Gang!
Hoping everyone is doing swell and staying in stories.
It’s rarely a good year to be a human being, not on this planet, under these tyrannies, but this year has been particularly horrifying. Everything everywhere enjoining everyone to battle, without reason, moderation, or compassion. And because our vampire squid hegemons want us to have none of these — reason, moderation, compassion — we must resist by having all of them.
At least that’s my answer.
Anyway, collected below is what fired my heart and my imagination during these last few weeks.
As always, profound appreciation to all of you reading this substack and following me down my weird rabbit holes. Without you, I wouldn’t be here at all.
Alright, that’s it from the CORO bullpen. Time for another OFFICE HOURS.
If you have any questions at all regarding building stories or building worlds or the creative life in general — or have any questions about anything we’ve been discussing — please ask your question in the comments section of this very post or DM me.
Nota Bene, with apologies: OFFICE HOURS is for pay subscribers only.
And now onto our…
READ
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725334/victim-by-andrew-boryga/
Chung’s stories are weird and wild, inventive and ruthless, which is just how we like ‘em. I’m on my way to reading everything Chung has written. Also: can’t wait to teach these.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/bora-chung/your-utopia/9781643756219/
This one I wrote about and you’ll have to decide if you wish to read it, given the way it was published.
Gabriel García Márquez, the mago of Aracataca, and one of the planet’s finest writers, died in 2014. Hard to imagine in retrospect, but he did not always appear destined for the firmament; born poor and raised by his grandparents, he was a dedicated but struggling journalist whose first novella, Leaf Storm, languished seven years before finding a publisher. Another early book, The Evil Hour, came and went without fanfare. And then, in 1967, at the height of the counterculture, he published One Hundred Years of Solitude, a towering achievement that earned him critical adulation, a global readership, and ultimately a Nobel Prize.
Gabo, as he is affectionately known by his fans, had the kind of impact that only a handful of artists in any century, in any genre, have ever achieved. No one better dramatized First World realism’s inability to cope with Third World reality (or coloniality’s spectrality) than García Márquez. No one better strategized how those of us hailing from what is euphemistically called the Global South might capture our impossible realities, or meaningfully intervene in imperial struggle between the true and the real.
García Márquez changed art forever, full stop. And what he did for Latin American, for Caribbean writers, is perhaps only slightly less colossal: he opened an artistic door that no force on this planet has been able to shut. I am not alone in believing that I could not have become the writer I am without the spectrums that he brought forth.
The rest can be read at the Boston Review:
bostonreview.net/articles/the-ghost-of-…
WATCH
It’s strange. I’m the complete opposite of my father in every possible way and yet he loved watching gangster movies and for whatever reason that love — and almost nothing else — passed on to me. I still remember being mesmerized by this film back in graduate school, on a snowy day in Ithaca, and afterwards talking about it nonstop to my poor housemate.
Long story short: if you’re going to watch a single gangster film or a single yakuza film, make it Kinji Fukasaku’s unbeatable BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR OR HUMANITY. I fell in love with Fukasaku1 when I first saw his VIRUS in 1981 (an uneven film that my adolescent self adored) but BATTLES is something else altogether — a mix between Cinema Furia or Cinema Feral — either way it is moviemaking at its carnivorous best. This is where your Japanese kawaii fantasies come to die.
The folks at Films at Lincoln Center said it the best: “These gangsters fight like rabid dogs over the scraps that drop from their masters’ tables, and the gutters overflow with their blood because to their bosses they are human garbage. This is the secret history of Japan’s economic miracle, a landmark film about how the country emerged from the ruins of World War II and rebuilt itself on greasy whorehouse handshakes, bribes, and organized crime.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_Without_Honor_and_Humanity
WATCH/PLAY
Even if you can’t make it to Seoul to check out Kang Seung Lee’s sublime and supremely collaborative video LAZARUS at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, please track it down as soon as possible. It is the most moving work of art I’ve seen in years. And talk about recovery work of the highest order. I’ve attached the music and an article below. (To be honest, Kang Seung Lee’s whole exhibit at the MMCA is extraordinary.)
“Living and working in between Los Angeles and Seoul, Kang Seung Lee delves into the legacies of queer history — often overlooked by the mainstream narrative — and rediscovers the narratives of minorities. By interconnecting across the boundaries of gender, nationality, race, and generation, the artist does not simply memorialize the forgotten or deliberately erased history of queer communities. Rather, he poses questions on the potential of queer future that arise from the succession and development of these legacies.
Kang Seung Lee presents a retrospective exhibition titled Who will take care of our caretakers in Gallery 3. The title Who will take care of our caretakers refers to a phrase from a poem written by the American poet Pamela Sneed (b. 1964), posing questions on who will look after the caretakers who took care of her queer friends who suffered during the AIDS epidemic. This exhibition commemorates those who died of AIDS along with their caretakers. It also highlights the significance of intergenerational solidarity and care by interconnecting queer communities from different times and spaces. Lee’s works reincarnate those memories, unspoken in mainstream history, yet vividly remembered and passed on through corporeal language. Despite the finitude of human life, the memories left on bodies and artifacts are historicized through the solidarity of intergenerational caretakers. Reaching beyond the historical narratives, Lee takes care of the legacy of preceding artists and incorporate their stories into contemporary art history through his sentimental and delicate artistic reconstitution.
Kang Seung Lee's new video, Lazarus, pays tribute to Goh Choo San (1948-1987), a pioneering Singaporean-born choreographer, and Jose Leonilson (1957-1993), a Brazilian conceptual artist known for his poetic works about love and grief through a queer lens. Goh performed and choreographed for prominent ballet companies throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States during his lifetime.
Leonilson lived most of his life in São Paulo creating a twork predominantly autobiographical of his life and experiences as a gay man. Both artists died of AIDS-related illness.
Taking inspiration from Goh's original ballet, Unknown Territory (1986), choreographer Daeun Jung creates a duet of minimal and intentional movements reminiscent of queer intimacy, legacy, and states of suffering and belonging.
In Lazarus, two dancers interact with a costume reproduced after Leonilson's final work, Lazaro (1993), a sculptural installation made of two men's dress shirts sewn together.
Through replicating Leonilson's work in sambe, a woven hemp textile traditionally used in Korea for funeral shrouds, Lazarus honors the lives and memories lost during the AIDS epidemic while also commenting on historical erasure of their legacy.
Lazarus is composed with an animated text by a queer Chicano artist Samuel Rodriguez from his short experimental video, Your Denim Shirt (1998), transcribed by Martin Wong
(1946-1999)'s American Sign Language "font" adapted by Lee from Wong's paintings from the 1980s and 90s.
For Lazarus, Lee continues to collaborate with artists from his queer community such as KIRARA, a composer/musician based in Seoul, and Nathan Mercury Kim, a dancer/ choreographer/filmmaker based in Los Angeles.” (above quote from the gallery label)
https://www.galleryhyundai.com/story/view/20000000319
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2024/03/398_362871.html
PLAY
Kohh is back under his real name Yuki Chiba with Team Tomodachi. That beat….and them moves! If you don’t know:Yuki Chiba, now you know.
FEAST
Save this one for your next Tokyo trip: L’atelier de Stand Banh Mi. Came here with a colleague of mine and we had an amazing meal. And despite the picture their lemon grass chicken is a MUST. (Everything else got eaten before we remembered to take photos)
https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/restaurants/latelier-de-stand-banh-mi
Most folks know Fukasaku from BATTLE ROYALE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film))
Hi Junot Diaz,
Thanks for this Community. I saw you speak at a humanities festival in Charlottesville, VA a few years back and read at the University there from This is How You Lose Her. I’ve watched several videos of your lectures and talks and wonder if you’ve thought of starting a podcast. You’re gifted at conversation and talking through what you’ve got to offer as a writer and reader. Your insights and energy are more than often extraordinary. Reading the quality of what you’re doing on this platform makes me think a podcast would be awesome. Thanks for what you do.
As for a question, what would a syllabus for an American Literature course look like if you were to teach a 10 week intro as an 18 year career desperate English adjunct at a community college, someone who has been teaching at the college’s prison program in Men’s and Women’s prisons in central VA for two years now and wonders what the hell to offer students as we enter the summer of an American election year, especially knowing that every incarcerated person noticeably worries and wonders what the hell has happened to our country.
Do you apply the same lessons of persona and audience to these Substack posts?