Last night, a Taiwanese friend messaged me about the US presidential election. My succinct response: 「我也怕」 ("I too am afraid.") Maybe this goes without saying, but I didn't sleep much. I began the morning with a email from a distressed student, unable to attend class because of their emotional state after the results of the…Read more “I too am afraid” 「我也怕」
inspiration
Novel learning
One of the components of job application materials for academics is the teaching statement. Given the amount of introspection needed, it is not an easy piece to write, although it is the perfect piece for stewing over indefinitely. Over all these years of learning how to make myself write (with varying degrees of success depending…Read more Novel learning
Narrative Compass
In my non-academic reading recently, I've been enjoying the essays collected in A Narrative Compass: Stories that Guide Women's Lives. Though it may sound like a self help book, it's actually nineteen essays written by women academics - professors and students of literature, folklore or history; or librarians - about how some narrative affected them…Read more Narrative Compass
Pray consult the story related in the following chapter
Sixty-three years ago, David Tod Roy was, as the New York Times puts it, "a 16-year-old American missionary kid looking for a dirty book" at a used book store in Nanjing, China. The book? The Chin P'ing Mei (金瓶梅), a 100-chapter vernacular novel from 16th century China. It relates the intricate details of daily life…Read more Pray consult the story related in the following chapter
Far From Formosa 