A big thanks to Deke Farrow of the Modesto Bee for coming by to Ceres to do an interview with me regarding my month-long Visiting Artist Project at the UC-Merced Center for the Humanities. Already there have been many successes in the project that I look forward to discussing more here in the coming days ahead.
I've greatly enjoyed conducting several workshops and class conversations already at the University of California-Merced, including the conference on
Water: Ways of Knowing and Being, as well as at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center. Hmong American poet Soul Vang invited me to speak to his students at Fresno City College, and I've been connecting with many emerging artists and writers in the Modesto area.
photo by Deke Farrow, Modesto Bee
I appreciate everyone who's taken the time to help us get the word out about this unique opportunity to meet with the community and to encourage the growth of the literary arts and particularly speculative poetry in Merced and the Central Valley region. You can visit my colleagues and I at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association at www.sfpoetry.com but also our ongoing blog at specpo.wordpress.com where we are highlighting many of our member activities.
I also had a chance to visit the Castle Air Museum where I had a chance to see many of the planes from American military history, including several of the types that were so much of a part of our journey in the years preceding the Southeast Asian diaspora.
At the heart of many of my remarks so far has been the importance of expressing a future we can see ourselves in, and of recovering and reclaiming our spaces, both internally and externally and putting them on the "literary map" of the world in order to help the next generation gain a fuller understanding of our various perspectives and narratives. To challenge monostories and instead encourage alternate views and perspectives.
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