Woman. Warrior. Writer. 03-24

Susan Ito Vol. 5 No. 3 03-05-24

Woman. Warrior. Writer. Susan Ito

SUSAN ITO     

How did you come to author your life?

My life has always been riddled with questions: where did I come from? Who were my original parents? Why was I not growing up with them? As a biracial Asian child adopted by Japanese American parents, I constantly straddled the borders of belonging, family, and identity. I invented stories at age six, poetry in college, and eventually began weaving the pieces of my own story. I wrote a novel called Filling in the Blanks. I embodied my life in a one-woman show, The Ice Cream Gene. It took over 30 years for my memoir to emerge. Many questions remain.

Susan Ito is the author of the memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, and a Library Journal best memoir of 2023. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere.  Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater. www.thesusanito.com

CLASSES AND NEWS

·      Intersectionality Manuscript Workshop (10 weeks) April 2-June 4 Tues. 1-3PM (HST) You must be working on a full-length manuscript. Instructor permission only. Contact: writer@drstephaniehan.com to submit a manuscript and to set up an interview. MFA level workshop.

I launched drstephaniehan.com during COVID. Students have gone on to receive fellowships from PEN, VONA, and Tin House, earn spots at artist residences, publish, go on to higher degrees, and win awards! I’m so impressed! I’m gonna brag here: I have a better track record than many MFA programs! Why? Because I always encourage you to take the literary risks that you need to write truthfully. I have your back while you do that. We need people who help us dream into who we are. And then, we are off and on our way!

My expertise is voice—I want you to have the confidence it takes to tell the story that only you can write. Your primary duty as a writer is to write an emotional truth—real or imagined.

My mission is to have women’s narratives out in the world, and for you to see that narrative controls lives and that you can author yourself into being. You’ll read BIWOC writers because I think it’s important to recognize the multitude of ways that global movement, colonization, and capitalism affects our lives.

Women writers also benefit from learning from each other. When we are writing powerful material, it helps us to know that our concerns are neither strange nor foreign, and instead relatable, believable, and meaningful. Contact: writer@drstephaniehan.com

·      Women’s Creative Writing Workshop (4 weeks) May 9-30 Thurs. 1-3PM (HST) a mixed level cross-genre generative writing workshop: voice, craft, creative process, community. I’ve had published authors as well as new writers in this class—it works as I emphasize voice and creative process.

·      Come to the big ask ask-me-anything Zoom April 1 Monday 1-2PM HST. This is a free session for WCWW FB members and WWW subscribers only. I assist you with creative process, divorce story questions, and more. It’s been very fun to see people! Link here!

·      Two spots open for one-on-one writing coaching sessions. Contact writer@drstephaniehan.com

REMEMBRANCE and THOUGHTS

Charles V. Hamilton died last fall, but this was announced last week. I took his one semester colloquium on race and ethnicity while at Barnard College. He posited interesting ideas (what if the US government had a parliament rather than our two party system?) and urged us to critically examine the our own ethnicity within the context of the US. I recall one student discussing the Polish and Irish community’s conflict in his small town and how they fought over the building of a playground. I wrote a paper on Asian American women. There were no Asian American studies courses at Columbia University. I learned Asian American history through self-study, internships, and simply asking around. I was uncertain about how to negotiate my identity through a white feminist lens. Hamilton, a Black man, a political scientist, led me to consider my identity in profound ways. RIP.

The vast majority of women from communities reeling from the fallout of colonialism, racism, or even monotheism confront the narrative of freedom and sisterly solidarity with uncertainty. Given historical oppression of their brothers, fathers, partners, uncles, cousins, nephews, sons, husbands, and loved ones we face the struggle of understanding our gendered lives within our group, and then must figure out how we can truly be free within a global context. What stories will we tell? And why?

HEALTH and CREATIVITY

Tendonitis—excessive yoga a few months back. It got worse. Then better. Then worse. Then I sprained my wrist when I fell because I slipped on mud the last 5 minutes of a hike! I haven’t been surfing. I can’t do hula for a few weeks. I found myself doing this guilt trip, then I thought—roll with it. Everything has its season. We need and want to get better at various pursuits, but progress is never a straight line.

At this stage in my life, I have a foundation in specific areas. So the challenge becomes to keep using different parts of my brain (learning to run the board at the radio station, hula and Hawaiian language lyrics, surfing and figuring out the water) and then remembering that I have to back off in others (reading, writing, editing, teaching) and relax into them. Now writing to finish a project, I remind myself that I need EASE. When we enter flow, feel receptive to ideas, colors and feelings, we tap into another state. This freedom is the foundation of creative expression. Do not push in the same way you always have. Seek to ease into flow.

AWP

Korean American 4th Kingdom writers Hyeseung Song, Margaret Lee, me, Caroline Kim

Renee Simms and me

MAUI and PALESTINE

Donate to Maui Strong. Visitors-- please support local businesses—and for those who can--help us expand our economy beyond tourism.

#Ceasefire now. Does your government representatives receive money from AIPAC?  Note their re-election dates.

MERCH

Woman. Warrior. Writer. T-shirts and hoodies for writing student financial aid

Mahalo nui loa for subscribing—if you have something to share email me writer@drstephaniehan.com

Aloha,

Stephanie