Woman. Warrior. Writer. 7-24
Grace Loh Prasad Vol. 5 No. 8 7-3-24
Woman. Warrior. Writer. Grace Loh Prasad
How did you come to author your life?
I grew up surrounded by books in Taiwan, New Jersey, and Hong Kong. My parents were very educated and spoke many languages, so I didn’t have to. I call myself an “accidental immigrant” because my parents never intended to settle down in the U.S. We were temporarily exiled while waiting for the political situation to improve in Taiwan. We naturalized and got U.S. passports so that my dad could travel the world as a Bible translator, but living here for so long meant that I forgot how to speak Taiwanese. This is both my biggest regret and the seed of my story.
Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024), a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Catapult, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI writers collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area.
Twitter/X: @GraceLP
Instagram: @graceprasad
Facebook: grace.l.prasad
Bluesky: @gracelp.bsky.social
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/graceprasad
Website: www.translatorsdaughter.com
Classes
BREAK: Write Your Divorce Story Workshop July 19 Fri. 2-4PM (HST), I will teach Divorce Story Structure. Do you remember the 5 paragraph essay? It’s a structure that enables high school students to easily organize their thoughts and ideas about a piece of writing. In this class I present a structural framework that will allow you to write your divorce story.
Disclaimer: ask your lawyer about putting it in your legal file. See Scarlet Society: HOW TO WRITE YOUR DIVORCE STORY or Youtube for further information.
Intersectionality: Manuscript Workshop September 9-November 11 Tues 1-3PM an intense fast-paced MFA level workshop and is a tight cohort of highly accomplished individuals and dedicated writers. This is a very serious class and requires that you are working on a specific manuscript project. The next 10-week session begins September 9. Limited enrollment. Writing submission required. Instructor permission only. Contact writer@drstephaniehan.com
News
Congratulations to Lilly U. Nguyen (WCWW, AWCWW) for her piece Reflections and the Multiple Layers that Intercede in the North American Review.
Library of Congress Centers for the Book chose Mindy Soo Pennybacker’s (WWW) Surfing Sisterhood Hawai’i: Wahine Reclaiming the Waves as the state’s Great Read
I sat on a panel with my fellow Honolulu Noir contributors for the Oceanic Popular Culture Association Conference 2024 held at Chaminade University. Present were Christy Passion (WWW) and Michele Cruz Skinner whose short fiction collection In the Company of Strangers was previously on my syllabus.
Look out for Reema Rajbanshi’s (AWCWW) forthcoming hermit crab essay "The Foyer or Exhibit for Travelers" in volume 10 of Press Pause. Rajbanshi is the author of the lyrical work Sugar, Smoke, Song
REFLECTIONS
My aunt Tae-Yeul Yoo passed away earlier this month. She served as the model for the aunt in my short story My Friend Faith, 1977. My aunt was a formidable presence in this lifetime—she was the first Korean woman to attend the Paris Conservatory a fact noted in the papers of the day. She was an opera singer and trained many Korean opera stars. She was a linguist, learning a new language from Arabic to Chinese every five years until she mastered them. She preferred French to English, and demanded I speak this to her from the time I was an adolescent instead of American (she wasn’t a huge fan) English☺
But behind this story is also a more serious one of societal expectations and how this shapes a life. My grandfather refused to let my aunt go to Paris until she was married and had a baby—a move likely to ensure her return. While there, she converted to Catholicism and fell in love. Desperate for money, she contacted my father, then doing his doctorate at Berkeley, but he had no money to send her. And so she returned to Korea. She went on to have more children, a career, and lived a remarkable life.
In her life I see what it means to be forced to bow to the demands of patriarchy. And too, what it means to further perpetuate these values. What are the demands placed upon women even now? Ask yourself: what you have done to ‘fit in’ to rules and how you have come to frame these requirements?
WRITING AND JOY
These do not have to be exclusive. I vowed to stay out of the water until my manuscript was done. The water gives me great joy, but I let my Confucian gotta-be-miserable-to-reach-goals mentality take over and pledged No Surf Until Writing Done. For four months I trudged in a loop around my valley in a weighted vest. Walking is great, yet in the meantime, I also slipped and broke my wrist! I finally let myself back in the water and when I did, my word count went up. The lesson learned was one of creative process. Joy matters. We do not have to get all Kafka-esque and think that misery improves writing. Do what it takes to have good physical and mental health. Rewire your brain by changing your routine. I got up early and went to the water. That did it. Everything that followed made sense.
Joy is dawn patrol three days in a row after peanut butter toast, half a cup of coffee, and throwing back some vitamin supplements
Hiking up Kokohead before 730AM--note to self, daybreak would have been better
Meditation self-hypnosis app (To Be Magnetic with Lacy Phillips) I'm doing the 2024 summer challenge
Hula for an hour one afternoon with hula sisters
Quick walk with weighted vest (8 pounds or 20 pounds for shorter stints)
Meals with family
And bonus: 1000 words of writing/day and something kicked in with my creative process
STOP THE DELUSIONS. Reconsider how you justify bad health in the name of writing. We live and die. Prioritize joy. Good feelings. Happiness. Remember this.
PALESTINE and MAUI
Sang Kil WWW professor at San Jose State University was suspended by the administration. I have known Kil since 2003 and I will attest to her ethics, fairness, and pragmatism. She is a thoughtful and compassionate leader and educator who understands the needs of students, faculty, and staff and how to bring people together in ways that are meaningful and effective.
Please sign this petition in support of Kil whose lifelong work has been to support university community members. She serves as an example of how we might teach, learn, and listen.
Families remain vulnerable and un-housed. Please consider a donation to the Maui Strong Fund.
MERCH
Woman. Warrior. Writer. T-shirts and hoodies for writing student financial aid
These are pretty cool. Plus they help women attend writing workshops!
Aloha,
Stephanie