Her Wild American Self

Fiction. Cultural Writing. Asian-American Studies. Winner of the Wisconsin Library Association's Outstanding Achievement Recognition Award, 1997. HER WILD AMERICAN SELF, Eveline Galang's first collection of stories, steps foot into the lives of Filipina American women, but is accessible to readers of all ethnicities. HER WILD AMERICAN SELF reminds us of the importance in staying true to oneself amidst cultural clashes and assimilation. "An honest and insightful look at the experiences of Filipina American women who 'grew up hearing two languages'"-Ms. Magazine. Galang teaches creative writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Filipina American debut author displays the contradictions of Asian American experience with irony & enthusiasm, anger & wit.

Publishers Weekly

Despite some pointed descriptions, most of Galang's debut short-story collection is marred by flat endings and characters almost entirely lacking in self-knowledge. This is particularly unfortunate in stories about self-discovery, such as "Rose Colored," in which the well-balanced Rose compares her life to her go-go dancing cousin; the title story, about the adolescent Augustina and her budding sexual relationship with her cousin; and "Figures," in which Ana, who paints voluptuous nudes, marries a man whose stability is at first appealing but who becomes vaguely grating. The most provocative work here is "Filming Sausage," a diary-like account of escalating sexual harassment on the set of a breakfast-meat commercial, but it too ends with a whimper as the victim switches from a moment-by-moment second-person account to a sort of summing up in the final paragraphs. Marking the beginning, middle and end are three short pieces, which are more political commentary on the position of Asian and Asian-American women than stories. Like in the head-on rant on stereotypes in "The Look-Alike Women" ("Because you are all exotic. Sensual and mysterious as red silk kimonos. Passionate like volcanoes, Mount Fuji and Pinatubo. Sexy like the girls who danced in clubs along Oolangapo. Fierce like Miss Saigon"), they are direct and forcefully worded giving some taste of what Galang might yet achieve in her longer stories. (Apr.)

Linh Dinh (born 1963) is a Vietnamese-American poet, fiction writer and translator. Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam, came to the US in 1975, and is living in Philadelphia. In 2005, he was a David Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England .He spent 2002-2003 in Italy as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers and the town of Certaldo. He is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press, 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press, 2004), and four books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish, 2003), American Tatts (Chax, 2005), Borderless Bodies (Factory School, 2006) and Jam Alerts (Chax, 2007). His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004, The Best American Poetry 2007, and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among other places. The Village Voice picked his Blood and Soap as one of the best books of 2004. Translated into Italian by Giovanni Giri, it is published in Italy as Elvis Phong è Morto. Dinh is also the editor of the anthologies Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (Seven Stories Press 1996) and Three Vietnamese Poets (Tinfish 2001), and translator of Night, Fish and Charlie Parker, the poetry of Phan Nhien Hao (Tupelo 2006). He has translated many international poets into Vietnamese, and many Vietnamese poets and fiction writers into English, including Nguyen Quoc Chanh, Tran Vang Sao, Van Cam Hai and Nguyen Huy Thiep.