Blogroll

When I'm not here, you may find me wandering the pages below. (If I'm a regular visitor to your site and I've left your link off or mislinked to you, please let me know! And likewise, if you've blogrolled me, please check that my link is updated: thisroamanticlife.blogspot.com. The extra (a) makes all the difference!)

Archives

For posts sorted by date or label, see the links below.

For posts on frequently referenced topics, click the buttons to the right.

To search this blog, type in the field at the top left of the page and hit enter.

Body: in sickness and in health

I won't lie; this body and I have had our issues with each other for many years. Body image -- sure. Physical and mental overextension -- comes with being a Type A kind of girl. I still struggle with these things, so they show up from time to time in my writing.

More recently, illness, pure but not simple, has added itself to the mix in a multi-system sort of way. And the challenges in figuring out exactly what's gone wrong are many. As problems have revealed themselves in the last few years, beginning with reactive hypoglycemia in late 2008, I've documented them here, partly to gain a little clarity on managing complex conditions but mostly to give voice to vulnerabilities I feel but don't normally share with anyone face to face. Better out than in, they say, right? (Oh yes, humor is one way I deal.)

The links below cover the different angles I've examined (and from which I've been examined) within that experience.

Travel: neither here nor there

When the person you're married to lives two time zones away, you log a fair number of frequent flier miles. And if you blog about commuter relationships, you log quite a few posts en route too.

Since we're no longer in separate places, I blog less often from airports. But we do travel -- together now! -- which is much more fun to write about. So in addition to thoughts on our years of commuting, the links below cover the places we've been as a pair and, in some cases, the adventures that have happened on the way.

Writing: the long and short of it

Why do I do it? Good question. Maybe it's not so much that I like to write but that I have to write, even when the words refuse to stick to the page. Believe me, I've tried doing other things like majoring in biochemistry (freshman fall, many semesters ago). Within a year, I'd switched to English with a concentration in creative writing and wasn't looking back.

After graduating, I taught English for a few years and then worked as an editor, which I still do freelance. In 2007, I applied and got into an MFA program at a place I like to call Little U. on the Prairie. I finished my degree in 2011 and have been balancing tutoring and writing on my own ever since.

The following links cover the writing I've done about writing: process, content, obstacles, you name it. It's not always pretty. But some part of me loves it, even when it's hard. And this is the result.

Heart: family and friends

I'd have a hard time explaining who I am without being able to talk about the family I grew up in as well as the people I've met beyond its bounds. But even with such context, it's not easy! In the simplest terms, I'm a first-generation Asian-American who has spent most of this life caught between cultures. That, of course, doesn't even begin to describe what I mean to, but there's my first stab at the heart of it all.

That's what this group of posts is reserved for -- heart. The essential parts of my life whose influences I carry with me, for better or worse. The links below cover what I've written as I've learned how these forces work within me, for me, against me, in spite of me. They anchor me even as they change me, and they keep life interesting.

Recommended reading

What do I do when there's too much on my mind and my words won't stick to the page? I escape into someone else's thoughts. Below is a collection of books and articles that have been sources of information, inspiration, and occasional insight for my own work.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Unpacking


This weekend, D and I tackled the piles of boxes we'd stuck in the room that will eventually become D's office. Since our arrival, the space has essentially been an extra-large walk-in closet for us, but now that my parents and Newly Graduated Sis are coming to visit in a week, we're inclined to get it somewhat tidied -- so it can fit the boxes that have spilled over into the guest bedroom.

We got through the majority of D's stuff by Sunday night, which leaves the rest of this week for me to figure out what I want to do with mine. Much of it is memorabilia from school that needs to be organized so it can be sifted through more easily should I ever need to access anything from a specific time, and being on the point of starting to write this thesis has made me reluctant to toss things that provide potentially useful information about my past. Not the best mindset to be in when you're trying to make space!

It doesn't help that the texts I've been looking at as possible models for my work all incorporate the use of personal documents and other such things to really interesting effect. In the last few weeks, I've managed to steal enough time (mostly on planes) to finish three books that do this.

The first is Five Thousand Days Like This One by Jane Brox. Her memoir is one part a collection of family stories passed down to her by her father and the other part a history of New England farm life. Both portions of the work use old records to reanimate scenes from the past in Brox's poetic style. I don't think it's a style I would follow -- sometimes the way the records are quoted into the larger narrative feels a bit choppy against the original language of the writer; the two just don't blend -- but it's striking how much those records help Brox situate her father's apple farm in the culture of American commerce when industry arrives. Context is everything.

The second book that makes great use of personal documents is Honor Moore's The Bishop's Daughter. In a way, the work relies almost too heavily on these -- primarily letters between Moore's parents in their dating years as well as letters between father and daughter and mother and daughter. The goal of incorporating all of this correspondence is to aid in creating a portrait of the family's private life while its members navigate a very public existence (Paul Moore was the 13th Episcopal Bishop of New York). I love how much access the narrator has to all of these rich primary sources -- I certainly don't have that volume to work with! On occasion, though, the specificity of each piece of evidence meant to illustrate some detail makes it difficult to see the big picture that the narrator is painting. It overwhelms, to a degree.

The most recent book I've finished is Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex. This one isn't actually a memoir, but it reads very much like one and situates its narrative over three generations of a Greek family adapting to life in America between the 1920s and 1970s (which includes Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement ...). It is extremely clear that the author has researched the influences of these six decades on Detroit -- the city where most of the narrative takes place -- and he weaves that information into the background of the story in a way that doesn't detract from the focus on the protagonist, a girl coming of age in that third generation of her family. Her coming of age is complicated by biological factors that have their own story, and this narrative thread's ability to hold its own as a driving force in the novel against such a tumultuous historical backdrop is what really amazes me. The two elements work in sync with each other to even greater effect.

All right, enough pseudo-book-reviewing from me. I know I've been behind on updating my reading list for the summer, so there you go (see the full list in the sidebar). Also, for those of you keeping track, I've got six more nominations left for the One Lovely Blog award, so if you like reading about what other people are reading, here are some blogs I've discovered recently:
And yes, the final nominee will be forthcoming soon.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unpacking is SO not fun!! I hope it goes smoothly this week!

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

We've made good progress, Sherlock :). The end is in sight!

I actually don't mind unpacking if I'm not pressed for time and it's not 90 degrees in the house. Unfortunately, neither of those conditions is holding this week ...

Tara said...

Thanks for the award! That's so thoughtful of you.

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

Happy to share it, Tara! Thanks for visiting :)

yurchie said...

I just started reading Middlesex for the second time, and he does an amazing job of doing both historical and personal exposition. It's kind of amazing. I forgot how good it was.

Are you at the NWP or the IWW? Your story / blog theme is very interesting, I hope to read more.

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

Denis, thanks for stopping by. For the sake of preserving some semblance of anonymity here, I'm going to refrain from giving details about my MFA program. I appreciate your comment about my blog theme, though! As for Middlesex, yes, really amazing exposition. It was my first time reading it and I couldn't put it down. It's been a long time since I've come across something that drew me in so completely through narrative voice alone.

Posts by date

Posts by label

Air travel Airline food Allergic reactions Astoria Awards Bacteremia Bacterial overgrowth Baggage beefs Bed and breakfast Betrayal Blues Body Boston Breastfeeding British Columbia California Canada Cape Spear Clam-digging Colonoscopy Commuter marriage Cooking CT scans Delays Diagnoses Dietitians Doctor-patient relationships Doctors Eating while traveling Editing Endocrine Endoscopy ER False starts Family dynamics Feedback Food anxiety Food sensitivities Gate agent guff GI Halifax Heart Home-making House hunting Hypoglycemia In-laws Intentional happiness Iowa Journaling Kidney stones Knitting Lab tests Little U. on the Prairie Liver function tests Long Beach Making friends in new places Malabsorption Massachusetts Medical records Medication Mentorship MFA programs Miami Monterey Motivation Moving Narrative New York Newark Newfoundland Nova Scotia Olympic Peninsula Ontario Ophthalmology Oregon Oxalates Pancreatic function tests Parenting Parents Paris Pets Photography Portland Prediabetes Pregnancy Process Professors Publishing Reproductive endocrine Research Revision Rewriting Rheumatology San Francisco Scenes from a graduation series Scenes from around the table series Seattle Sisters Skiing St. John's Striped-up paisley Teaching Technological snafus Texas Thesis Toronto Travel Travel fears Traveling while sick Ultrasound Urology Vancouver Victoria Voice Washington Washington D.C. Weight When words won't stick Whidbey Island Why we write Workshops Writers on writing Writing Writing friends Writing in odd places Writing jobs Yakima

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Unpacking


This weekend, D and I tackled the piles of boxes we'd stuck in the room that will eventually become D's office. Since our arrival, the space has essentially been an extra-large walk-in closet for us, but now that my parents and Newly Graduated Sis are coming to visit in a week, we're inclined to get it somewhat tidied -- so it can fit the boxes that have spilled over into the guest bedroom.

We got through the majority of D's stuff by Sunday night, which leaves the rest of this week for me to figure out what I want to do with mine. Much of it is memorabilia from school that needs to be organized so it can be sifted through more easily should I ever need to access anything from a specific time, and being on the point of starting to write this thesis has made me reluctant to toss things that provide potentially useful information about my past. Not the best mindset to be in when you're trying to make space!

It doesn't help that the texts I've been looking at as possible models for my work all incorporate the use of personal documents and other such things to really interesting effect. In the last few weeks, I've managed to steal enough time (mostly on planes) to finish three books that do this.

The first is Five Thousand Days Like This One by Jane Brox. Her memoir is one part a collection of family stories passed down to her by her father and the other part a history of New England farm life. Both portions of the work use old records to reanimate scenes from the past in Brox's poetic style. I don't think it's a style I would follow -- sometimes the way the records are quoted into the larger narrative feels a bit choppy against the original language of the writer; the two just don't blend -- but it's striking how much those records help Brox situate her father's apple farm in the culture of American commerce when industry arrives. Context is everything.

The second book that makes great use of personal documents is Honor Moore's The Bishop's Daughter. In a way, the work relies almost too heavily on these -- primarily letters between Moore's parents in their dating years as well as letters between father and daughter and mother and daughter. The goal of incorporating all of this correspondence is to aid in creating a portrait of the family's private life while its members navigate a very public existence (Paul Moore was the 13th Episcopal Bishop of New York). I love how much access the narrator has to all of these rich primary sources -- I certainly don't have that volume to work with! On occasion, though, the specificity of each piece of evidence meant to illustrate some detail makes it difficult to see the big picture that the narrator is painting. It overwhelms, to a degree.

The most recent book I've finished is Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex. This one isn't actually a memoir, but it reads very much like one and situates its narrative over three generations of a Greek family adapting to life in America between the 1920s and 1970s (which includes Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights Movement ...). It is extremely clear that the author has researched the influences of these six decades on Detroit -- the city where most of the narrative takes place -- and he weaves that information into the background of the story in a way that doesn't detract from the focus on the protagonist, a girl coming of age in that third generation of her family. Her coming of age is complicated by biological factors that have their own story, and this narrative thread's ability to hold its own as a driving force in the novel against such a tumultuous historical backdrop is what really amazes me. The two elements work in sync with each other to even greater effect.

All right, enough pseudo-book-reviewing from me. I know I've been behind on updating my reading list for the summer, so there you go (see the full list in the sidebar). Also, for those of you keeping track, I've got six more nominations left for the One Lovely Blog award, so if you like reading about what other people are reading, here are some blogs I've discovered recently:
And yes, the final nominee will be forthcoming soon.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unpacking is SO not fun!! I hope it goes smoothly this week!

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

We've made good progress, Sherlock :). The end is in sight!

I actually don't mind unpacking if I'm not pressed for time and it's not 90 degrees in the house. Unfortunately, neither of those conditions is holding this week ...

Tara said...

Thanks for the award! That's so thoughtful of you.

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

Happy to share it, Tara! Thanks for visiting :)

yurchie said...

I just started reading Middlesex for the second time, and he does an amazing job of doing both historical and personal exposition. It's kind of amazing. I forgot how good it was.

Are you at the NWP or the IWW? Your story / blog theme is very interesting, I hope to read more.

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

Denis, thanks for stopping by. For the sake of preserving some semblance of anonymity here, I'm going to refrain from giving details about my MFA program. I appreciate your comment about my blog theme, though! As for Middlesex, yes, really amazing exposition. It was my first time reading it and I couldn't put it down. It's been a long time since I've come across something that drew me in so completely through narrative voice alone.