Far be it from me to talk about myself. But I'm going to anyway, since our other writers seem a bit shy about... well, shy about writing. Writing
here, specifically...
I don't blame them though; it's just that
I'm in the habit of journaling online (that is to say that I
was until I became obsessed with finishing the current rewrite of
my Inter Bella chapter), so it comes naturally to me. Unfortunately, given the deadline I've set for myself, I've been neglecting these updates, but I'm changing my daily regimen to fix that.
So, who am I and what do I write about?
I grew up in NJ, in a time when its nickname hadn't yet become the
Chinese Breeding Ground State. As many of you can imagine or have actually experienced, being a kid and not knowing where you're supposed to stand socially can be a bit of an awkward thing. Could I go to the tire park to play with my friends, or was I supposed to spend some quality time with myself sitting quietly in the living room (it's a Chinese-American thing) - you know, quandaries like that would arise. But before I go off telling you my whole life story, I'll bring you around and tell you how this all applies to why I publish.
There are always things underlying what we see every day; the kinds of stuff that can only be read by the off-tone of someone's voice or a common mannerism that gives off a certain vibe about a person. These details source from something, and I've spent much of my life (most of the time inadvertently) trying to understand what the
something is. Every case is different, of course, but it can usually be tracked back to an upbringing - causes for why a person becomes who he or she is. But it's not that simple; after you've factor in someone's past, you realize that they are, inexplicably, not the sum of their parts, but the transcendence of their parts. These issues and ideas, about individuals and who they are (and who
I am in the grand scheme of the
diaspora), fascinate me. As a result, I make it my business to tell their stories and to likewise fascinate others. That's a bit of who I am and why I publish. Now, I'll tell you a bit about my stories.
It's been both a struggle and a pleasure to write my part of
Inter Bella and my Solo story. The latter is called
Twilight Crossing, and it's a project I began for my Senior Seminar class at
Kean University (one of the fastest growing schools on the East Coast, by the way, with great English concentrations, like writing, teaching and so on). The story follows a little girl, but is really about the place that she's found herself in. A mysterious place without a name and with very little reason. (No, it's not Long Island.) She doesn't remember her past - no one in this place does - and her only source of comfort and sanity comes from a blue eyed raven (the narrator) who has a special affinity for her. It'll be a dark/fun story, not necessarily for kids.
For
Inter Bella, I'll be writing the part of Renate, a former New Yorker who got stuck in the pull of the 1930s depression, but is now visiting her never-before-met grandmother in Austria. Renate's got a pretty turbulent past, but things have gotten a lot more turbulent since she received a mysterious letter at her Brooklyn home. I can't say exactly what was in the letter, but it's bound to take her on an odyssey, one that will test the limits of her developing mental state. Come back and find out what happens!
Well, that's it for the final installment of
Our Stories and We, but you'll find out a lot more about us when we get rolling with the About page. I'll catch ya next time.
-
Ray
