Your Hosts: Piper Drake, Aliette de Bodard, and Wesley Chu, with special guest Ken Liu
Our hosts for this episode are experts in a great many different things. One thing that they have in common is that they’re all members of the Asian Disapora, and in this episode we’ll learn what kinds of things writers get wrong when writing Asian Diaspora elements, and how we as writers can learn to get those things right.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:33 — 15.5MB)
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Read China Men, by Maxine Hong Kingston
The Paper Menagerie, and Other Stories, by Ken Liu
This was wonderful episode, gang, thank you! I love this theme and I went looking for all the episodes tagged “What writers get wrong” and noticed that a recent episode I did hear, the one with Mike Stop Continue, didn’t show up. Might want to double check it’s tagged to show up.
Thanks again for these!
Bad tags, missing tags, and basically anything tag-related that isn’t on the playground is totally my fault. Fixing now…
That was a great podcast.
It’s pretty interesting that you mentioned the internal conflict that occurs when Asian characters are potrayed. In contrast, the way Irish/Italian/e.tc. are portrayed is more about nostalgia and eventual lack of feeling to the place that they came from.
I wonder why? Are more Asian characters portrayed as having parents who are first generation, or is that portrayal also in regards to Asian characters who are not first generation?
I ask as one of the internal conflicts in all of my novels is that whole caught between two worlds subject matter and most of the characters are first generation.
It was a pretty enjoyable podcast. I am not from America, and I have never been in America, and it was interesting to hear about the different view of Diaspora in America. I feel like, outside of wonderful France, Europe has a bit of a problem with always classing immigrants as ‘other’. An Irish person’s grandchild will probably be classed as Irish if they live in Britain/Poland/e.t.c. I think one of my students was complaining about that.
It was a really nice podcast and I hope more are like this. Sometimes the best teaching is insightful rather than practical.
And it was fun to hear the word ‘bloody’ :)
This was an interesting episode. I’m glad that it is here because everything you guys are saying is reflected in the Black community and the Latino community. I think that people born in the US and is also part of a diaspora feel the same. We just are, there is no inner emotional conflict.
Also, I have this question, you may have heard it before, will there be an episode of What writers get wrong about writers? I am also aware the whole might just the answer.
A special trio, Piper, Aliette, and Wesley, met with Ken Liu to talk about the Asian Diaspora. What bothers them in media portrayals of Asian characters, how can you write better characters? Plenty of in-depth discussion that you will want to read, in the transcript now available in the archives and over here.
https://wetranscripts.dreamwidth.org/144171.html
I’m feeling quite emotional to hear people -for the first time- articulate what I have lived. What a fantastic discussion.
I’d also like to point out I am not Asian or American but a mixed race girl of African/South-Asian/British descent and all these issues were identifiable to me.