We invite you to join us for the Asian American Reading Group’s second meeting of the semester. Based on the last meeting’s conversation and suggestions received, we’ve chosen Ted Chiang’s Hugo Award-winning SF short story “Exhalation,” found in the collection of the same name.
The meeting will be held via Zoom on:
Tuesday, November 1, at 3:30 p.m.
For the link, contact Rob Nguyen (ran22 at psu dot edu) or Su Young Lee (szl598 at psu dot edu).
This story and conversation may be of interest if you work in Asian American literature, but also if you are generally interested in SF or the short story form. Chiang’s work is, arguably, exemplary of both.
To read Chiang’s work through the lenses of Asian American literature gives rise to challenging questions, as Chiang is an Asian American writer who does not explicitly engage with topics or characters concerned with Asian American experiences, leading Christopher Fan to write in Post45, “Chiang indicates and conceals his Asian American identity in the same gesture. What, then, are the features and circumstances of Chiang’s writing that produce Asian American racial form in the very same postracial move of not writing as an Asian American?”. Fan’s essay discusses “Story of Your Life,” the short story that was adapted into the film Arrival, but this may be an excellent question for us to work with as well.