Reflections

Over the past months, I’ve poured my time into crafting blog posts under the Autumn section where I combined the genres of book review writing, poetry, memoir, and theory. 

While working on my senior project, I witnessed the place of autobiographical work in my academic life and the symbiotic relationship between my personal life and literature. I have looked back to my love of the Young Adult Romance genre and read books written by Asian American authors, and I found familiarity in the experiences surrounding race and romance. I originally set out to explore questions of my Asian American identity and culture, silences in my childhood and current life, and healing, but the questions stretched. I began to touch on questions of desire: desire for intimacy, for trust, and for comfort. I traced my own interests of desire, identity, and race through reading the novels and theory and writing creative pieces.

In my book reviews, I incorporated genre theory, specifically scholarship by Pamela Butler and Jigna Desai on works in the Chick Lit genre that are written by authors of color. The scholars analyzed the role of family, assimilation, and race in the Chick Lit novels. I also read Janice A. Radway’s work on the romance genre, and Asian American Literature and neoliberalism scholarship by Julia H. Lee, Susan Koshy, and Pamela Thoma. The threads that I saw between the scholarship were ideas of comfort, belonging, and expectations placed by society and family. In other blog posts, I wrote poems about the desire for the past in “Our Window” and sexual desire in my “Gallery Series” poems. Most of my poems draw from my personal experience, and I’ve included memoir with my poems. 

As I’m reflecting on my senior project, I find myself looking back on my undergraduate career as an English Major. I entered Skidmore College knowing that I wanted to study English because books were and still are my solace and my “friends.” During the tumultuous periods of my childhood with moving to different homes, cities, and states, literature remained constant, grounded in words that comforted me. Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “One Art,” encapsulates how I felt about being uprooted. 

“I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

 some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

 I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster” (13-15).

Literature combated the sense of “disaster” in losing friendships and my connections to places. 

In my first year of college, I took Introduction to Literary Studies and Women and Literature with Professor Lee, who would later become my advisor, and she taught me how to close read books and films. She taught me how to improve my writing and editing skills. Later, I would take Introduction to Asian American Literature with Professor Lee where she introduced me to the world of Asian American Literature, a current interest of mine. In my freshman year, I focused on literary based courses, but during my sophomore year, Professor Greaves’ Poetry course piqued my interest. I had written poetry in high school, and I wanted to learn more about the poetry universe. Later, I would go on to take her courses: Intro to Poetry Writing and Modern Poetry. Professor Greaves taught me to close read poems, to share my own readings of poems, and to write poetry. In her poetry writing course, I wrote about my childhood and the YA Romance genre, and she provided helpful editing tips (“to make my images weirder”) and encouraged me to pursue those “obsessions” that she calls them. Many of my current interests were born from my work in Professor Greaves courses, and I will always be immensely grateful to her for supporting me and encouraging me to grow in my poetry. I will keep her feedback and advice dear to my heart. In my junior year, I enrolled in Professor Mintz’s Disability Narratives course where she introduced me to memoir writing, a healing mode of writing, and she inspired me to be brave in my writing about my anxiety and the stigma of mental illness in the Asian American community. This semester, I’m taking her Milton course, and for my final project, I’m working on a memoir piece where I use Milton’s writing as a guide to navigate my relationships with my father, faith, and romantic partners. My English professors have been lovely and incredible, and it has been a privilege to develop relationships with them and to learn from them. The English courses that I’ve taken at Skidmore have fostered my love of genre, and I plan to pursue my interest in genre. 

Although the curtains to my senior project have closed, my literary blog, “Broken Silences,” will live on. I will be posting more memoir, poetry, and book reviews. I anticipate that my questions will grow and transform as I continue my studies. Thank you for joining me on my literary travels.