The current featured contributor to
Writers Read: Sandra Beasley,
poet and
editor.
One book she tagged:
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, by Jennifer 8. Lee (Twelve Books) - I'm always working my way
through an "oatmeal book," usually non-fiction, that I read while stirring my steel-cut oatmeal each morning for the 20 minutes it takes to cook. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles follows Lee as she tracks down the origins of many flagship Chinese food dishes -- fortune cookies, chop suey, General Tso's chicken -- zeroing in on the ways in which Chinese immigrant culture has commercialized (and often corrupted) itself to engage American tastes. The tone is witty, the writing well-paced, and Lee is confident in her evocations of old New York and mainland China, where many of the stories -- often spanning generations of family, multiple ethnic cultures, and various lawsuits -- take place. This book is a perfect follow-up for those who enjoyed Trevor Corson's The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket, which came out last year. Did you know that some of the most valuable black market exports from the U.S to Japan are chicken feet, pig ears, and cow stomachs? One culture's trash is another's treasure. [read on]
Sandra Beasley works on the editorial staff of
The American Scholar.
Her poems can be found in recent issues of journals such as
32 Poems, Slate, RHINO, Blackbird, New Orleans Review, Poet Lore, and Meridian. Her work has been featured on
Verse Daily and appears in the 2005
Best New Poets anthology and the
Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (Second Story); work is forthcoming in the
Outside Voices 2008 Anthology and
Online Writing: The Best of the Frist Ten Years (Snow*Vigate Press). Her full-length manuscript,
Theories of Falling, received the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize, selected by Marie Howe, and will be published in March 2008.
Learn more about Beasley and her work at
her website and
her blog, Chicks Dig Poetry.
Writers Read: Sandra Beasley.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
