Hi! Are you headed to Baltimore? I am, too!
Our panel is on the language of walking. What does it mean to engage with walking as writers, poets, artists? As citizens?
Come by, say hello! #2026AWP
Hi, I’m Jung Hae Chae. I’m a writer and poet, based somewhere in the eye socket of America, always looking, trying (though often failing) to look deeper still. I write mostly about the people I remember, those who are now gone, most of them women, mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters, artists, or would-be artists, those I can’t stop thinking about. They come into my dreams and tell me things. I’m interested in documenting their lives of struggle, in small, quiet-descending-upon-late-afternoon moments, their interiors, the secrets they kept to themselves—I imagine into them, as I, too, now have become a middle-aged immigrant woman who never ceases to struggle to live and to raise a daughter the right way. How to live as an artist-mom, as an immigrant artist-single mom surviving, sometimes thriving, though not always, in a strange corner patch of NJ suburbs?
I keep learning. I keep remembering. This week as part of #SAFtakeover, I have the privilege of sharing some things, family pics, notes, books, some motifs and ideas I employ in my work. The work of continually sussing out what it means to live conscientiously, to learn from we inherited from beyond, the work of documenting and interpreting the complicated layers of personal history interwoven with a larger history—my own and others.
Enjoy and say hi.
#writerparent #artistparent #koramwriter #korea #writingcommunity
tune in this week for JUNG HAE CHAE, whose memoir-in-essays, Pojangmacha People, explores what immigrant women—particularly Korean women, bound by the legacy of war and imperialism— inherit from their mothers and grandmothers. She lives in New Jersey with her family. #writerparent #fiction #fictionparent #korea
Dr. Sue-je Lee Gage. That was her name. In pictures, her wide, warm smile gives off a sense of ease, a comfort, and a particular kind of grace that's complex and all-encompassing. She taught anthropology at Ithaca College, did on-the-ground ethnographic research on Amerasians and with Korean women who once worked in militarized sex industry for U.S. soldiers in S. Korea. I wish I knew her.
And so I'm grateful to @hannahbae for guiding me to @sunlitresidency , where Sue-je once lived and worked, and where I spent some time this summer. I stood in the same hallway where she must have stood, cooked and washed dishes inside the same galley kitchen where she must have spent countless hours prepping meals for others. I was able to slow my mind down, relax my body, chop and chew my veggies mindfully, and yes, think more deeply into all those messy layers of (generational) grief held in the body, in women's bodies, in immigrant women's bodies, in my body, and how to live with and be responsible with it.
And so my deep thanks to @sunlitresidency director, Annette Levine, for inviting me into this special, most enchanting place, where humming birds came around all day everyday to sit with the trumpet vines for just long enough for me to feel flitting joys yet never long enough to take a pic. Grateful too to Nathan Fitch @nathanfitch and Liz Margolies for our intimate, nourishing conversations over food. Thanks Nathan for capturing me when I wasn't eactly looking. 🤗🙏❤️
I wrote about postpartum depression (14 years never too late!), about the spectacle of mother-child relationships in middle of America, and some other messy things.
Tremendous thanks to Aube Rey Lescure @aubenoisette , an editor extraordinaire & the whole team at Off Assignment @offassignment for their brilliant care. 💜
You can read the essay and the interview here:
/articles/junghae-chae
A week from today! February 29 @ 8 PM Eastern
Delighted to be reading alongside other contributors in honor of long-time New England Review nonfiction & drama editor J. M. Tyree's (@textplusimage )
COME JOIN US!!!
What a dream of an evening it was to speak with and listen to my dear friend, Ani Gjika @ani.gjika , about her new memoir, #ANRULEDBODY, @politicsprose last week. Thanks to @ivan__dervishi for capturing this moment!
DC friends! I'll be in conversation w/my dear friend @Ani_Gjika on Wed, 1/3 @PoliticsProse to celebrate the launch of her new memoir, AN UNRULED BODY, just out from @RestlessBooks , winner of 2021 New Immigrant Writing Prize. Come join us!
We planted some perilla leaves (깻잎) this summer. Too much for a small family. Some froze over, so just now I picked all the perfectly freeze-dried leaves off their stems, and now have more than enough to last for years...to season soups, rice, and make tea with. They smell amazing!
Delighted to see my small piece (called "Smalls") included in the latest issue of StoryQuarterly (read at Storyquarterly.org), and to share space with other terrific writers, including my Bread Loaf Writer workshop buddy Kirtan Nautiyal. Grateful to Paul Lisicky & Stephanie Manuzak for their care.
This is the best Mother's Day gift ever!! Thank you @SustainableArts for recognizing the work we do as parent writers and artists!! Congratulations to the other winners and finalists!!! ❤️🥰
