Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum

Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum

Search
MENU
the expanding canon teaching multicultural literature
Workshop Home
Reader Response: Pat Mora and James Welch Reader Response: Keith Gilyard and Mourning Dove Inquiry: Rudolfo Anaya and James Baldwin Inquiry: Tomás Rivera and Esmeralda Santiago Cultural Studies: Ishmael Reed and Graciela Limón Cultural Studies: N. Scott Momaday and Russell Leong Critical Pedagogy: Octavia E. Butler and Ruthanne Lum McCunn Critical Pedagogy: Abiodun Oyewole and Lawson Fusao Inada
Theory Overview Teaching Strategies Authors and Literary Works Resources
Session 6 Cultural Studies: N. Scott Momaday and Russell Leong - Authors and Literary Works

Author: N. Scott Momaday
Work: The Way to Rainy Mountain
Author: Russell Leong
Work: "Aerogrammes"

 

REFLECTION - Interactive Forum

Explore two poems using four approaches.
ChannelTalk

Share your views on the discussion
board.



Download the Session 6 Guide

Russell Leong

Russell Charles Leong was born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown. After studying at the Kearny Street Workshop for writers and National Taiwan University, he earned an M.F.A in film at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently the editor of the Amerasia Journal and the head of the Asian American Studies Center Press at UCLA, where he also teaches Asian American studies. His rich cultural background, along with a strong visual sensibility, informs Leong's complex poetry.

Leong's work often focuses on cultural exile, or "diaspora." His poems describe the bifurcated consciousness of the individual who exists between two worlds. In "Threads," for example, Leong imagines himself as an unformed, yet somehow indivisible, entity: "It is with me / And yet / There is nothing I can say ... That will make it work." Leong does not specifically say what this vestigial "it" is, or why "it" sticks to him so irritatingly. But he does go on to metaphorically describe this "it" as undigested but necessary food: "It is with me ... A fruit ripening on a tree ... a fat insect caught on threads." In this way, Leong's poetry both bemoans and celebrates the half-split consciousness of diasporic identity; it is uncomfortable to experience oneself as a dual entity, he seems to suggest, but it is also exciting and filled with potential.

Leong's work speaks in general about diaspora, but it also speaks specifically to the Chinese American and larger Asian experience. As he demonstrates to Bobbi Ciriza Houtchens' class, studying Chinese American culture often brings students into contact with various Asian cultures: Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian -- or "Chino," as Leong refers to them collectively. In this way, Leong investigates the relationship between different types of Asian American identity.

Leong has published both scholarship and poetry, including Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience. His work has been anthologized in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Charlie Chan is Dead, The Open Boat, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers, ZYZZYVA, The New England Review, and The United States of Poetry. Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories, Leong's collection of short fiction, was honored with the 2001 American Book Award. The Country of Dreams and Dust was awarded the PEN Josephine Miles Literature Award in 1993.

Works by the Author

top NextWork: "Aerogrammes"


Support Materials About This Workshop Sitemap
The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature

Home | Video Catalog | About Us | Search | Contact Us | Site Map | | Follow The Annenberg Learner on Facebook

© Annenberg Foundation 2013. All rights reserved. Legal Policy.