신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin

Don't miss this special reading by David McCann, Koreanist and poet at Harvard

February 26, University of Minnesota, Consortium for the Study of the Asias

David McCann (from Harvard University's East Asian Studies Dept), Sun Yung Shin (reading from "Skirt Full of Black" and other poems), and Ed Bok Lee (reading from Real Karaoke People and new work)

7 pm, studio 100, Barbara Barker Center for Dance, U of Minnesota west bank. Free.

Two upcoming readings in New York

AKA presents Geographies of our own: New Visions in Korean Transnational Art
Hosted by Tom Hudson
featuring: Jane Jin Kaisen, Lee Herrick, Sun Yung Shin, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
7 - 9 pm doors open at 6:30
Silk Road Mocha, 30 Mott Street between Mott & Pell
Admission $15 and 1 drink minimum
AKA members $10 and 1 drink minimum

Gathering of the Tribes presents:
Sun Yung Shin & Matthew Shenoda
Saturday, February 2, 2008
7pm at the Gathering of the Tribes
Lower East Side
285 East Third Street (between Avenue C and Avenue D)
New York, NY 10009
212-674-3778

I get to read with Graham Foust this Saturday!

SHANNON GIBNEY & SUN YUNG SHIN: Tuesday, October 9, 7:30pm - Magers And Quinn Booksellers

  Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption

 Given Madonna's recent decision to adopt a child from Malawi, news and entertainment are abuzz with what you've observed yourself--in your own family, or the family next door, or passing the neighborhood playground--there's a boom in transracial adoption. Most coverage focuses on the struggles of good white parents wishing to adopt "unfortunate" children of color. Some touches on the irony of Black babies in the United States being exported to Canada and Europe because of their "unwanted" status here. Some even address the trafficking of children (of course, it would--that's sensational). But few look at

 * why babies are available for adoption in the first place

 * what happens when they grow up and

 * how we come up with solutions that are humane and just

 Healthy white infants have become hard to locate and expensive to adopt. So people from around the world turn to interracial and intercountry adoption, often, like Madonna, with the idea that while growing their families, they're saving children from destitution. But as Outsiders Within reveals, while transracial adoption is a practice traditionally considered benevolent, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and even economic toll.

 Through compelling essays, fiction, poetry, and art, the contributors to this landmark publication carefully explore this most intimate aspect of globalization. Finally, in the unmediated voices of the adults who have matured within it, we find a rarely-considered view of adoption, an institution that pulls apart old families and identities and grafts new ones.

 Moving beyond personal narrative, these transracially adopted writers from around the world tackle difficult questions about how to survive the racist and ethnocentric worlds they inhabit, what connects the countries relinquishing their children to the countries importing them, why poor families of color have their children removed rather than supported--about who, ultimately, they are. In their inquiry, they unseat conventional understandings of adoption politics, ultimately reframing the controversy as a debate that encompasses human rights, peace, and reproductive justice.

Sun Yung Shin is the author of Skirt Full of Black (poems, Coffee House Press 07), co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (South End Press 06), and Cooper's Lesson (Korean/English children's book 04). Currently she is a 2007 Bush Artists Fellow for Literature and has also received grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her website is http://sunyungshin.com

Shannon Gibney's poetry has appeared in Black Renaissance Noire, Wicked Alice and the Bellingham Review, and is forthcoming in PMS. You can find her nonfiction in Essence Magazine and Outsiders Within (South End Press, 2006). Gibney was awarded a 2005 Bush Artist Fellowship and the 2002 Hurston/Wright Award in fiction. Her short fiction is forthcoming in Tea Party, and has appeared in Brilliant Corners. She is a 2002 graduate of Indiana University's MFA program in fiction, and also hold an MA in 20th Century African American literature from that institution. Currently, she is at at work on a novel that chronicles the journeys of 19 th century African Americans who colonized Liberia, and BROWN ON BROWN, an anthology of essays on building coalition between communities of color. Find out more at shannongibney.net .

 

Writers of Color Reading - Myspace

Check out the blog entry about Thursday's reading at the myspace for the Intermedia Arts Writers of Color Reading Series...http://myspace.com/intermediaartsWOC...

Here are some photos to tantalize you!

Intermedia Arts! Tonight!

Literary Arts Calendar

      

Jae Ran Kim

The Carol Connolly Reading Series Color Theory for the 21st Century: Beyond the Pure Readings by Writers of Color Thursday, July 12, 2007 7:00 PM at Patrick’s Cabaret 3010 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis Free and open to the public

Hosted by Sun Yung Shin

Featuring:
JAE RAN KIM is a writer, teacher and social worker. She was born in South Korea and adopted to Minnesota in 1971. Jae Ran's poems, essays and articles have been published in KoreAm Journal, Korean Quarterly, the Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly and the recently published anthology, Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption from South End Press. University of Illinois Press will publish Jae Ran’s essay, “Waiting For God” in the anthology Religion and Spirituality in Korean America this coming fall.

BOBBY WILSON (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota and Standing Rock Lakota). A young indigenous artist and youth care worker living in the Wasicun city of Minneapolis. Bobby Wilson has been actively involved in the art community since 1999 appearing in anti-tobacco ads, visual art shows, musical venues, and indigenous community events. He can also be seen frequently speaking to groups of youth in schools and community centers or practicing for big shows at open mics. Bobby Wilson's powerfully complex verbal imagery and hard hitting delivery have made a favorite within the Minnesota scene collaborating and performing with the likes of Bao Phi, Truth Maze, Toki Wright, and many more.

This Carol Connolly Reading is co-sponsored by Patrick's Cabaret.

Off to Chicago tomorrow

Tomorrow I'll be driving to St. Charles for the National Women's Studies Association annual conference. I'll be moderating a panel on Friday, and am very interested to see what women's studies scholars (at the conference) are thinking and talking about...

I'm involved due to my colleague Kim Park Nelson, who asked me to participate in this role. She is doing cutting-edge theoretical work and I'm very fortunate to be able to work with her in any capacity.

Here's the panel:

Asian Transnational Adoption: Gender, Race, Maternity, Loss, and Identity

This panel's participants come from departments of English,
Culture Studies, and American Studies, and use literary, ethnographic,
and historical analysis as well as theories of global reproductive
politics and the new field of adoption studies. Park Nelson applies to
transnational adoption Aihwa Ong's concept of the "family romance" as
"the collective and unconscious images of family order that underlie
public politics [that]inform the way people imagine the operations of
power between individuals and the state, between different ethnic
groups, and of course, between men and women." The literature Novy
analyzes demonstrates some of these images in practice but also
explores how adoptees negotiate their identity. Patton challenges
romantic notions of transnational adoption by exploring the life
experiences of adoptees and birth mothers, and emphasizing the power
relations regulating the immigration of children to the

US

through
adoption.