Like a Nuprin: Road Trip Wednesday

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for 15-year-old Jenna Gustafson's MG book!

This Week's Road Trip Topic at YA Highway:

 NAME THIS LIFE: What would your memoir be called?

So not only have I already written a memoir, it's technically published.  (woo!)

Harvard publishes all honors theses that attain magna cum laude or higher and keeps a leather-bound copy in its famous massive library.  So if you visit Cambridge, MA, you can find it AND a videotape of the play I wrote, directed and starred in.  I advise you not to do this as I will be incredibly embarrassed.  The performance features drag queens, Miss Saigon parodies and objects not nameable on a YA blog.  

The name of my first memoir is:

Like a 'Nuprin': Little, Yellow, Queer;

The Case for queer Asian American autobiofictional* performance

The link will take you to the Google Books page, although the publish date is wrong (earlier than it actually came out).  Researching and writing the thesis took a year and a half and I got a grant to spend a summer in California, the shiny land of Asian-Americans, to interview performers.  That trip spurred me to follow my Hollywood dream after graduation.

college me hangs w/ Lauren Tom (Friends, Joy Luck Club) at a photo shoot

I wish I had even one picture of my motley cast, but I lost all my precious college photos in a laptop crash when I moved across country.  :'(

Since then, I've performed versions of this as stand-up acts, one-woman shows and play readings.  And yes, one day I'd love to bring it back.

*I coined the term "autobiofictional" for the thesis to underscore the complication and intersection of fiction and autobiography.  Harvard forces critical theory on you, what can I say.

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While I'm on the topic of race, be sure to check out Ellen Oh's post: Why The Pretty White Girl YA Book Cover Trend Needs to End