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"Yurt" by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Jul. 30th, 2008 05:54 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
obongo.livejournal.comThis is my first official "post" to this site, and I'm going to start not with an official "review" but a sort've commentary/review about a recent short story in The New Yorker by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum. As her middle-name implies (and her picture seems to attest to--although ocular veracity of one's "Asian-ness" can be suspect) Bynum is half-Asian (Chinese I believe, ancestrally speaking) and her latest story in the infamous New Yorker (the one that features the Obamas in all their Afro-militant-racial-satirist glory) is very tight and as a harbinger of what is to come from her new novel MS. HEMPEL CHRONICLES (which this seems to be an excerpt/chapter from) it should mean that we will be seeing Bynum appear regularly in The New Yorker and as one of those authors who has that MFA impramateur.
The story essentially follows Ms. Hempel during a day at her middle-school but it's sort've Gatsby-esque because it ostensibly follows the Fifth grade teacher, Ms. Duffy, who, after she has some kind of emotional breakdown (and who wouldn't teaching public school) shows up unannounced a year later very pregnant. The story follows the overlapping social spheres of various teachers and romances, clandestine and not, that occur in this middle school, but it's also a very poignant look at a somewhat lonely teacher (Ms. Hempel) trying to make sense of what is around her.
Anyway, I enjoyed the story and would definitely pick up the novel. ONe of the things I appreciated was that Bynum throws in random references to race and ethnicity that seem part of everyday life and not as a "meaningful" event. This is really done through surname and some apt cultural references and ethnic descriptors, but I apprecaited it, because she seemed to be making a statement about ethnicity without necessarily "making a statement."
Although I do wonder, should we consider her an "Asian American writer"? There was only a single character who "seemed" to be coded as Asian American--and he was described rather than had any "air time" on his own. And Bynum, herself, seems deracinated, from what I"m able to glean from the google stalking I did of her. Nonetheless, there's her middle name. And I believe in another short story she wrote, she did focus on Asian American characters (albeit through the perspective of a white male narrator).
I am, of course, obsessed with this topic currently, but I'd be curious to know what everyone thinks.
The story essentially follows Ms. Hempel during a day at her middle-school but it's sort've Gatsby-esque because it ostensibly follows the Fifth grade teacher, Ms. Duffy, who, after she has some kind of emotional breakdown (and who wouldn't teaching public school) shows up unannounced a year later very pregnant. The story follows the overlapping social spheres of various teachers and romances, clandestine and not, that occur in this middle school, but it's also a very poignant look at a somewhat lonely teacher (Ms. Hempel) trying to make sense of what is around her.
Anyway, I enjoyed the story and would definitely pick up the novel. ONe of the things I appreciated was that Bynum throws in random references to race and ethnicity that seem part of everyday life and not as a "meaningful" event. This is really done through surname and some apt cultural references and ethnic descriptors, but I apprecaited it, because she seemed to be making a statement about ethnicity without necessarily "making a statement."
Although I do wonder, should we consider her an "Asian American writer"? There was only a single character who "seemed" to be coded as Asian American--and he was described rather than had any "air time" on his own. And Bynum, herself, seems deracinated, from what I"m able to glean from the google stalking I did of her. Nonetheless, there's her middle name. And I believe in another short story she wrote, she did focus on Asian American characters (albeit through the perspective of a white male narrator).
I am, of course, obsessed with this topic currently, but I'd be curious to know what everyone thinks.
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