Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
.W.o.W. #36
Christine C. Hsu
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
Keep going.
What is a book you wish someone would write?
Just more Taiwanese American stories. I [was] reading Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu and Bestiary by K-Ming Chang.
Describe an early experience where you learned that language has power.
I was waiting for the BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] to go home. An elderly man asked me for directions in Chinese and luckily I could speak a little Chinese to help him out. Because I was nice to this guy, another man came up to me asking for help in Spanish, and I was able to help him, too. I remember that when I went to Taiwan, I felt bad because I couldn’t speak Chinese well and needed my parents to help me get around and was happy to help these folks.
Christine C. Hsu is a writer, playwright, and poet based in Oakland, California. Her creative nonfiction piece “Mother Tongues of Confusion, Shame, and Love” was included in RENASCENCE, Vol. VI, No. 1; Christine read an excerpt from it for Renascence: A Reading in 2021. And like Kim Berrios Lin, Christine sat with Taína for a chat before the release of RENASCENCE.
She recently had a poem, “Korean Pirate,” published in the Nonbinary Review, Issue #26: Person of Interest. And very exciting, her first commissioned play, Baijui, for the Fresh Baked Pears Festival began streaming on April 23 and will be available through May 8. It is an all Asian American female cast, director, and playwright so show your support and love before it stops streaming!
Learn more about Christine at medium.com/@hsu.christine and follow her on Twitter @HsuChristineC.