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| The Lambda Book Report
published a wonderful review of "Calendar
Boy" by Richard Labonté in their July/August
2001 edition. It was up on their webpage for
quite a while. I've copied it onto my own
homepage HERE.
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| Book Review
on: www.redsalamander.com/books.asp
(November 2001) CALENDAR
BOY
A few
years ago, a Yale graduate named Eric Liu
published The Accidental Asian, an eloquent
series of essays tracing the young author's quest
to come to grips with his Oriental heritage after
growing up under the Euro-dominant influence of
continental USA. That book now seems rather
quaint beside the Canadian-authored Calendar Boy.
It isn't just Andy Quan's value-added "otherness"
of queer sexuality that gives this book more edge
- although some of the bitchy irony that drives
these stories surely arises from that. It's
rather that Quan is a lot funnier about cultural
disharmony, less forgiving of polite society and
more aggressive in taking the piss out of PC
earnestness. In "What I Really Hate",
there's as much disdain for the cha-cha-cha-ing
Chinese dancers as for the drooling rice queens.
His take on fetishism is refreshingly inventive,
as in "How to Cook Chinese Rice" and
"Hair", and yet there's a haunting sort
of beauty in the darker subject of a Japanese
girl's attempted suicide ("Almost Flying").
With a disciplined, poet's eye - short, punchy
sentences and well-rendered visuals - this book's
a keeper. Daniel Gawthrop
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Books of Note
- by Richard Labonté
Review in Lambda
Book Report,
October 2001 (North American gay
and lesbian literary review magazine, wide
distribution)(A lovely
review by Richard Labonté appearing under Poetry
in the Books of Note section of the Lambda Book
Report. There aren't actually any poems from
Greece, maybe it was Italy Richard was thinking
of.)
Slant - by Andy Quan
As with the short stories in Quan's recent
collection Calendar Boy, the poems in this slim,
rich volume are borne of a mind and a body
forever on the move - back into the roots of his
immigrant Chinese family, out and into reflective
and sexual and erotic gay moments, and through a
myriad of lands, among them Greece and Spain,
Ecuador and Australia, Malaysia and his homeland
Canada. Quan writes with an enticing style whose
conversational simplicity blossoms smoothly into
intricate, evocative imagery; the result is
poetry both musical and highly visual.
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"Sex
and drugs: The gay life, and
addicted lives, depicted in two releases" by
Tim Chamberlain
From: Victoria Times-Colonist,
October 7, 2001 (daily
newspaper from Victoria, B.C.)
(Matched up in a
review with "Addicted: Notes from the Belly
of the Beast" a non-fiction collection of 10
Canadian writers exploring the topic of addiction.
Is this a good thing? Gay life automatically
linked to addiction/drugs/alcohol. Hmm...Goodness,
my metaphors and similes take a bit of a beating
in reviews. I'll be praised for some, critiqued
for others. Oh well.) You can argue all day whether the
personal is political, but is it art? Andy Quan's
collection of short fiction, Calendar Boy,
catches the gay zeitgeist of modern life in a
manner reminiscent of TV productions such as
Queer as Folk. His characters grow up, fall in
love, become educated, travel ... in other words,
they do everything straight people manage to do.
This is confident writing that
doesn't shy away from the various characters' (and
the author's) sexual orientation. Furthermore,
Calendar Boy, never lectures and manages to avoid
the curse of overt political correctness. However,
Quan's collection does risk becoming insular at
times. While there is nothing wrong with
chronicling the ups and downs of gay men making
their way in the world, some of his stronger
selections do incorporate elements of straight
existence as well.
For example, The Polish Titanic,
describes a stormy trip on a ferry in the Baltic.
The protagonist develops a chaste shipboard
friendship with a man called Piotr, a friendship
that transcends the bounds of any notion of
sexual orientation. Since all shipboard
friendships are finite by definition, the ending
of this story is bittersweet: this is a touching
story, deriving much strength, I would argue,
from its portrayal of worlds colliding at several
levels.
Quan has a slight tendency to
contort metaphors - a stylistic tic he may want
to keep in check. In Hair, an otherwise excellent
story, he explains that "hair... sprouted
about my penis, all twisty like the shrubbery
that grows next to the ocean, the curves and
bends eluding the sea wind, rooting itself into
place." At times like this, a judicious
editor should step in and delicately prune.
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"young
boy shows promise" by
Carly Hollander
From: Ubyssey Magazine,
Friday, September 7, 2001,
p. 12
( student magazine from the University of British
Columbia)(A positive review.
I'm not sure I particularly like the headline -
though the review does focus on the themes of
youth and coming out. This review is another
lesson for me on the pitfalls of mixing fiction
and auto-biography. The auto-biographical voice
is so strong in "Calendar Boy" that it
seems to overwhelm the purely fictional stories.
As this comment has been echoed in other reviews
(sameness of characters, all the characters being
gay and Asian), it seems that some reviewers
either 1. don't connect enough with the themes
and stories to sustain their interest for the
whole book; or 2. expect a short fiction
collection to feature a cast of different
characters rather than similar characters
exploring different themes. Should I have grouped
all the mostly auto-biographical stories together
in one section titled "kind of me"? An
interviewer who told me how varied the characters
were suggested that people who suggest all the
characters are the same are not reading the book
through in order, but instead dipping into the
collection in random order.)
Whether it's in a small family
home in Saskatchewan, or on a nauseating boat
ride in Gdansk, in Calendar Boy, Andy Quan finds
some where in the world to take his readers on a
journey through self-discovery.
Calendar Boy is an anthology of
sixteen stories in which characters struggle with
cultural, sexual and identity issues in a society
unwilling to accept anything either strange or
generic. These stories are poignant pictures of
love, friendship, self-awareness and the struggle
for happiness. Quan writes with truth and ease.
The prose flows easily, yet with profound emotion.
He is an honest writer - real and bursting with
youth.
Similar themes appear
throughout the anthology. Each story is a
monologue by a young gay male of Asian descent.
The common thread in each story is the search for
the character's identity and his role in society.
Quan writes about the problems these men have
finding a place in the Asian and gay communities.
For Quan's characters, it's not just about being
gay; it's about fully discovering oneself in the
context of sexuality.
In one especially heartfelt
story, "Hair," the character
experiments with different hairstyles as his self-discovery
progresses. When he first comes out, his hair is
long and shaggy - something he can hide behind
without exposing his true self to the world. At a
point of self-acceptance, he decides to shave his
head. He talks about the lightness of being
exposed, showing his true self. This story has
universal themes for many young people today. It's
not just about issues of culture or sexuality. It's
about finding ourselves and being proud to show
ourselves to the world.
Despite the emotional truths of
Quan's characters, the characters' voices often
don't distinguish themselves from one another.
Nothing makes one character truly stand out from
another, except for a different name or a
slightly different experience. For the first five
stories, it was barely recognizable that more
than one character was speaking.
As a relatively new writer,
Quan has made a great debut to the writing world.
His writing his honest, true and emotional. He
chooses his words well and uses dialects to add
some personality to his characters. Unfortunately,
Quan's characters have too much in common.
Nonetheless, Quan has created a wonderful medley
of stories with ideas applicable to all.
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The
Canberra Times - Reviews -
Tuesday, 30 July 2002
Books - Fiction: "Sincere work".
Reviewer: KAYE ROBERTS
Andy Quan's Calendar Boy boldly
tackles issues of gay identity in his 16 stories
about youthful insecurities, self-discovery and
racial prejudice. Set in diverse locations from
Paris to Sydney, Calendar Boy is a sincere and
straightforward work. Each of the characters,
from naive first timers to sophisticated city
dwellers, are on the search for self-acceptance
and individuality in a white world swollen with
stereotypes, suffocating conventions and foreign
prejudices. Like Quan himself, the main
characters are Asian and gay.
This allows dual viewpoints, from the outsider
longing to fit in and have a voice to the gay man
developing his own distinctiveness and sense of
self-happiness. Quan writes intimately about the
disruptions and influences that play across the
character's lives affecting decisions and evoking
both joy and loss. His language is sharp and
honest and the stories can, at times, be
excruciating as mistakes are confessed. Overall
it conveys the fragile human condition and deep
wish to be accepted. Poignant and funny, these
contemporary stories are to be enjoyed. |
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The
Calgary Straight, vol 3, #106
(July 6-12, 2000): page 8
Swallowing Clouds: An
Anthology of Chinese-Canadian Poetry - Reviewed
by Nicole Markotic
It's difficult, in a short review,
to do justice to any anthology, but it is
especially difficult to characterize and describe
the richly diverse collection of poets,
Swallowing Clouds. In his introduction, Andy Quan
tells the reader that the title for this
collection comes from two simple opposites:
swallowing and cloudy heavens, also known as won-ton.
Such a title promises simple comfort, as well as
a delicate mixture of broth and meat, noodles and
vegetables; a mixture, in other words, for a
variety of tastes and preferences.
Quan goes on to relate how this is an anthology
that comes from a place both real and mythical -
Chinese-Canada, and that the poets within its
pages come from around the globe, they "are
these travellers, and their children, and their
grandchildren, and even further down the family
tree." The anthology, he says, is the
creation of a "we" rather than an
"I." But it is also so much more - it
is a gathering of multiple "we"s, who
speak their stories in diverse styles and
approaches and language plays and poetic truths.
Included inside Swallowing Clouds, are a range of
talented individuals from internationally-known
poet Fred Wah to first-time published writer Lien
Chao. Although Wah's Governor General Award is
credited to the publication of the fiction
anthology, Many-Mouthed Birds (which came out in
1991; Wah's G.G. was 1986), and each poet's bio
is included in a page a bit too visually precious,
the anthology is a wonderful assortment of
original and vital poets. They are collected here
not because of their homogeneity, but because of
their literary appeal and diverse poetic reach.
Rita Wong's "sunset grocery," takes on
the problematic icon of the corner grocery store
as well as foregrounds the narrator's small-case
I, right-justified ragged-left margins, "inscrutable"
"fine girl" self - all amid a world of
skinny hallways and flamboyant prometheus:
the summer i am afraid of fire i make change in
my sleep. the cash register's metallic rhythm
comes quick to my fingers: 59˘ from $1 gets you
back one penny, one nickel, one dime, one quarter...
Wong's poetry absorbs narrative devices at the
same time as it rejects these devices - the
tension in her lines, each stanza slightly off-kilter
yet perfectly balanced, holds the reader waiting
for that final cash-register "kachink."
Leung Ping-Kwan offers a medley of styles and
voices, ranging from a poem that celebrates
imperial architecture at the same moment it
examines a bitter colonial history that old
buildings represent. His poems introduce the
reader to foods and smells and sounds "that
challenge your blueprints' rectangles" and
"melt on your tongue."
Famous mostly for her narratives, Evelyn Lau, in
these poems, brings about an equally engaging
narrative voice, but with added emphasis on the
twisted image or the torn metaphor. "I am a
pale scar around your neck," her persona
says to listener/reader/lover, as she babbles a
truth made up of polished stones and marbles.
I'll end with one of my fave's, in which language-centred
poet Fred Wah mixes fast-food imagery, punning
rhythms, and ridiculous rhymes to drive the
reader, again and again, to the end of the line
and back again, to the construct of race and then
further:
What's yr race
and she said
what's yr hurry
how 'bout it cock
asian man
I'm just going for curry.
You every been to ethni-city?
How 'bout multi-culti?
Read this anthology for the wonderful poets I
have mentioned and for the fabulous poets I have
had to leave unquoted. Read it for the diversity
of voice and language and context and ideals.
Read it because it is new and fresh and necessary.
Most of all, read these delectable won-tons for
the sheer pleasure. |
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