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| The Word is
Out is a
Sydney-based online journal for gay, lesbian and
queer liberation. Their Word is Out issue no 2,
March 2002 features a wonderful positive review
of Calendar Boy by Happy Ho, a local Asian
lesbian celebrity - a doctor, performer, comedian
and activist. Click here to go the current issue and here for the review. Happy describes the collection as "a
wonderfully engaging and impressive debut, not
only for the breadth of the themes explored, but
also of the flair with which they are presented".
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QP,
Brisbane, Queensland (Lesbian and Gay community
newspaper) February 2002
(A short and sweet review that
included a book give-away for the first five
readers that called!)
The sixteen short tales in Canadian-Australian
author Andy Quan's Calendar Boy offer up a tasty
and diverse multicultural and multi-dimensional
stew. Set around the globe from Vancouver to
Paris to Quan's adopted home of Sydney, each
story explores notions of culture, community,
identity and eroticism. But while these common
themes are woven into each of the stories, Quan
switches voice as frequently as he switches
locale, ensuring no two tales are too similar.
Quan's short stories have appeared in twelve
anthologies including Circa 2000: Gay Fiction at
the Millennium, Best Gay Erotica 2000 and Carnal
Nation: Brave New Sex Fictions.."
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Sydney
Scope Magazine, Vol 3 Number
8, February 2002
Books by Lewis Wolfe
(Joy, joy, joy! Finally, a
free entertainment magazine that doesn't trash me
(see bad reviews). In fact, I love this review.
While I'm not sure what constitutes the "bulk
of [my] literary predecessors", Wolfe makes
it clear that he's enjoyed the book, but doesn't
have to be gay or Asian to do so. He gets it. Yay.)
For a book primarily concerned with issues
important to a gay male of Asian extraction,
Canadian-Australian Andy Quan's debut is
surprisingly good. Not that being of Asian
descent and gay persuasion is a recipe for
literary terribleness - simply that Quan could
have reclined in the political easy-chair
provided him by his genes, as the bulk of his
literary predecessors have done, and he has not...
Sidestepping the expected traumas of ethnic/homosexuality
acceptance in favour of dilemmas more immediate
and unexpected, Quan writes with a muscular
adaptability, his voice changing pitch more than
a dozen times as he races us through a series of
vignettes at the end of which, for the most part,
the narrator himself is either too confused
("Wreck Beach"), exhausted ("Sleep")
or disturbed ("What I Really Hate") to
pass clear judgement... First novels are
notorious dumping grounds for an author's long-harboured
political views, and Quan's are certainly here.
But they're buried; popping up like gravestones
disturbed as the author already hauls earth for
new foundations. All round, Calendar Boy is an
exciting book, particularly if Andy Quan is going
to write another.
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Other Voices
- Tony Maniaty, The Weekend Australian, May 11-12,
2002. p. 8-9
(Appearing in a review with
three other books, I can't be more pleased with
this one. This newspaper probably has the largest
circulation of anywhere I've been reviewed in)
Andy Quan's Calendar Boy (Penguin,
228pp, $22) tours the world in search of sex.
"Anyone could have told me that the gay life
I was seeking would not be found in Peterborough,
Ontario." Now settled in Sydney, Canadian-Chinese
Quan offers 16 stories about men seeking men and
men seeking something beyond sex: identity. He
avoids unwanted pick-ups: "Fat man, his eyes
like an outstretched hand. No. Shake my head once.
Quick like the flick of a chopstick. Like cocking
a gun." He's rough and tough: "What I
really hate are gay Asian clubs. They're the
worst. I mean, what a bad joke: a race of people
who can't handle alcohol." He listen to his
beating heart: "I want to be that, what I'm
listening to: dark, earthy, red, dynamic,
unthinking."
If you like sharp and clever writing, with a
cross-cultural gay perspective, Quan is your man. |
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The Danforth Review
- Alex Boyd. Review on the net
found here
(A lovely review of Slant,
full of praise in a stylish, smart Canadian-based
literary review on the net.)
The poems in Slant, by Andy
Quan, make occasional references to race, such as
in "Mr. Wong’s Children," which
concludes:
though speaking
with no accent
was as easy
as water the eyes
were a little
harder to hide
But the poems in Slant cover
such a diverse range of topics, and all with
enough careful crafting, empathy and expressive
language, that it becomes impossible to close the
book believing in one interpretation of the title.
This is not meant as a criticism. In fact, one of
the joys of reading the book is that so much
falls out of it. Quan is Vancouver born of
Chinese descent, but explores gay sexuality and
has also clearly done a great deal of travelling,
firing off poems from Berlin or London with
poetic observations that can’t help but be
cultural explorations as well.
Like all good poets, Quan can
photograph a moment using words. In the poem
"First Sun," (set in Savona, Italy) he
greets the sun after "winter travels"
and takes it in "like a pop star preening on
a balcony / that juts out like a proud chin."
As a careful writer, Quan ensures that even his
description of the balcony matches his mood, and
we are immediately allowed to step into how he
felt at that moment. He continues to carefully
control the perspective of the reader, observing
next that "young men on mopeds" down
below "bob" like "human buoys."
In "The Old Woman of Seville" we find
the women are draped in polyester flowers "as
bright as language."
Not every image in the book
works perfectly. In the last example, I
can’t help but think that while Quan might
use bright language in his poetry, language is
simply a tool for most people. In the poem "Sun
Bathing," he describes breasts as "fully
developed double summits," an image more
amusing than effective. It strikes me as
unoriginal and awkward enough that even something
like "large breasts" might have been
better. Titles like "Letters Backwards in
Time" tell me that he can do much better
than "Gym Boy," though it is only his
own talent that gives him away. At times, simple
lack of punctuation forced one line to bleed into
another, so that it wasn’t clear to me where
one thought or image began and another ended.
This is not a tremendous problem, but it does
mean the poem jams and I have to go back and
reread a few lines to be sure I understand it.
Are these minor quibbles? Yes,
they are. Quan is a talented writer who provides
many worthwhile moments in his book. Have a look
at these descriptive lines from "The Last
Visit," how he makes the eye of the reader
move from one detail to another and add them up:
The heat
rising from narrow
Spanish walkways
a white pigeon
tucked into the window-frame
a bright fallen orange
on the cobblestone.
He allows the reader to see
through his tangible description, as though he
had painted it rather than spoken about it. The
poem "Nails," is literally about him
cutting his nails, something I’d normally
call a worrisome topic for poetry, but have a
look:
Each of my new fingertips
the shape of a harbour
or a just-opened tulip
or my round face.
The mention of a harbour (which
is constructed for something else) allows for a
subtle way to include others, even in his privacy.
What would be pure narcissism in the hands of a
less empathetic poet is another worthwhile moment
here, and it is because of this compassion, craft
and talent that I can recommend the poetry of
Andy Quan without hesitation.
Alex Boyd is a
Toronto writer with samples of poems, essays and
fiction online at alexboyd.com.
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Melbourne's Midsumma
Cabaret Culture - Jonathan Marshall
(An excerpt from a review on
the net of the "Love Gone Wrong" event
that I took part in as part of the Midsumma
Festival's literary program in January 2002)
"Though
ostensively a para-literary event, the Word is
Out program had a cabaret ambience too.
Writers recited texts in some cases written for
performance in a relaxed manner, amongst the
barely theatrical surrounds of a former Trades
Hall meeting room. . . Andy Quan’s
selections from Calendar Boy... were rich,
expressive passages wrought from the simplest of
elements. He employed a relatively unadorned,
observational style which kept the emotional
content at a certain remove. This proved
intensely affective though in his study of the
dangers of love, following a character who only
barely avoided an abusive relationship. There but
for the grace of God go I, seemed to be the
message...[a] perplexingly moving objectification
of the personal." |
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| Melbourne
Star Observer - January 2002 Books
- Crusader Hillis - "A Date to Cherish"
Traditional wisdom suggests that a
writer must start with a novel, perhaps two, then
those fabulous short stories that have been
collected over the years might be considered by a
mainstream publisher. Canadian writer Andy Quan
turns this wisdom on its head with his first book
Calendar Boy, 16 short stories that move in time
through Canadian cities, Eastern and Central
Europe and Sydney. The book was first published
in Canada a couple of years ago and achieved
local success there. Now living in Sydney where
he works in the HIV/AIDS industry, Quan's book
was accepted by Penguin, who possibly saw some
parallels with their great gay success story,
Timothy Conigrave's Holding the Man. Both books
are incredibly compelling, and both offer that
rare feeling in reading when you feel fully
immersed in the inner lives of its main
characters. Both are propelled by open-ended
search for acceptance, and a seeming desire to
tell things like they really happened.
Calendar Boy, however, is not
strictly autobiographical, although it is likely
that the concerns of many of its protagonists are
the same that have faced Quan in his life as a
person born in Canada, though always perceived as
'Asian'. Often when you read a collection of
short stories there's a tendency to pause between;
it's often too jarring to move onto a new story
until the weight of the preceding one has settled.
This is not a problem here. The main characters
share so much similar history that at times it's
like reading a novel or series of interconnected
stories. This may be an unintended result, but it
gives the book a powerful momentum, and also
occasionally brings you up short as you grasp the
differences in outlook and personal details of
the characters. It is a reminder of our tendency
to homogenise individuals into groups or even
stereotypes on the basis of shared
characteristics. In his fluid writing style, Quan
seems to initially encourage this only to pull
the rug from beneath us, making us pause and
examine the ways in which our own histories
determine how we see others.
None of this is done in a heavy-handed
fashion. Quan's touch is gorgeously light. He
gets the tone just right all of the time. He's a
wordsmith with a wide-ranging eye, keenly
observant of the ways in which people act and
their possible motivations. There's also a deeply
felt disconnectedness and sadness imprinted in
his stories. At the same time that he rejoices in
the personal freedoms of being gay, he reminds us
that the gay world is neither a democracy nor a
meritocracy, but a beautocracy. His descriptions
of the continual rejection and invisibility
suffered by those perceived as 'Asian' in the gay
community are deeply moving and anger-inspiring.
It is also shows how such treatment works to
isolate its targets, even to the point that most
of his characters are incapable of seeing their
own beauty and are unable to recognise that the
majority in the queer communities, most of whom
don't come up to the right beauty standards,
suffer from this very same, self-perpetuating
prejudice.
Calendar Boy is a gorgeous
collection and presents a very talented and
insightful writer. Let's hope we can keep him in
this country for his next book.
Andy Quan is a special guest
at Midsumma's Word is Out, 24-30 January at the
Trades Hall, Carlton. He appears in Love Gone
Wrong on Saturday 26 January and launches
Calendar Boy on Sunday 27 January at Hares &
Hyenas. Contact the bookshop on 9824 0110 for
bookings and details of other events.
(I've since become friends
with Crusader since his review of this book, and
he and Rowland have been incredibly supportive of
my writing through Melbourne's Hares & Hyenas
bookshop. Looking it over so long after it was
published, I see that his comment about "our
tendency to homogenise individuals into groups or
even stereotypes on the basis of shared
characteristics" is a better response than I
could give to some of the bad reviews, and even
some of the good ones.)
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Canadian Literature: Issue 180 (for
full review on the web, click
here)
“Hyphenating
Minorities”
Andy Quan
Calendar Boy.
New Star Books $20.00
Francisco Ibaņez-Carrasco
Flesh Wounds and Purple Flowers: The Cha-Cha
Years.
Arsenal Pulp Press $17.95
Reviewed by Philipp Maurer
Are there minorities within minorities? Is a
Canadian-born Asian gay man a queer Asian
Canadian or an Asian Canadian queer? Is there
such a thing as Asian Queer Canadian? A Latino
Canadian Queer? Are those differentiations
relevant? Are they noticeable? Are they sensible?
These are some of the questions that arise in
Calendar Boy by Andy Quan, and Flesh Wounds and
Purple Flowers: The Cha Cha Years by Francisco
Ibaņez-Carrasco.
Andy Quan was born and raised in Vancouver and
now lives in Sydney, Australia. Calendar Boy is a
collection of short stories dealing with aspects
of queer and immigrant life all over the world.
Some of his work has appeared in anthologies such
as Contra/Diction, Queeries, and Queer View
Mirror. When asked for an author's statement for
Contra/Diction, Quan wrote that for him, "being
included in a collection like Contra/Diction is
about challenging a monolithic view of what it is
to be gay or queer in Canada or the world in the
nineties. But I don't believe there is a
monolithic view. Or even anything more than a
contingent cultural or communal norm."
This is exactly what, in a nutshell, Calendar Boy
is about. Quan's stories challenge a monolithic
view not only of being queer, but also of being
the descendant of Chinese immigrants. They deal
with being Asian in Canadian gay subculture; with
“coming of age,” “coming out”
and “going public”; with racism and
self-acceptance.
Quan's debut contains sixteen stories revolving
around these issues; their tone is sometimes
aggressive and threateningly sharp, sometimes
ironic and subtle. All the characters seem to be
facets of the same person in a way; they are
travellers in a geographical as well as a
figurative sense. Quan uses simple and yet
incisive metaphors in stories such as “How
to Cook Chinese Rice,” a recipe as well as
an observation of coming out as an Asian gay man,
or in “Sleep,” a story on the nature of
monogamy and trust in a relationship. His stories
portray “Asian-ness” against a backdrop
of being queer – and vice versa, as in
“Immigration,” in which Quan
sensitively draws a parallel between the emotions
of an early twentieth-century Chinese immigrant
and those of a Chinese Canadian gay man coming
out at the turn of the millennium.
In addition, stories like “What I Really
Hate” illustrate Quan's views on the
politics of queer minorities and pseudo-multiculturalism:
"Why do we have a separate club night
anyways? Does that put us into the category of
leather night, rubbermen, underwear parties? Are
we a fetish or are we a theme party?" This
kind of questioning of identity politics
reappears throughout the book. Quan's stories
seem to reveal that multiculturalism and the
embracing of difference are substantially less
developed in gay subculture than in Canadian
mainstream culture.
Granted, Calendar Boy is one more publication in
a long line of books on identity and the
questionable concepts of community and cultural
heritage, yet what makes it special is that it
applies both to being Chinese and to being queer.
Both Calendar Boy and Flesh Wounds and Purple
Flowers deal with minorities within minorities.
Francisco Ibaņez-Carrasco’s novel is the
AIDS memoir of a Chilean-Canadian protagonist
Camilo, who, from his hospital bed, recalls his
life, during which he has often and even easily
crossed all sorts of borders and boundaries
between countries, and has defied many norms and
values. Ibaņez-Carrasco was born in Santiago,
Chile, and now lives in Vancouver. Flesh Wounds
and Purple Flowers takes place in various
locations in the Americas: Chile, Cuba, Canada
and the United States.
Camilo leaves Chile for New York, on the way
stopping by chance in Vancouver, where he decides
to stay. The story of his life is an odyssey of
emigration and immigration, of love, sex, and
self-discovery. For Camilo, his disease is both
plague and revelation. Like Calendar Boy, Flesh
Wounds and Purple Flowers deals with racism and
ethnic origin, and yet Ibaņez-Carrasco's writing
differs considerably from Quan's. Apart from
being considerably more lascivious and erotic, (which
among other things confers on it a certain touch
of “gay nostalgia”), his novel is a
virtually closed unit, or at least one that can
hardly be entered. Access is granted selectively
through the use of “Spanglish,” which
emphasizes cultural differences and keeps
boundaries in place: some readers are
intentionally left outside. Quan deals more
directly with the exclusionary effect of language:
in the title story “Calendar Boy,” the
protagonist Gary (a Chinese Canadian) is pitied
by Hong Kong Chinese people for his inability to
speak Cantonese, and is intentionally left out of
conversations.
One could further elaborate on what the two works
have in common and what sets them apart; the
deeper one steps into the layers of detail and
metaphor, the more aspects of difference and
mutuality one finds. Yet they share one
fundamental concept: the notion of splitting what
was commonly considered non-fissionable, the
elementary particles of the queer atom –
minorities within minorities. In the course of
their skilfully crafted works, both authors
construct and at the same time challenge and
deconstruct “hyphenated minorities” As
one of Quan’s characters delcares, "I'm
checkerboard. Through and through, two-tone
abstract art, multi-coloured swirl painting.
Plaid, baby, I'm plaid, so out of fashion I'm in
fashion and so stylish I'm on my way out. I don't
go with anything you own." |
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