by Sky Lee
SK: I like this, the letting in all sorts of weather. Thank you for indulging my “teach” question. So, what have you been up to recently when not busy with house renovations?
SL: The last book I read or re-read was DMC for this interview. At the same time I was re-reading my signed copy of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands. My last DVD watched was a mangu.tv production of Creating Freedom, episode one, The Lottery of Birth. I tried to purchase it online but found the website to be defunct. Will try again. My last meal was daan foo yong made by yours truly. Lastly not beastly, I’d like to leave the reader with my all-time favourite quote, Tian xia wei gong. The translation: All under the heavens belongs to all. So I’m not a fan of any sort of deeply divided society between haves and have-nots, as vetted by dirty-minded old men. You know, these, oh so simple Chinese characters were made into gorgeous calligraphy by my ex-husband that I silk-screened onto a t-shirt. The shirt is worn away but I still bear the saying in mind.
Toronto, 2016
SKY Lee grew up in Port Alberni, BC. She is a founding member of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop. Her debut novel, Disappearing Moon Cafe, was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award and won the City of Vancouver Book Award.
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Smaro Kamboureli is the Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. Her many publications include Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada. She is also the Editor for The Writer as Critic series at NeWest Press.
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Christopher Lee is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, where he is the director of the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program. He is the author of The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature.
