rochellespencer.com

Murakami is kind of like my long, lost identical twin, except he’s Asian and I’m African-American; I’m female and he’s male; he’s a genius who writes magical fiction, and I’m just a person who’s in love with story. But those differences aside, when I read the description of his latest novel in a New York Times interview, I thought he’d sucked my brain out my skull and printed it on the page. When Sam Anderson (the author of the article) describes how in IQ84, Murakami’s new book, a “young woman named Aomame (it means “green peas”) is stuck in a taxi, in a traffic jam,” before she enters an entirely new and fantastical world, I felt as though he was describing a scene from my novella. Except Murakami’s book will be 1000 times better. And how does he do this? How does he create this vivid yet fantastical world that feels completely real? I’ve filed IQ84 under “Books to Read, To Figure Out Author’s Tricks.”

What authors do you read? Whose tricks are you trying to figure out?

Trailer for Murakami\'s new book, IQ84

Other Announcements
Kweli Journal’s writing workshops are limited to 10 students, and the price is very reasonable: http://kwelijournal.org/Workshops.htm

The Asian American literary festival is happening next weekend: http://pageturnerfest.org/schedule

Website that promotes Gen Y writing:
http://www.laptoplitmag.com/

Nominate a writer for the Asian American Lifetime Achievement Award! 
Deadline: Friday, July 22, 2011, 7PM. Visit the Asian American Writers Workshop at http://www.aaww.org/

I’ve spent the last few months thinking a lot about voice—and how voice is even more essential to a person’s identity than appearance.

You pick up a phone, hear someone’s voice, and with just a “hello,” and a few other words, you can determine that person’s gender, emotional state, the region where they’ve spent most of their lives, and perhaps their class and educational status.

In other words, you know who they are.

Voice is an oral fingerprint.

Or take Halle Berry. She’s beautiful, of course, but her voice, midwestern, malleable—as compared with other actresses whose voice patterns mark their ethnicities—has been as instrumental to her success as her symmetrical features.

Source: Writers Break

Again, voice is an oral fingerprint.

And speaking of acting, if it’s hard for even the most trained actors to duplicate someone else’s exact voice, where does that leave us as writers? How do we replicate voice on a page, when we have to convey audio on a sheet of paper? I write my more recent work under a pseudonym, which has been strangely liberating. I feel freer to experiment, and writing in a multitude of voices—the voice of someone much younger, much older, or from somewhere far away—has allowed me to figure out why voice is so essential to determining who and what we are.

was the title of a story I published a few years ago. The story was about a woman who goes to a bar and runs into a younger version of herself, a self she is both ashamed and proud of…I think rereading books you’ve once read is like that; when you reread a book you’re remembering the person you were when you first read it—the innocent(!) who approached that novel with all this wonder and surprise—and you’re also paying tribute to whoever you are now, the person who feels a little smug with all of your new insight and understanding of all the little details you missed your first go through…

I’ve been doing a lot of rereading these last few weeks. It’s been years since I’ve read Wright’s Native Son, Petry’s The Street, and Hurston’s Mules and Men, and as I revisit these texts, I see entirely new worlds that I somehow missed that innocent first time around…Also, I’m rereading these books with a sense of something greater than pleasure; these books give me a tremendous understanding of who I once was—and who I am now…There are some books from my past that I may never read again. There are some books that I don’t think I will ever finish. For instance, I stopped reading Franzen’s Freedom once I realized the wife was going to have the affair, a mere what—20?—pages after the rape? And that she was going to have the affair because her husband wasn’t rough enough? I just couldn’t. (Despite a promise to @Inkognegro to finish!). But maybe I’ll go back. I stopped reading Forster’s Passage to India after the court scene because as perfect and brilliant as the first two parts of the book are, that last third seems unnecessary. The book, to me, focuses on whites and their response to colonialism, and so after you get that response—after this moment of understanding and recognition—where else is there for the novel to go?

But enough about me. What books are you revisiting? What books did you not complete? And what books do you hope to someday return to?

At least that’s what the Times says: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/media/08jailmail.html?hpw

I’ve been writing a lot of thank you notes lately, and I realize–I no longer remember how to write a “cursive Q.” I think the “cursive Q” looks like a “loopy 2″ but then again, it may not be a “loopy 2,” and instead, could be a “floppy Z”???

I have to admit I’m charmed by a quick, warm-hearted text, but I know we’re losing something (I’m not sure what) as fewer people create handwritten letters.

Ok, so this is depressing: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-social-thinker/201012/are-black-women-invisible

The Always Visible Grace Jones

Bat City Review, a literary journal out of U-Texas’s creative writing program, wants your poetry & fiction (by Nov.1). One of the editors there, Laura M. Dixon, is the only person I’ve ever met who has played basketball with Michael Jordan (and she’s a great poet too). Find out more about Bat City Review at www.batcityreview.la.utexas.edu.

Last night, when I told my husband I plan to be Nicki Minaj for Halloween (world’s cheapest costume: pink wig, tight pants, exuberant makeup), he went off: “Why-you-wanna-dress-up-like-some-Lil’Kim-rip-off-with-her-little-nursery-school-Jack-and-Jill-went-up the-hill-rhymes-can’t-stand-her-or-that-simple-ass-Drake-either-rap-hasn’t-been-worth-anything-since-1996,” and etc., etc. until he went back to watching the Yankees game and started going off on them too (even though they won)…

I’ve been thinking a little about Nicki because I’ve been thinking a lot about fiction, and how much value does it have, really?

Nicki Minaj

This year, as I’ve been trying to balance scholarly activity and creative production, I’ve been reminded, more than ever, that Stories are important to me. The Stories that we tell ourselves–the fictional worlds that we create–can provide so much pleasure and opportunities for exploration, even when these fictions never leave the boundaries of our own imaginations. And yet I still feel the world secretly suspects that something “made up” is totally lacking in value.

And so back to Nicki and what I kind of like about her: In a world where everyone claims to keep it real, she’s not ashamed of artifice. She shamelessly appropriates, with a kind of self-awareness matched only by someone creating her own fictional web.

Nicki appreciates story. And so I respect her game.