Manoa Winter 2012: On Freedom–Spirit, Art, & State

24-2 frontWinter 2012

The various meanings of freedom are difficult to explain in the discursive language of theory and philosophy. But authors of fiction, poetry, and other narrative forms—using metaphor, parable, and figurative speech—are often at home with what is difficult and too subtle for reason alone.

Residing in countries throughout Asia and North America, the authors in On Freedom help us understand the need for cultural, spiritual, and intellectual freedoms in order to have a life that is fully realized.

New translations of fiction by A Yi and Zhang Yihe (translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping), non-fiction by Woeser (translated by Dechen Pemba), and poetry by Chen Dongdong (translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain), co-edited by Frank Stewart and Sze-Lorrain.

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Sky Lantern Reviewed at Honolulu Weekly

LiterarySky Lantern, the recent Mānoa issue edited by Frank Stewart and Fiona Sze-Lorrain has been reviewed at the Honolulu Weekly. Here’s how it begins:

Even for the well-versed poetry enthusiast, Chinese poetry can begin and end with the short bangs of “The River-Merchant’s Wife.” But we’ve traveled far from Ezra Pound’s translation of that eighth century love letter. The road from Cho-Fu-Sa veers and switchbacks to the White Terror, the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, sweatshop labor, and Richard Gere’s plea for a free Tibet. Not to mention, the trees dressed according to season and the everyday vicissitudes of light. Edited by Frank Stewart and Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Sky Lanterns: New Poetry from China, Formosa, and Beyond illuminates this complicated terrain with stunning and provocative poems, prose, and photography.

Click the image above for the full review.

Sky Lanterns: Poetry from China, Formosa, and Beyond

Sky Lanterns: Poetry from China, Formosa, and BeyondThe new issue of Mānoa is available, edited by Frank Stewart with Fiona Sze-Lorrain:

Sky Lanterns brings together innovative work by authors—primarily poets—in mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, and beyond who are engaged in truth-seeking, resistance, and renewal. Appearing in new translations, many of the works are published alongside the original Chinese text. A number of the poets are women, whose work is relatively unknown to English-language readers. Contributors include Amang, Bai Hua, Bei Dao, Chen Yuhong, Duo Yu, Hai Zi, Lan Lan, Karen An-hwei Lee, Li Shangyin, Ling Yu, Pang Pei, Sun Lei, Arthur Sze, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Wei An, Woeser, Yang Lian, Yang Zi, Yi Lu, Barbara Yien, Yinni, Yu Xiang, and Zhang Zao.
Sky Lanterns also features images from the Simple Song series by photographer Luo Dan. Traveling with a portable darkroom in remote, mountainous regions of southern China’s Yunnan Province, Luo Dan uses the laborious nineteenth-century, wet plate collodion process of exposure and development. In exquisite detail, he captures a rural life that has remained intact for centuries.

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