Hello Chaos, A Love Story
Essentially an existential Hello Kitty x Mickey Mouse fanfic. Absurdly funny and surprisingly thought provoking. A compendium of the uncanny forms these two characters have taken on throughout their existences. Draws from contemporary dating culture to create a narrative that tows the line between reality and fiction in profound way. Picked this up at the L.A. Art Book Fair and am slowly finishing it when I have time to meet up with my friends and read it together. Pick this up and you’ll never put it down.
Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan
Speaks to the ethnobotanical histories of Taiwan with a comparative literature lens, all through the framework of a relatively new discipline - Ecocriticism. Chapters 2 through 4 deeply informed one of my most recent projects, a zine about Tea in Taiwan from past to present that drew connections from the 19th century beginnings of Taiwan’s tea plantations and contemporary consumer culture related to boba. This anthology critically comments on the relationships between indigeneity, land / labor dispossession, and settler colonialisms. Each chapter unpacks how we understand plants through the literary imagination, analyzing works from natural histories, to traditional poems, to novels.
Sheena Ringo
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square (1998)
A visual autobiography about artist Wang Shui-bo’s youth in China during the Cultural Revolution. Using collages of artwork and archival photographs, Wang creates a visually gripping tale of the paradoxically individual and universal experience of struggle during the Cultural Revolution. His ability to move from macro to micro as well as the technical mastery of format has inspired me as I’ve worked to create projects of a similar nature.
