AIMEE BAHNG
ENGLISH, ASIAN-AMERICAN STUDIES, WOMEN'S AND GENDER STUDIES FAVORITE BOOK TO TEACH Dictee, by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha MUST-READ BOOKS IN YOUR FIELD Immigrant Acts, by Lisa Lowe Native Speaker, by Chang-Rae Lee FAVORITE PLEASURE READ Momofuku, by David Chang and Peter Meehan MOST RECENTLY READ Debt, by David Graeber Automaton Biographies, by Larissa Lai Cruel Optimism, by Lauren Berlant "I love teaching Dictee in my Asian-American literature classes because it helpfully complicates all three of those words: 'Asian,' 'American' and 'literature.' It is hauntingly cinematic while conjuring up the lived histories of war and imperialism in Korea that inflect Korean migration to the Americas." "I first encountered Lisa Lowe's Immigrant Acts when writing my undergraduate thesis, and it made me realize that cultural forms such as literature constitute a political terrain where we work out our ideas about the worlds we inhabit. On a related note, Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker illuminates the power of speech and language to shape, distort and inform experience." "Favorite pleasure read was perhaps the most difficult category to fill, because, on the one hand, I derive great pleasure from reading philosophy and theory, and on the other, so much of my research deals with popular culture. So pleasure and work are productively co-constitutive in my life. 'Guilty pleasure' reading might have been easier to answer: The Hunger Games trilogy recently took five days of my life. If we're counting in terms of total number hours of pleasure, then it's a tie between the Ant and Bee children's book series and J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of theRings, which both my brother and I read annually dating back to our 'tween years-but there's something pointedly awkward about calling either one a favorite pleasure read. Thus, I settled on something rather more hedonistic. David Chang's Momofuku cookbook opens with an account of a deep appreciation of jjajangmyun—a dish I also hold in that esteemed category of comfort food. A gripping read and a heart-wrenchingly delicious meal make for a winning combination."
