“Alex Kuo is a mainstay of Chinese American
and Asian American writing.”
--Maxine Hong Kingston
and Asian American writing.”
--Maxine Hong Kingston
|
CADENZAS is a work of fiction that narrates a conversation between music and language, with walkins by Dorothy Parker, Dante, Edith Sitwell, J.S. Bach,
Qiu Jin, Dmitri Shostakovich, June Jordan. It is Alex Kuo’s accumulation of more than eighty years of living, listening and writing on several continents and breathing in the cadences of several languages. Praise for Alex Kuo's Writing
“One of our most gifted and audacious storytellers, who fuses Gone with
the Wind, American missionaries in China, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics to both celebrate and expose the cultural mishaps and hypocrisies of our modern world.” —Aimee Phan
“I happen to believe that there are a lot of good poets around at present, but a poet like Alex Kuo, who possesses a highly developed moral sense and a bitter honesty, is rare at any time, and especially in this time. We need him.”
—Carolyn Kizer
“The essence of short stories should be: simple and at the same tie profound and disturbing. It is his genius to bring to light now the basic horror of repression, censorship and state terrorism is the same all over the world on any side.”
—Luisa Valenzuela
“This fast paced political thriller offers a much needed fresh and multidimensional examination of student unrest on both sides of the Pacific.”
—Ishmael Reed
“Alex Kuo is a mainstay of Chinese American and Asian American writing. He has helped to create this field by producing some of its most important work and by defining the field.”
—Maxine Hong Kingston
“He sculptures lines over minefields of emotions. Very powerful. Incredible silences. I can feel the near explosion, then a dance, a twist to save life. Know what I mean?”
—Joy Harjo
|
Other Books by Alex Kuo:
The Window Tree (1971, poetry)
New Letters from Hiroshima (1974, poetry)
Changing the River (1986, poetry)
Chinese Opera (1998, novel)
This Fierce Geography (1999, poetry)
Lipstick and Other Stories (2001, fiction)
Panda Diaries (2006, novel)
White Jade and Other Stories (2008, fiction)
A Chinaman’s Chance (2011, poetry)
The Man who Dammed the Yangtze (2011, novel)
My Private China (2013, non-fiction)
shanghai.shanghai.shanghai (2015, novel)
Meeting Words at the Gate (2015, bilingual poetry)
Mao's Kisses (2019, novel)
New Letters from Hiroshima (1974, poetry)
Changing the River (1986, poetry)
Chinese Opera (1998, novel)
This Fierce Geography (1999, poetry)
Lipstick and Other Stories (2001, fiction)
Panda Diaries (2006, novel)
White Jade and Other Stories (2008, fiction)
A Chinaman’s Chance (2011, poetry)
The Man who Dammed the Yangtze (2011, novel)
My Private China (2013, non-fiction)
shanghai.shanghai.shanghai (2015, novel)
Meeting Words at the Gate (2015, bilingual poetry)
Mao's Kisses (2019, novel)
About the AuthorAlex Kuo has lived most of his adult life in Idaho and Washington, with sabbaticals made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington State Arts Commission, Idaho Commission on the Arts, United Nations Artists Program, Rockefeller Foundation, Lingnan Foundation, and Fulbright Program.
Cadenzas is his accumulation of more than eighty years of living, listening and writing on several continents and breathing in the cadences of several languages, including three Chinese dialects. |