Intercultural Collaborations - Josh Peterken

Once, during a game of Dungeons and Dragons , I was stupid enough to attack a raven which had been giving us odd looks as my companions and I travelled through the land of Barovia. As it turned out, the bird had been a were-raven, and a member of a secret society which wanted to aid us in our quest to defeat the vampire lord, Strahd von Zarovich. I had misread the signs, paranoid and possibly a bit xenophobic. What the raven had meant to be a friendly greeting, I had taken as hostility. As a consequence, we found ourselves pushed out of the local inn, shunned by NPCs who had been allies, for they had also been were-ravens. Dismayed and ashamed of my actions as the session drew to a close, I scoured the internet for a story I could use to mend the damaged relationship. Eventually I found it:  mokusatsu. A Japanese word which literally means to kill with silence. It is also a word which was horrendously mistranslated by the American government in 1945, leading to one of the greates...

This is a writing prompt that I have struggled with for the better part of a week. What is habitus? It doesn't help that Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice  is deliberately written to be difficult to understand. But after contending with this question, I think I am starting to get the idea. Our habitus is always changing. Every moment that we experience defines us, either consciously or subconsciously. Our habitus is the amalgamation of those moments. It is largely shaped by the culture and customs that surround us. In a way, we all have an impact on each other's habitus. What happens around us changes the way that we see the world, for better or worse. My own habitus as a writer is somewhat difficult to contend with. Having spent the vast majority of my writing life (the five years in which I have had a strong enough passion for writing to seek a career out of it) writing long form fantasy, I don't feel as if I have reflected my own habitus in my writi...

"There’s a profound difference between making something up and imagining it. You’re making something up when you think out a scene, when you’re being logical about it. You think, “I need this to happen so some other thing can happen.” There’s an aspect of controlling the material that I don’t think is artful. I think it leads to contrived work, frankly, no matter how beautifully written it might be. You can hear the false note in this kind of writing. This was my main problem when I was just starting out: I was trying to  say something . When I began to write, I was deeply self-conscious. I was writing stories hoping they would say something thematic, or address something that I was wrestling with philosophically. I’ve learned, for me at least, it’s a dead road. It’s writing from the outside in instead of the inside out." - Andre Dubus III

The first sentence in Getting Here is around three lines long and has no commas. In fact, the story almost entirely ignores the use of commas and opts for run-on sentences instead. Some readers may have to read a few sentences several times to understand their meaning. This can be jarring at first, but over time, they begin to reflect the narrator’s personality. The run-on sentences fit well into the idea of the narrator questioning and reflecting on his past. We read his thoughts – raw and unfiltered. Through this stylistic choice, we understand the character even more despite the writing being hard to digest in the beginning. Similarly, the abundance of metaphors may require a line to be read twice or thrice. It can be said that the author uses too many metaphors and sentences that seem out of place, however, the majority of Getting Here is spent in the narrator’s mind. The author, Henry Wei Leung, uses such uncommon metaphors to tell us more about the narrator’s background and pe...

Prove Them Wrong -  Fiction Kudashov Igorevich is born in Soviet Russia, with parents who firmly believe in the narrative of the capitalist pigs versus the Russian communism. At the age of ten, Kudashov tells them that he wants to play Ice Hockey in the United States. Their response could only have been worse if he'd told them he was interested in men. An athlete throughout all his childhood, his parents are usually supportive of his talents. They want him to be an Olympic pole vaulter, but his passion lies with hockey. This, they support. But they would sooner give Kudas up for adoption than let him move to America. As adolescence flies by Kudas' skills only grow. Speculation rises within Russia about where this young star will play his hockey. Will he play nationally? Will he play for the Olympic team? But his dream of playing in the NHL only grows. He keeps his ambitions a secret from all, with the exception of his manager. At the age of 20, his manager te...

My blog said that there was nothing here. I didn't like that, so I put something here.