How Dare We! Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse

How Dare We! Write: a multicultural creative writing discourse offers a much needed corrective to the usual dry and uninspired creative writing pedagogy. The collection asks us to consider questions, such as "What does it mean to work through resistance from supposed mentors, to face rejection from publishers and classmates, and to stand against traditions that silence you?" and "How can writers and teachers even begin to make diversity matter in meaningful ways on the page, in the classroom, and on our bookshelves?"

How Dare We! Write is an inspiring collection of intellectually rigorous lyric essays and innovative writing exercises; it opens up a path for inquiry, reflection, understanding, and creativity that is ultimately healing. The testimonies provide a hard won context for their innovative paired writing experiments that are, by their very nature, generative.-- Cherise A. Pollard, PhD, Professor of English, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

So-called "creative writing" classes are highly politicized spaces, but no one says so; to acknowledge this obvious fact would be to up-end the aesthetics, cultural politics (ideology) and economics on which most educational institutions are founded. How Dare We! Write, a brilliant interventive anthology of essays, breaks this silence.-- Maria Damon, Pratt Institute of Art; co-editor of Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader

How Dare We! Write is a collection of brave voices calling out to writers of color everywhere: no matter how lonely, you are not alone; you are one in a sea of change, swimming against the currents.-- Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, and The Song Poet, a 2017 Minnesota Book Award winner

How Dare We! Write is a much needed collection of essays from writers of color that reminds us that our stories need to be told, from addressing academic gatekeepers, embracing our identities, the effects of the oppressor's tongue on our psyche and to the personal narratives that help us understand who we are.-- Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria, writer, spoken word poet/performer and contributing author to A Good Time for the Truth: Race In Minnesota

"This book turned out to be unlike any writing reference book I have read. Of the thirty-odd writing books in my collection, many have spoken to my identity as one who loves the written word, as a recovering perfectionist, as a person who thinks in rhythm and will rewrite a sentence until the rhythm is right; this is the first book on writing that has spoken to my identity as someone who is all of those things, and is a biracial woman. It was a revelation to see on paper that there are other lovers of writing out there who are thinking about that piece of their identity every day, too"

-- Vanessa East, Book Geek Shelf Talkers

Learn more at http: //blog.SherryQuanLee.com

From Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com

Sherry Quan Lee, MFA, University of Minnesota, and Distinguished Alumna, North Hennepin Community College, is the editor of "How Dare We! Write: a multicultural creative writing discourse". Her most recent book, "Love Imagined: a mixed race memoir" was a 2015 Minnesota Book Award Finalist. Previous books include "Chinese Blackbird," a memoir in verse, "How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life," and a chapbook, "A Little Mixed Up." Quan Lee was a selected participant for the Loft Literary Center Asian Inroads Program, and later was the Loft mentor for the same program. Previously, she was the Writer to Writer mentor for SASE: the write place, at Intermedia Arts. Also, she was the 2015-2016 Loft Literary Center's Mentors Series poetry mentor. She was the Asian American Renaissance, Artist and Youth Program Manager and a volunteer editor for: Body of Stories, the fifth journal of the Asian American Renaissance, and Spirits, Myths and Dreams: Stories in Transit, the fourth journal of the Asian American Renaissance. She has recently retired as an adjunct creative writing instructor at Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, MN, and has taught creative writing at St. Catherine University. Follow her on the site http: //blog.sherryquanlee.com.