WEBVTT

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--known about that event.

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Tonight, we're delighted
to welcome Marilyn Chin.

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She was born in Hong Kong,
raised in Portland, Oregon,

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and is the author of
two books of poetry,

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Dwarf Bamboo, which was
nominated for the Bay Area

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Reviewers Award, and The
Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty,

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winner of the PEN
Oakland/Josephine Miles Award.

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She majored in ancient
Chinese literature

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at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst,

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received an MFA from the
Writers' Workshop at Iowa,

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and has held a Stegner
Fellowship at Stanford

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as well as two NEA fellowships.

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She was a translator for the
International Writing program

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at the University of Iowa, where
she co-translated the selected

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poems of Ai Qing published
in 1985 by Indiana University

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Press.

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In an interview with Bill Moyers
for "The Language of Life,"

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Chin spoke of her identity
as being "non-static,"

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as something limitless
and always changing.

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This fluid sense of
identity refers not only

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to her individual
self, but, to borrow

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from the title of one of
her most powerful poems,

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the self as nation.

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In that poem, "A Portrait
of the Self as Nation,"

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she weaves together with wit and
bite the dynamics of dominance

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and submission within
a sexual relationship,

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with those dynamics within
cultural relationships.

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Her voice can be lyric and
focused, defiant, expansive,

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passionate, fierce,
and, yes, tender.

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It's always intense,
as if making up

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for the lost time of
other generations of women

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who did not have the benefit
of such powers of speech.

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Her poems draw
subjects from family

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and personal relationships,
classical Chinese tales

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and poetry, and the
social/political swirl

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of contemporary California.

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Assimilation may be her theme,
but she never addresses it

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with happy melting pot pieties.

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Instead, the reader begins
to know through her poems

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how steep is the
price of assimilation,

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how political are the bargains
one must make with one's heart.

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Please welcome Marilyn Chin.

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[APPLAUSE]

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