In the Western Consciousness

I've mentioned before that I don't see much advertising for Asian American artists. Although now that I try to blog about these issues, I pay attention more and there seems to be quite a bit out there. In addition to supporting these artists, I think it is also beneficial for us to support other authors who pay tribute to our culture if they do it in a way that doesn't rely solely on stereotypes (martial arts movies maybe not so much).



One such book is Naamah's Kiss by Jacqueline Carey (and the rest of the series seems to follow in the same vein although is unpublished as of the writing of this post) which while the book itself is fairly scandalous, the author took a lot of time to visit China to view the scenery and read a lot of history to craft her characters. Granted her novels are alternate history so there is still some distortion, but her use of Chinese pronunciations lends an authentic flavor.

Another novel recently out which shows that Asia is infiltrating the Western consciousness is Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. He mentions in a post on John Scalzi's blog that his work was inspired by a poem by Du Fu. I look forward to reading it and perhaps posting here with a review