Dark Soil

Angie Sijun Lou is a Kundiman Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the American Poetry Review, the Georgia Review, and Amerasia Journal. She lives in Oakland.Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of eight books (including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award, and most recently Sansei and Sensibility), all published by Coffee House Press. Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and a United States Artists’ Ford Foundation Fellowship, she is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Praise for Dark Soil“A centrifugal, suggestive way of looking at place through the lens of story.” —Kirkus Reviews“A stunning anthology uses the strength of story, both fiction and nonfiction, to address missing histories and revive the narratives that have too often been omitted.” —Shelf Awareness“Editor Angie Sijun Lou presents an innovative, provocative anthology. Fiction and mythographies (mythos + geography) engender piercing truths.” —Terry Hong, Booklist"Exploring a variety of marginalized lives, these stories and essays show the complex mix of culture, history, politics, and imagination that can make up a single place, whether that be California, Guam, or Ohio.” —David Lewis, Los Angeles Review of Books“Countering the relentless tendency of capitalist modernity, the exquisite geography of these chapters annihilates time by space. I can’t stop thinking about José Saramago, especially Raised from the Ground. Dark Soil’s multiple, stubborn narrators creatively mix humor and surprise with the extraordinary brutalities of ordinary violence. The book sings of planetary consciousness, refusing partitions and enclosures by remembering life in excess of such deadliness.” —Ruth Wilson Gilmore“Karen Tei Yamashita and the essayists of Dark Soil have brought to life figures who have been passed over in history and literature. This book is like burning thousands of incense sticks in their honor. Dark Soil is a must read.”  —George Ow Jr.

• Editorial IntroductionFiction by Karen Tei Yamashita"Mystery Spot""The Missing Testicles of Padre Q/Los Compañeros Ausentes del Padre Q""The Brother's Parking Lot""Frutos Extraños""Quimosabe""This Is Someone's Paradise""Santa Cruz Chinatown""Indian Summer""Midsummer Night's Dream""Neverneverland"AfterwordSanta Cruz Nori CoordinatesMythographies"801 Silver Avenue after Hom Wong Shee" by Brandon Shimoda – San Francisco, CA"(De)Tour of an Unincorporated Territory" by Craig Santos Perez – Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Guam"506 N. Evergreen Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90033" by Sesshu Foster – Los Angeles, CA"Navel, Bury" by Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint – Amherst, MA"A Pale Persephone: On the Video Works of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha" by Angie Sijun Lou – New York, NY"Whether the Border Looks Out from Eight Hundred and Fifty Eyes, or Two, the MBQ Remains Few Though on the Rise" by Saretta Morgan – Sasabe, AZ"After Silent Incantations, the Intertidal" by Ronaldo V. Wilson – Berkeley, CA"The Blue Plume" by Juliana Spahr – Cheshire, OHDark Soil Coordinates