4-Week Workshop | Writing in Grocery Stores with Esther Kim
Class Description
In this four-week generative essay writing workshop, Esther Kim will teach participants to consider their grocery store foods, as a way to unpack critical questions of belonging, place, and migration. In this four-week workshop, students will produce new work, hone their drafts with personalized feedback, and develop a basic understanding of literary essay traditions across cultures.
Each week, we will read and analyze works by prose writers such as Eileen Chang, Minae Mizumura, and Robin Wall Kimmerer as our guideposts. We will focus on how to observe one’s ingredients and surroundings and weave them into the literary essay. We will also discuss how to write about culturally-specific food while providing broader context/research; and how to build structure into the essay. Students will walk away from this course with a first draft, instructor feedback, and a writing community, documenting your foods as a way to consider questions of belonging and migration through ingredients, place-setting, and characters.
When & Where
4.13, 4.20, 4.27, 5.4
8:00-10:30am, Taipei
4.12, 4.19, 4.26, 5.3
8:00-10:30pm, New York
Online: Zoom
Language: English
Instructor Bio
Esther Kim is a writer, editor, and independent journalist living in Taiwan. She writes a column for The Korea Times, a South Korean daily, and has contributed criticism, essays, and reviews to The Infatuation, Heritage Food Radio, The Nation, The Guardian, and Modern Farmer, among many others. She is currently a Fulbright semi-finalist and heirloom bean enthusiast. Originally from New York, she divides her time between Taiwan, Malaysia, and South Korea.
Required Readings
Eileen Chang Written on Water (2023 English NYRB, 2005 English CUP, 1945 Chinese), “Days and Nights of China” p. 231-237
Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013 English, 2013 Traditional Chinese 編織聖草) “The Honorable Harvest” p. 175-201
Minae Mizumura An I-Novel (2021 English, 2015 Simplified Chinese 私小说：从左至右, 1995 Japanese) Excerpted section on Chinatown p. 150-159