I am extending my invitation (beyond Australia) to American story tellers to join us in sharing your stories that are intercultural, that is, Chinese American. You may wonder why am I inviting our American friends to share your stories.
While doing research in intercultural or cross cultural theatre with a focus on Chinese theatre making, most of my search has taken me to the USA. David Hwang’s M.Butterfly leads me to his intercultural Chinese American comedy Chinglish. As a result, I am a fan of his now.
I also realise that in Australia, Chinese Australian story tellers are very few. We are a very small population compared to the number of Chinese Americans. Those who are famous in telling intercultural stories about Chinese and Australians are even fewer compared to the American ones. Names like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and David Hwang, the playwright, are 3 great story tellers that come readily to mind in the USA.
Here is how you do it:
1.Send me a snippet, a tale, an anecdote or a short, short, very short story for my Chinese Theatre that is intercultural and in need of stories and plays to perform. It is just a snippet, a snap, a tale, a “story” to tell at a party or round a camp fire. So it does not have to be a well crafted written short story. As yet.
2.Length: not exceeding 500 words
3.It must be in English.
4.It must be intercultural – Chinese & American
Intercultural is defined as including some Chinese aspect or issue or person in your tale.
For example:
As a young Chinese student in Australia, I was invited to a party. My Australian friend Barbara told me to “bring a plate.” I brought an EMPTY plate. (In Aust, “bring a plate” means “bring some food”. Being Chinese, it was (and still is) unheard of to ask a guest to bring their own food.
In this snippet or anecdote, the Chinese is me, the person. But it could be an issue, an incident or even a made up tale.
WHAT DO YOU GET IN RETURN
And in return I will give you a gift. To show my appreciation for your time and effort, I will give you my ebook (The Young Poetess & Other Short Chinese Stories) in www.smashwords.com for free. If you don’t want this lovely gift, then invite me to your blog and I will make a comment and/or like your facebook page. Fair enough as we Australians would say!