Language Learning

 Hello there! Some exciting things have happened since my last post:

  • Insignia Stories posted one of my accepted drabbles for Women in Horror Month
  • I received an acceptance for one of the pieces of short fiction I submitted last month! The date is still TBA, but will be posted in April :)

I didn't write nearly as much this last month as I had hoped, but I did take time to read more short fiction from both small presses and some of the larger speculative magazines. There's a lot of fun work out there. One of my favorite stories was "The Bahrain Underground Bazaar" by Nadia Afifi, which was published in the November/December 2020 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It was the perfect example of speculative stories that force you to sit with the feelings it conjures for a long time afterward.

I also have started taking Vietnamese lessons with an iTalki teacher. I grew up speaking the language with my parents, but like many diaspora kids, the language I speak feels clunky and awkward. I want to eventually read Viet literature. Thankfully, my current focus is on folktales and fairytales. Since the first texts I'll probably be able to comprehend are children's stories, this is convenient, heh. 

It's funny when you learn a language from parents who left their homeland decades ago. Some of the phrases or words I've learned to use are outdated or incomprehensible to native speakers. My teacher has been very patient in teaching me.

Anyhoo, hope you have a good start to spring! I started some pepper and Viet herb seeds this past week, fingers crossed they germinate 😬

tuxedo cat sitting in an empty box of Shin Ramen





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