Distant voices find a home

Yuko Taniguchi, Sun Yung Shin and Wang Ping will come together May 1 to share stories that incorporate aspects of lives across the ocean and ultimately speak volumes on a universal level. The recent works of these three Asian-born Minnesota residents share the unifying theme of the authors' efforts to honor their native cultures while facing the challenges many immigrants struggle with.

What: Reading of work by Yuko Taniguchi, Sun Yung Shin and Wang Ping
Where: The Loft Literary Center
When: May 1, 2007, 7 p.m.
Cost: Free

Wang, 49, who emigrated from China, has striven to narrow the gap between cultures through her work. "I want to build more bridges and connections," she said. One thing she has built is an established name: She has published five books, an eclectic combination of novels, short stories, poetry and a scholarly study of footbinding in China. She will read from her recently released collection of short stories, "The Last Communist Virgin." "[A] reading is a good place to tell stories face to face," Wang said.

The stories, told through the eyes of Chinese characters, explore the notion of home. "The old concept of home is vanishing," she said. "Home is in the language and the heart." She has struggled with the issue of home as an immigrant, considering herself neither Chinese nor American in nationality. "I'm a nomad in my nature," she said.

In several stories, characters face disillusionment with American culture. The title story details the hardship of a young Chinese woman to adapt to a new land, laboring to make ends meet and moving from apartment to apartment in a quest for comfort. The experience described in the story mirrors Wang's own as a student in New York. "I didn't have an accurate concept of American culture," she said.

Though her newest publication has evolved partly from her own experience, Wang said she has largely moved away from personal topics. "My perspective is much more global, universal," she said. Although devoid of a strong sense of nationality, she said she has been well embraced by the community.

For emerging writers Sun Yung Shin, 32, and Yuko Taniguchi, 31, the reading is a chance to showcase their work alongside someone they admire. "I just really revere her spirit," Shin said of Wang. Shin, who will read from her first collection of poems, "Skirt Full of Black," was born in South Korea and came to this country when she was adopted. She is also one of the editors of the noted adoption anthology, "Outsiders Within." Shin, who grew up in Chicago, said the journey to becoming a writer was challenging, largely due to the lack of a substantial connection with her native culture growing up. "I faced 26 years of nothingness-a whole childhood of void," she said.

Shin has since been able to reconnect with her roots, which play a large role in her most recent work; the poems address issues such as the Korean Diaspora and relations between the United States and Korea. Shin said she writes, in part, because of the lack of writing about Korean culture. "My main goal is to write what I need to read and haven't read," she said. "I have a very strong desire to represent myself and who I consider my own people on my own terms."

Yuko Taniguchi's journey to becoming a writer began when she left Japan at the age of 15 to attend a boarding high school in Maryland. Taniguchi knew very little English, which made it difficult to make friends. She was frustrated by her inability to communicate, but it was the positive aspects of the experience, namely, the compassion Taniguchi received from understanding individuals during that tumultuous time. That compassion has helped form some of the characters in her debut novel, "The Ocean in the Closet." "There are some very kind people in the book," she said. The book follows a young American girl who connects with her own Japanese culture while uncovering her mother's past.

Though Taniguchi does not consider herself an American, her experience as a writer has helped her to feel connected to her life in Minnesota on a deeper level. "I don't really feel all that different, maybe because I'm always looking for connections," she said.