The Ghost Archive: Master Class with Jane Wong
The archive is often associated with the physical or cinematic; its presence in writing is often taken for granted. However in her class "The Ghost Archive," Jane Wong encourages students to approach the subject with greater intention to demonstrate how the impact of memory can be strengthened through craft. Wong's oeuvre spans poetry, prose, and visual art, all of which deal with biography and family history: her ability to evoke a feeling and idea from the perspective of multiple different disciplines poises her to assist artists of all kinds in transforming their own archives into creative works.
Artist and writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha writes: “Beginning wherever you wish, tell even us.” What happens when your archive is a ghost? Working through familial and historical archives, this generative craft intensive engages how we can grapple with the difficulty of research through memoir, poetry, and hybrid texts. How can we expand the definition of the archive to include the half-lit, the half-recorded, the speculative, even? And how can we reimagine storytelling through different mediums? Through readings and guided exercises, we will discuss, write, and share with each other.
Optional: Students may bring archival materials with them (i.e. photographs, clothing, seeds, food, documents, etc.).
Jane Wong is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023). She also wrote two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Ucross, Loghaven, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and others. She grew up in a Chinese American take-out restaurant on the Jersey shore and is an Associate Professor at Western Washington University. Her poetry installations which engage haunting and nourishment have been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum, the Richmond Art Gallery, and the Asian Art Museum.
An incandescent, exquisitely written memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore.
In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family’s Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. Jane is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City’s promise lies her father’s gambling addiction, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant.
In her debut memoir, Jane Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story as she writes about making do with what you have―and what you don’t. What does it mean, she asks, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability―and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, a portrait of how we become who we are, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share.