Have You Eaten Yet? Stories

Have You Eaten Yet? Stories is a fictional short story collection about Chinese food. Before I anger Chinese cuisine experts, I acknowledge that my featured dishes are not “authentic.” I write about transplants, fusion, and junk food. My characters are similarly Chinese-adjacent. They are westernized, conflicted, longing to return to China, or declare independence from it. Their stories expand upon the canon of immigrant kitchens and frugal home-cooking. I needed these stories, ones that reflect Chinese identity as global and varied and human. With President Trump’s references to coronavirus as “the Chinese virus” and discrimination against Chinese restaurants, this representation felt more important than ever. “Dim Sum Days” is a traditional short story for a classic Cantonese brunch, featuring mother-daughter relationships and nods to Joy Luck Club. “DTF” mimics a text conversation and touches on millennial absurdism and hookup culture at Din Tai Fung. “Be Water” explores the violence of the Hong Kong Protests, the intersections of political and private life, and the comfort of cha chaan tengs. “White Rabbit, Sour Plum” covers an immigrant’s first 25 years in America with vignettes and multiple perspectives. My po po begins our phone calls with “Have you eaten yet?” Chinese grandmothers say this interchangeably with “Hello.” Food is a language of love for our people. When we talk about food, we talk about so much more: love and craving, identity and history, family and sacrifice. I chased these themes in my stories. As with most recipes, I followed my gut and tongue

David T. Gies, editor: The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture

Review of: David T. Gies, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1999, 327 pp

Dialogical Skirmishes

Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal, which critically responded to the celebratory rhetoric’s of ‘China Now’ and other celebratory markers of China's global ascent in 2008. As well as the introductory article 'Dialogical Skirmishes', Tan also interviewed Hans Ulrich Obrist

Use of Most Bothersome Symptom as a Coprimary Endpoint in Migraine Clinical Trials: A Post-Hoc Analysis of the Pivotal ZOTRIP Randomized, Controlled Trial.

ObjectiveTo better understand the utility of using pain freedom and most bothersome headache-associated symptom (MBS) freedom as co-primary endpoints in clinical trials of acute migraine interventions.BackgroundAdhesive dermally applied microarray (ADAM) is an investigational system for intracutaneous drug administration. The recently completed pivotal Phase 2b/3 study (ZOTRIP), evaluating ADAM zolmitriptan for the treatment of acute moderate to severe migraine, was one of the first large studies to incorporate MBS freedom and pain freedom as co-primary endpoints per recently issued guidance by the US Food and Drug Administration. In this trial, the proportion of patients treated with ADAM zolmitriptan 3.8 mg, who were pain-free and MBS-free at 2 hours post-dose, was significantly higher than for placebo.MethodsWe undertook a post-hoc analysis of data from the ZOTRIP trial to examine how the outcomes from this trial compare to what might have been achieved using the conventional co-primary endpoints of pain relief, nausea, photophobia, and phonophobia.ResultsOf the 159 patients treated with ADAM zolmitriptan 3.8 mg or placebo, prospectively designated MBS were photophobia (n = 79), phonophobia (n = 43), and nausea (n = 37). Two-hour pain free rates in those with photophobia as the MBS were 36% for ADAM zolmitriptan 3.8 mg and 14% for placebo (P = .02). Corresponding rates for those with phonophobia as the MBS were 14% and 41% (P = .05). For those whose MBS was nausea, corresponding values were 56% and 16%, respectively (P = .01). Two-hour freedom from the MBS for active drug vs placebo were 67% vs 35% (P < .01) for photophobia, 55% vs 43% (P = .45) for phonophobia, and 89% vs 58% for nausea (P = .04). MBS freedom but not pain freedom was achieved in 28%. Only 1 patient (1%) achieved pain freedom, but not MBS freedom. The proportion with both pain and MBS freedom was highest (56%) among those whose MBS was nausea.ConclusionIn this study, the use of MBS was feasible and seemed to compare favorably to the previously required 4 co-primary endpoints

Retrat de cineasta pintant a l’estudi: relacions entre pintura i cinema a David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)

David Lynch: The Art life (2016) es un documental que supone un interesantísimo acercamiento a una figura tan fascinante como polifacética: David Lynch. Este film indaga en las primeras décadas de vida de quien, empezando su periplo artístico como pintor, desembocaría en el séptimo arte con una obra sugerente y perturbadora. En este trabajo se estudian las relaciones entre cine y pintura que se tejen en el documental, atendiendo al modo en que la obra pictórica del Lynch pre y post cinematográfico va condicionando el discurso del propio director y de los autores del documental. Para ello, analizamos la película, así como las diferentes entrevistas concedidas por los directores, y diversas publicaciones de David Lynch que explican el sentido de su arteDavid Lynch: The Art Life (2016) is a documentary film that involves an interesting approach to a fascinating and multifaceted figure: David Lynch. This film explores the first decades of life of a filmmaker with a suggestive and disturbing work, wich began his artistic career as a painter. In this paper we study the relations between cinema and painting that are shown in the documentary, taking into account the way in which the pictorial work of pre and post cinematographic Lynch is conditioned by the discourse of the filmmaker and the authors of the documentary. To do this, we analyze the film, as well as the different interviews given by the directors, and various publications by David Lynch explaining the meaning of his artDavid Lynch: The Art life (2016) és un documental que suposa un interessantíssim apropament a una figura tan fascinant com polifacètica: David Lynch. El film indaga en les primeres dècades de vida de qui, començant pel seu periple artístic com a pintor, desembocaria en el sèptim art amb una suggeridora i pertorbadora obra. En aquest treball estudiem les relacions entre cine i pintura que es teixeixen al documental, tot atenent a com l’obra pictòrica del Lynch pre- i post- cinematogràfic condiciona el discurs del director mateix i dels autors del documental. Per tot allò, analitzem la pel·lícula, així com les diferents entrevistes concedides pels directors i diverses publicacions de David Lynch que expliquen el sentit del seu ar

Lobsters with an almost perfect matching are graceful

Let $T$ be a lobster with a matching that covers all but one vertex. We show that in this case, $T$ is graceful.Comment: 4 page

Stability of Texture and Shape of Circular Domains of Langmuir Monolayers

Finite domains of a Langmuir monolayer in a phase with tilted molecules can be modeled by a simple elastic free energy of an XY order parameter with isotropic and anisotropic line tension terms. The domains can and often do contain nontrivial textures, which in turn influence the shape of the domains. Herein we investigate the properties of a simplified isotropic model with a single elastic constant. For circular domains a first-order phase transition is found between two distinct textures: an exterior defect (or ``virtual boojum'') texture, and an interior defect texture. Starting with a circular domain and either of these two textures as a ground state, we find shape instabilities develop that depend on the elastic constants and line tensions in the simplified model. In both cases a necessary but not sufficient condition for the onset of shape instabilities is the possibility for a local negative effective line tension to develop from the anisotropic line tension term.Comment: 14 double column RevTex pages, 8 eps figure

Towards the Characterization of Terminal Cut Functions: a Condition for Laminar Families

We study the following characterization problem. Given a set $T$ of terminals and a $(2^{|T|}-2)$-dimensional vector $\pi$ whose coordinates are indexed by proper subsets of $T$, is there a graph $G$ that contains $T$, such that for all subsets $\emptyset\subsetneq S\subsetneq T$, $\pi_S$ equals the value of the min-cut in $G$ separating $S$ from $T\setminus S$? The only known necessary conditions are submodularity and a special class of linear inequalities given by Chaudhuri, Subrahmanyam, Wagner and Zaroliagis. Our main result is a new class of linear inequalities concerning laminar families, that generalize all previous ones. Using our new class of inequalities, we can generalize Karger's approximate min-cut counting result to graphs with terminals

Rhetorical Self-Fashioning in Aramburu: A Contemporary Take on Cervantine Techniques

 In Cervantes’ Don Quijote (1605), Dulcinea does not participate in any dialogue, and yet still appears a vivid character as real as the other female characters who do speak in the novel. Dulcinea, a figment of others’ imaginations, forms a sharp contrast with the character of Marcela, who fashions an authoritative self through dialogue with other characters. Marcela’s self, like Dulcinea’s, is relational to others’; however, her self-fashioning frees her from the objectification of Dulcineism and instead Marcela makes herself a character that transgresses conventional narratives, both cultural and literary. Likewise, a similar rejection of Dulcineism and a desire to craft her life story through her dialectical exchanges with the rest of the characters enables Miren, a principal female character in Aramburu’s Patria (2016), to fashion a self that actively contravenes the general perspective of her son’s supposed crimes as an etarra. In this analysis, I consider the Cervantine technique of rhetorical self-fashioning in characters such as Marcela and I trace this technique in the development of the character of Miren in Aramburu’s contemporary novel, Patria. Cervantes’ Marcela inaugurates the self-fashioning character in Western fiction, which is expanded by Aramburu four-hundred years later with his female character, Miren. Like Marcela, Miren must fashion herself against a polyphony of voices, frequently male, that provide a variety of narratives shaping the events of her life. I argue that Aramburu’s character, like Cervantes’, is empowered to author her own narrative to contravene an undesired outcome. Furthermore, both female characters use dialogue to reject the common literary tendency towards Dulcineism and, through relational rhetoric, disregard conventional narratives in favor of creating their own: a remarkable choice for female characters, both then and now