Poetry Collection Forthcoming 2012

UpSet Press is excited to announce the upcoming release of Vocalises by Jenny Husk (2012)

Vocalises – Poems by Jenny Husk

“In the poems of Jennifer Husk the world is a membrane words bounce against and poke into, skating on the scrim then delving below in quick sharp digs of fragment, image, and gut-punch. This work is “river dialogue” and “glare on the surface” all at once, achieving experiment, a sustained rhetoric, intimacy and political weight in one go. If Van Gogh graffitied “The Starry Night” on an urban wall then broke it apart with a mallet, you might get at something resembling the rough and precious texture of a Husk poem. Her register is horizon-wide & she jumps its length in a blink: the same stanza holds “rooms of dust” and “harmony,” then enjoins us to “hack the map” and “tag it city-wide.” This is a skateboard train anyone wishing to journey the sidewalk, desert, star, and cerebellum should hop on, presto. I am still traveling.”
-Ana Božičević, author of “Stars of the Night Commute” (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)

 

Author Bio:
Jenny Husk received an MFA in poetry from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 2003. She currently teaches in the English department at Southern Connecticut State University and lives in New Haven with her husband and two children.

Ed Lin & Cihan Kaan @ FIT: Super Rad

April 13th Ed Lin and Cihan Kaan read to FIT students in American Literature who are studying their work. More on the reading and photos soon! The semester has been hectic and yes UpSet Press members are still in school! So we live our lives in tune with semester cycles.

Special thanks to Ed Lin and his warm praise of Cihan Kaan’s work on his website Giant Robot:

I met Cihan Kaan at AWP, just completely randomly because he stopped by the Kaya booth and picked up Waylaid. Hey, he had to be cool! Cihan’s collection of shorts, Halal Pork and Other Stories, was just published by UpSet Press. You want street cred? Homeboy has been getting death threats for the title alone. And just to turn a metaphor around, his writing is killer.

“Brooklyn, New York, September 11th, 1981, I was four. My father had to break into his own apartment, where my mom and her new boyfriend were just beginning to throw a live lobster into a boiling cauldron. Up until that point, my short life had been filled with episodes of my parents battling each other on a near daily basis. When Dad finally left, Mom didn’t waste time finding the next guy.”

– from “Isa, American Turk”

Check out The Flood and Halal Pork and Other Stories. If you meet me and tell me you’ve read them, I will think you’re really cool.

Thanks Ed! We think you are super rad! We cannot wait for the student write ups of the event (which we will post once we get all the permissions in).

Congrats Are In Order!

We’re happy to announce that Cihan Kaan’s Halal Pork And Other Stories made the BESTSELLER list on SPD, in fiction!

Interview with Cihan Kaan

photo by Anjali Bhargava

Cihan is the first American fiction author of Crimean Tatar descent. His debut collection of short stories, Halal Pork and Other Stories was released in March 2011. The book has been the fastest selling book by a first time author published by UpSet Press. The book tour has just begun and reviews are coming in. Cihan has performed at Stony Brook University, NYC’s own Fashion Institute of Technology, and the Bowery Poetry Club, just to name a few venues. This first stage of the book’s circulation is just the right moment to sit with the author and chat about his creation.

Savanna: With such a provocative, yet intriguingly stimulating title, what other noticeable (and not so noticeable) significations do you want your readers to take away from Halal Pork?

Cihan: It’s impossible to predict what a person will take away from reading a book.  It all depends on what they bring to the table, literally. I wrote the stories, including the story the book is named after, out of a drive to express latitudes of thought after having been pigeonholed and stereotyped at my day job. I found myself responding to questions of what my name meant or if I was a terrorist— more so than if I had been evolving as a person. The demonization and stereotyping on a daily basis really started to wear me down. The book was my silent retreat into growth; it was how I managed to keep my mind expanding in private, while the world closed theirs. I hope readers can stretch their imaginations so that they may be open to a new voice, one through which has emerged from all of this.

Savanna: Tell me about how Halal Pork came into being. How much of it was inspired by its author? How did you decide what to contribute, what to exclude (if anything)?

Cihan: “Halal Pork” came from two things; firstly, it was a term I adopted from a Muslim fast food restaurant menu item in France. Secondly, it made everyone laugh. So, it existed as a concept as far back as 2005, but in French. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction and I write about the etymology of the phrase here: Elan Magazine. However, the story in my book is about a young Muslim trying to find his place before and after 9/11. He works in a Turkish-American “Fusion” restaurant. There is no actual recipe for “Halal Pork” as mentioned in the book; it is a state of mind, a contradiction. Particularly, the idea of  “Halal Pork” as a condition of the mind is of growing up in one culture, yet having inherited cultural ties to another. It sparks debate and questions how we reconcile the two, or if we even can. The artist’s job is not really to solve these problems, but to give them words and meaning. If we can’t identify a condition we’re in how can we ever transcend it?

Savanna: From which kind of response are you more challenged by— the death threat or praising review? I have a sneaking suspicion that it is the former. So, my preemptive follow-up questions are: What is your initial reaction to “the death threat”? What is your approach in dealing with readers who hold persistently toxic-extremist views of Halal Pork?

Cihan: This is a huge question and it goes back to the Salman Rushdie affair of 1989 (during which I was a child.) Unfortunately, for those few radicals looking for a new Rushdie, they won’t find one in me.  I have written nothing in the book about religion at all.  If those individuals who are threatened by the title actually read the book, they would see that I am not advocating the consumption of pork (I, myself am a vegetarian) nor am I instigating any type of “shirk” innovation to do so. As I said, the book is a collection of short stories ranging in point of view and genre— from comedy to science fiction to psychological horror.  If these people read the book they would be transported into other realms of thought.

Again, in case it wasn’t fully absorbed the first time I said it; the title is based on a real menu item (which is a flavored beef) at a French Muslim fast food restaurant. I use it more as a description of a psychological pathology, rather than a religious commentary. The stories themselves are fun and enlightening to everyone, no religion is criticized and no race or ethnicity is put down.

By the way, in America, we have a tradition of funny titles dating back to Mark Twain. For instance, to have “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court” is impossible, but it was Twain’s way of parodying events in his time. It’s just how us writers handle heavy topics; we almost have to. It’s like improvising a tool to dig out of a dark place. We make something out of something else.

Savanna: So, I hear you’re a multidimensional artist. Is there a possibility of Halal Pork being translated into film or even serve as inspiration for an album?

Cihan: Yes, to both questions. That’s all I can say about those projects right now.

Savanna: Did you by any chance manually write parts of HP in its creation before transferring it to the word processor? In general, do you feel more connected to your pieces if you first write them out manually? Does the pen-to-paper action in any way transmit fluidity and/or sustain complexity?

Cihan: Yes, I write with a specific brand of pen, usually on a pad or in a composition notebook. I’d say 99.9% of the stories in the book were written in bursts of inspiration throughout New York City and Brooklyn. When I felt stories were complete I would type them into an open source program called “WriteRoom”, which is no longer available.

Here’s a funny story about the first draft. I was playing keyboards in this all-girl Depeche Mode cover band (I was the token boy) and left my first notebook of writings in the bassist’s car. That night the car crashed and my first draft went up in smoke.  Luckily no one got hurt, but I literally had to rewrite from memory.  That was frustrating though it taught me how to channel ideas better. It also marked the end of me playing covers of New Wave 80s songs.

Savanna: What distinguishes your voice from that of your creative influences? How much credit do you attribute to your influences, in finding your own voice?

Cihan: Good question. As an artist I strive for originality in everything I do.  Rule number one: nothing should be derivative, at least in conception. If I have an idea and don’t act on it I usually see it done by someone else, 6 months later. Before I wrote, I was a filmmaker, before that I was a programmer, before that a musician. After I released my first record, electronic music became the soundtrack of a generation. After I made “She’s Got an Atomic Bomb,” every movie suddenly was about a strong female protagonist living in a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi world done in a glossy style. Each discipline had its own influences and at no point was I crafting myself off anyone in particular (besides maybe Mighty Mouse and The Greatest American Hero) but instead drew from this big ocean of ideas. Right now, in this early part of the 21st Century, we need what I call “identity artists”, folks to lead the way for the previously marginalized and victimized members of the planet. However, artists can’t lead— it’s not in the job description, so to speak. They create symbols and words. So my concern and radar resonates with those kinds of memes. It might change and so will my influences.

There’s this pool of ideas I think we can all draw our ideas from; call it the collective unconscious or the guff or higher power, whatever floats your boat. It’s simply a matter of, in the words of David Lynch, “Catching the big fish”. If Muslim-Americans, or rather Muslims in the 21st Century, expect to overcome hatred and misrepresentation they will have to first find love and representation. That comes with celebrating new artists and acknowledging new voices. That’s where the future is and always will be.

Savanna: Thank you Cihan for your lovely words. I can’t think of anything truer and more culturally meaningful than celebrating new artists whom contribute their fresh perspectives and voices— as I am a fellow up-and-coming writer (poetry, specifically). Not always is there a forum for us to be recognized and validated. Cihan’s story and UpSet Press allow writers with unique stories to be told and, more importantly, to be heard.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Savanna D’Amato is a Brooklyn native, freelance writer, poet and lover of animals. At the age of 21, she is currently pursuing her MA degree in English Literature.  She can be contacted/read at: sdamato6@gmail.com / http://citysavy.wordpress.com/

Ed Lin & Cihan Kaan at Fashion Institute of Technology 4/13 @7pm

Please join FIT in celebrating the important works of these two Asian American authors. Those interested in attending the event (and who are not FIT students) please send us an email to be on the guest list.

AIAW’s Second Annual Nowruz Literary Event by Cindy Jordan

Happy Now Roz

Last month, on March 25th, I attended an event at Zora Space, on 4th
Avenue in Park Slope; a known spot for housing events for arts of all kind.
It was the AIAW’s (Association of Iranian-American Writers) Annual NYC
Nowruz Literary Event, hosted by Manijeh Nasrabadi (AIAW’s Co-director)
and Zohra Saed (Editor for UpSet Press), and was co-sponsored by UpSet
Press. The reading featured writers such as: Aisha Kashgari, Nadira Artyk,
Najila Naderi, Narges Bajoghli and Sara Goudarzi; a gathering of Afghan,
Iranian, Uygher and Uzbek writers, willing to share their art with anxious
ears. They offered an assortment of poetry and short fiction, one performer
(Kashgari) even reciting her piece (with assistance) in both english and her
native language. Beautiful.

The evening also included indelible interludes by musical guests, the
Farvardin Ensemble featuring: Ozan Aksoy on Zarb/Domback, Piruz Partow on the
Persian Tar and–of course Habib Partow playing the Santur, which acted as the perfect
accompaniment to such poignant vocals. Both of their performances throughout the
evening were incredibly moving. Being front-row for all of it was a bit overwhelming,
but thankfully so.

Fun fact: Nowruz, for those like myself who didn’t know, is the spring equinox of the
Iranian calender; actually marking the beginning of the Persian New Year and time of
celebration. Nowruz is also recognized cross-culturally, among those in parts of India,
China, the Balkans, etc. It coincides with holy days of many faiths including Purim, a
Jewish festival, that may have roots in Nowruz. So this reading was a way of
celebrating, gathering together for the common purpose of artistic expression; complete
with visual art displayed around the room. It really was a very cool time, not-to-mention
educational.

 

Cihan Kaan’s Latest Collection of Short Stories

In Halal Pork and Other Stories, Cihan Kaan projects an avant garde, post 9/11 world, from the perspective of a young Muslim New Yorker. It’s a place where Coney Island meets Mars; where hijabi girls are punk rock dervishes; where identity salesmen count pigeons at insane asylums as a cream cheese conspiracy brews in gitmo; where rich boys pay to be Muslim for a day; where the transgendered are holy; and where the bacon is halal. Kaan offers up five urban Sufi tales in the swirling graffiti of Brooklyn.

What People Are Saying:

Welcome to the hip and edgy and vibrant world of Halal Pork & Other Stories, a postcolonial feast where, as the title implies, contradictions reign, the figurative is made literal, stolen homelands are bought back and not fought over, and a Coney Island circus star, garbed in a space suit and known for her levitating act, is none other than the prophetess from another planet. These five, witty stories serve up a refreshing crash course on identity, diaspora, dispossession, and on the not-so-distant future full of “alien-human hybrid forms” seeking their “way to a place of solace, grief, or limbo.” An impressive debut.

R. Zamora Linmark, The Evolution of a Sigh and Leche

What do you mean you’d never even thought about reading Tatar Turkish Russian Muslim immigrant Brooklyn post-colonial sci-fi punk-rock short fiction before? After you’ve finished Cihan Kaan’s Halal Pork and Other Stories, you’ll realize how ridiculously narrow-minded you must have been. Irreverent, urgent, funny and refreshingly unpredictable, Kaan entertains and instructs in devious and delightful ways.

Moustafa Bayoumi, The Edward Said Reader and How does it Feel to be a Problem: Young and Arab in New York

Our First Review:

Halal Pork

Natalie Storey bio ↓ ·  April 5th, 2011  ·  filed under books, reviews, rumpus original

Filled with a slew of social critiques and riffs on popular Muslim and American iconography, Cihan Kaan’s first collection of short stories, Halal Pork, is decidedly Muslim-American but also conflicted, negotiating the space between assimilation into American society and the rules of tradition.

In Cihan Kaan’s version of New York City, Muslim and Jews eat fake bacon, girls wear headscarves and Uggz, and punk rock Muslim boys dream of stardom. A white man idealizes Lawrence of Arabia and begs authorities to send him to Guantanamo Bay. Absurd juxtapositions like these inhabit Kaan’s collection Halal Pork and Other Stories, a bold and darkly funny debut.

Halal Pork lets loose a slew of social critiques and riffs on popular Muslim and American iconography in five lively stories. Kaan’s characters call Sept. 11 “the New York date rape by Al-Queda” and deem a popular beer “one-dollar Pap Smear Ribbon.” A character mangles the Arabic greeting “Salam wa lakum,” saying, instead, “Salami Legume.” The misfortunately named Jehan receives the new title: “Jeeeehad ‘DO NOT call him Arab’McBaconface.” The stories fire off eclectic references that provoke reflection, especially about what it means to be called American, Muslim or Muslim-American.

Kaan presents critiques through allegory, a strategy reminiscent of Q’uranic tales. These thinly veiled allegories achieve a powerful effect through Kaan’s dark humor. In the second story “Misili Midhib, Punk Rock Hijabi From Another Dimension,” Kaan casts an alien/Muslim as his main character. Misili whirs and spins like a Sufi, chanting Islamic prayers and delivering auguries. Frat boys yell, “Take off that veil and let’s fuck, you terrorist bitch,” and Misili thinks: “They look at me because hiding one’s form in public charges their voyeuristic libidinal drives. These types of minds cannot be quelled without thought rearrangement.” As other Americans project their ignorance about Muslim women on Misili, she becomes a filter through which Kaan lays stereotypes bare. Another character in the story, Ayanda Shiraz, seems a stand-in for the real life activist Ayan Hirsi Ali, who penned an inflammatory memoir called Infidel that exposed the realities of the author’s early life in Muslim societies in the Middle East and Africa. Kaan’s character has penned books about her “alleged victimhood under Islam” called 99 Names of the Hornet’s Nest, Not Without My Freedom, and Allah Forbid. Through this character, Kaan satirizes academics who latch onto activists like Ali. Of his character Kaan writes, “Of course, Ivy League universities and feminist foundations encouraged her to unveil this oppressive religion…” Kaan’s satires expose a reductive way of looking at Islam still alive in the United States today.

(Cihan Kaan Photo by Anjali Bhargava)

While the stories succeed in ridiculing American ignorance of Muslims, Kaan never turns his critical eye eastward. Ayan Hirsi Ali’s perspective doesn’t gain sympathetic treatment in Kaan’s allegorical tale. Instead, Shiraz appears dishonest and conniving in the story. The mockery reads like a defense of Islam, an awkward move by someone who titled his book “Halal Pork.” (Halal means something permissible in Islam. Pork, forbidden, carries the label haram.) Astute readers will pick up on Kaan’s unique perspective: decidedly Muslim-American, conflicted, negotiating the space between assimilation into American society and the rules of tradition.

Rage over the treatment of Muslims in American society pumps through all of Halal Pork, but its most in- depth treatment occurs in “Isa, American Turk.” The story tackles anger head-on, transmitting Isa’s thoughts to readers. “I discover I am also a heathen. In the Stan Lee Marvel Universe worldview, aheathen is what Spider-Man fights against,” Isa says. Other characters in the story so frequently misidentify and misinterpret Isa that sympathizing with him becomes easy. Isa’s mother tells him to change his name to “John” or “Gary” to get a job. His girlfriend sleeps with him for his exotic looks. A man keeps referring to him as the dishwasher. “I’m not ethnic,” Issa proclaims after these repeated acts of racism lead to a loss of dignity. “Violence may be a learned phenomenon, but tonight I want to break shit because of my face,” says Isa, “because I am simply not like the rest of America.” The anger proves justified by the catalog of encounters with “the rest of America” Kaan puts forth.

The stories mix Muslim terminology with twisted stereotypes and will capture the interest of anyone seeking to understand Islam in America. “Hijab, not to be confused with the Burqa, only covers the hair allowing for all types of secular adornments from uggz to rainbow fat laces while still staying modest aka halal,” Kaan writes in the author’s note. The greatest strength of the collection lies in a new, clever writer’s ability to interrogate both complex concepts and commonplace notions while maintaining the book’s punk, intelligence and dark humor.

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Natalie Storey is currently enrolled in the MFA program at Penn State University, where she writes about the two years she spent living as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan