Dear friends,

How are you doing, here at the start of spring?

For me, apropos to the season, it’s been a month of interlinked gatherings, the seeds of which were planted long ago. This Friday, March 29, at 4:30pm ET, I’ll be hosting “Asian x American x Buddhist x Literature: A Gathering of Writers, a Field of Cultivation,” an in-person (at the University of Michigan) and online (via Zoom) event that brings together five brilliant authors: Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, Tsering Yangzom Lama, Shin Yu Pai, Ryan Lee Wong, and Bryan Thao Worra. Their impressive oeuvre of work, from poetry to podcasts to translation to fiction (and beyond), inspires the central question of our roundtable: What creative, political, and liberatory possibilities emerge at the intersections of Asian America, Buddhism, and literature?

In other gatherings: I was just in Massachusetts for Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard (L2BB), a project that began three years ago and continues this spring with a group of high school students whose deep-dive into Buddhism will be rooted in interactions with local temple communities. Our recent visits to Chua Tuong Van in Lowell, American Wisdom Association in Billerica, and Wat Boston Buddha Vararam in Bedford have led to questions, insights, and sated bellies. (We highly recommend eating with the Buddhists in your backyard if you get the chance.) This year’s L2BBers will be in conversation with high school seniors from three other interdisciplinary projects, one of whom wondered, in their Asian American literature class last term, why they struggled to find more Buddhism-influenced Asian American authors beyond Ruth Ozeki and Ocean Vuong.

In other interlinkages: The chanting, rituals, and Dharma talks we encountered during our L2BB temple visits echoed earlier this month at the May We Gather memorial and pilgrimage in Antioch, California. Deep bows of gratitude to everyone who joined us in-person and via the livestream to mark the three-year anniversary of the March 16th Atlanta spa shootings. You might have seen some coverage of the event in your local newspaper thanks to Deepa Bharath and Terry Tang’s thoughtful reporting: one of the AP artciles is filed under Religion, the other under Race and Ethnicity. Both are beautifully photographed.

Here’s wishing you an abundance of joyful, meaningful, and nourishing gatherings in the months ahead. Hope to see some of you online and at the Michigan League this Friday for Asian x American x Buddhist x Literature; in Massachusetts for Story and Song: Learning and Living with Buddhist Chant this May (17th–20th); or in Northern California for Home is Here, Refuge is Now this July (13th).

Warmly,

~Chenxing