Author: Jackson Bliss

(My) 10 Rules For APIA/Hapa Fiction: A Brief Ars Prosae Asianae

(My) 10 Rules For APIA/Hapa Fiction: A Brief Ars Prosae Asianae

Like the Bechdel Test, these ten rules should be treated as the first critical lens that APIA readers (can) use to call out and contest orientalism in publishing while also serving as a mandatory metric by which all readers (can) hold APIA writing accountable as well as the presses that publish those works by and about us.

Killing the Messenger: A Dual Interview with Charles Baxter and Viet Thanh Nguyen on the Importance and the Stigma of Didactic (APIA) Fiction
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Killing the Messenger: A Dual Interview with Charles Baxter and Viet Thanh Nguyen on the Importance and the Stigma of Didactic (APIA) Fiction

Inside the craft-obsessed, time-warped fiction workshop where literary realism has reigned supreme forever, the Show-Don’t-Tell maxim serves an important function in critique.

The Psychopathic Gaze: Murder, Violence, and Misogyny in Natsuo Kirino’s Out

The Psychopathic Gaze: Murder, Violence, and Misogyny in Natsuo Kirino’s Out

Out is an exhausting but indispensable blood-and-guts novel that constructs real, complex, contradictory, and authentically credible female characters who transgress the social hierarchies of Japanese culture while also defying the sexist and stock stereotypes of women as helpless victims in both slasher and thriller genres.

Japanese Boy Band Saves the World: Postcolonial Masculinities in Final Fantasy XV

Japanese Boy Band Saves the World: Postcolonial Masculinities in Final Fantasy XV

Only in a Japanese RPG can a boy band save the world from the empire and its demonic biotechnological army. In Final Fantasy XV, four male friends use the empire’s language of violence to decolonize the kingdom of darkness. Somewhere, Fanon’s ghost is drinking sake and smoking Peace cigarettes.