Sun Yung Shin Recommends...

“Recently, for various personal and transcultural and political reasons, I’ve become very interested in cloning, cyborgs, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These aspects of reproduction, replication, immortality, and the programmability of affection are very provocative in terms of the territory of consciousness and the role of language as a technology of the self and of communication with other selves. The uncanny valley allows me to think in new and broader ways about my (not uncommon) fascination with zombies and other liminal, and permanently transformed/devolved forms of the human. As an immigrant and a person of color and a woman in the United States, I am in many ways a deviant model. I feel I have much in common with Frankenstein’s monster, with Ovid’s Medusa, etc. Writing through issues of Orientalism, patriarchy, rape, global capital, and mechanization keeps me fueled and the work evolving.”
—Sun Yung Shin, author of Unbearable Splendor (Coffee House Press, 2016)

Photo credit: Dan Markworth