Mandy-Suzanne Wong

A Novel

The Box

Mandy-Suzanne Wong deftly explores the complex world of the ama -- ocean women, mostly elderly, who eke out a living while diving deep to capture abalone, snails, and otherworldly sea creatures for food. Unlike the men of the fictional village of Kaiyono who fish from boats, the ama battle the cold currents without scuba tanks or snorkels. They do this while facing the threat of an ecological crisis they had no hand in causing. Suffused with lyrical imagery and profound longing, Wong creates evocative moments of love, pride, jealousy, misunderstanding, and sacrifice in this duet of short stories.

A Duet of Short Stories

Awabi

Literary Nonfiction. Art. Mandy-Suzanne Wong does something far beyond 'giving voice' to animals and the artists that record them. She listens: quietly, carefully, truthfully. And the animals speak for themselves. Listen, we all bleed is a powerful and much needed book for our times. Now more than ever, we need to listen to the voices of all beings. And collectively, hopefully, we can save our beautiful Earth.--Kathryn Eddy In this beautifully subtle, intricately woven text, Mandy-Suzanne Wong entreats you to listen, to really listen, to the nonhuman. And even if this listening makes you feel uncomfortable, ashamed, guilty, she dares you to persist. Moving seamlessly among the works of artists devoted to nonhuman voices, she manages to relay a myriad of worlds beyond our own, each with its own infinite complexity and beauty. Reading this book, hearing and loving the nonhuman, should prompt you to be passionate about saving this world that we have so thoroughly ravaged.--Tracy McDonald Haunting, vivid, confrontational, unafraid--a new beat to penetrate our hearts and lead an awakening dance in which we stop refusing to see. Wong's descriptions call up Sue Coe in prose. To read about my own work this way--alchemized from sounds in the air and projections on walls and embroidered onto the page--is pure and powerful magic.--Colleen Plumb LISTEN, WE ALL BLEED is both an informative and invigorating shock to the system...with striking and evocative prose...Wong's text compels the reader to brave the often ignored sounds of nonhumans and endure the raw emotion behind them. Whether the bleating sheep now turned leg of lamb or the symphonic wanderings of lost snails, in that moment the reader doesn't just listen--we become. As we hurt alongside the torment of nonhumans, Wong gently exposes our very hand in causing it. This book is a heart-wrenching albeit imperative rattling of the human soul. A must read for any Earth-goer.--Rich Andrew

Listen, We All Bleed

"As far as I know, you can only die once..." But when Aetna Simmons disappears from her lonely Bermuda cottage, she leaves behind not one but ten suicide notes. Ten different suicide notes. And no other trace to speak of, not even a corpse, as if she'd never existed. Drafts of a Suicide Note tells the tale of the darkly enigmatic love letter written by Kenji Okada-Caines, a petty criminal who once exposited on English literary classics and now, marooned on his native isle, nurtures an obsession with Aetna's writing. His murky images of a woman with ten voices and no face launch him into waking nightmares, driving him to confront his lifetime's worth of failures as a scholar, lover, and opiate addict. His wild conspiracy theories of Aetna as an impostor ten times over lead him to the doorstep of the Japanese mother who turned her back on him--and to the horrifying discovery that the great love of his life isn't who she seems to be. Kenji's is a story of dire misunderstandings and the truths we hide even from the ones we love.

Mandy-Suzanne Wong

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