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chowleen.bsky.social
eileen chengyin chow
@chowleen.bsky.social
8.2K followers 680 following 12K posts
@chowleen most elsewhere; my old tweets reappear here at odd times.

Duke prof, APSI Dir+DGS, Duke Story Lab founder. DUP Sinotheory, LAReviewOfBooks board. Shewo Institute 舍我紀念館 Director, Biographical Lit 傳記文學 publisher
周成蔭 #everynightapoem
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chowleen.bsky.social
a new small post on 柏舟 ("Cypress Boat") from the Book of Songs (c 600 BCE).

My heart is not a mirror
To reflect what others will

My heart is not a stone
It cannot be rolled

My heart is not a mat
It cannot be folded away

我心匪鑑 不可以茹
我心匪石 不可轉也
我心匪席 不可卷也

#everynightapoem chowleen.substack.com
My heart is not a stone. How to say "I would prefer not to," from three millenia ago. - image is a film still of two stones, from Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) CHOWLEEN.SUBSTACK.COM
November 11, 2025 at 12:41 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
(Because we need a diversion)

I don’t have the NYT cooking app so someone who does might tell me: why would it take a whole *30 minutes* to make egg drop soup?? Are we collecting eggs from the hen coop? Making bone broth from scratch??
Photo from NYT Cooking of bowl of egg drop soup. Text reads: 30-Minute Egg Drop Soup Christopher Testani for The New York Times Food Stylist: Cyd Raftus McDowell
November 10, 2025 at 2:51 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
Watched Taxi Driver again tonight - last saw it in college probably.
Just astoundingly, disturbingly good.
Movie poster for Taxi Driver (1976) ROBERT DENIRO TAXI DRIVER A BILL/PHILLIPS Production of a MARTIN SCORSESE Film JODIE FOSTER ALBERT BROOKS as Tom HARVEY KEITEL LEONARD HARRIS PETER BOYLE as Wizard and CYBILL SHEPHERD as "Betsy Written by PAUL SCHRADER Music BERNARD HERRMANN Produced by MICHAEL, PHILIPS And JULIA PHILLIPS Directed by MARTIN SCORSESE
November 8, 2025 at 5:09 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
"We are the leaders we've been waiting for."
-Grace Lee Boggs
black and white portrait of Grace Lee Boggs
November 5, 2025 at 11:09 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
via @notoriousrsg.bsky.social: "Holding a Roaring Twenties party for your billionaire friends while you’re doing everything you can to make Americans relive the 1930s."
collage of photos from the Mar a Lago Great Gatsby party on the same week SNAP benefits have been stopped.
November 4, 2025 at 9:12 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
Both recovering from the plague, but wouldn’t miss a vote. Actually 15yo gave me informed opinions on the slate, and helped me make up my mind on a key vote
#nc #vote
Mom and daughter in fall clothes, with I voted stickers
November 4, 2025 at 7:03 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
Durham County Government, in collaboration with local partners, has created a food and nutrition resources page that contains important information and links for residents who are impacted by the federal government shutdown.
#Durham #NC #food
➡🔗 dconc.gov/Public-Infor...
Food Resources poster for Durham County, with links main website: https://dconc.gov/Public-Information/SNAP-Update Recursos de alimentos Condado de Durham Food Resources poster for Durham County, with links main website: https://dconc.gov/Public-Information/SNAP-Update
November 3, 2025 at 2:40 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
“It is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner...November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”

-Emily Dickinson, letter to Elizabeth Holland (Nov 1865)
#everynightapoem #november
"Whom seeing not, we" clasp - Emily A remnant of a letter to Elizabeth Holland, in the Amherst Emily Dickinson Collection
November 3, 2025 at 2:19 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
I just love that Otani shared this Yamamoto lion’s roar
#大谷翔平 #山本由伸 #WorldSeries
Screenshot of Shohei Otani’s Instagram story - of Yamamoto leaning back in victory
November 2, 2025 at 8:16 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
My tsundoku 積ん読 to be read book pile costume was originally crowned with a nightstand reading lamp on my head, but it toppled over…
#halloween
Costumes that is a poster board resembling a pile of books to be read My tsundoku 積ん読 book pile costume: Book sections excerpted from Italo Calvino, if on a winter’s night a traveler: “-Books You Haven’t Read - Books You Needn’t Read - Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading - Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written - Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered - Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First - Books Too Expensive Now and You’ll Wait ‘Til They’re Remaindered - Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback - Books You Can Borrow from Somebody - Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too - Books You’ve Been Planning to Read for Ages - Books You’ve Been Hunting for Years Without Success - Books Dealing with Something You’re Working on at the Moment - Books You Want to Own So They’ll Be Handy Just in Case - Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer - Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves - Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified - Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time to Re-read - Books You’ve Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It’s Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
November 1, 2025 at 3:21 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
I was going to attend the ball of ghosts and witches,
A delegation would appear there in masks and wigs,
And dance, unrecognized, in the chorus of the living.

Czeslaw Milosz, All Hallow's Eve
#everynightapoem
ALL HALLOWS' EVE In the great silence of my favorite month, October—the red of maples, the bronze of oaks, clear-yellow leaves here and there on birches— I celebrated the standstill of time.. The vast country of the dead had its beginning everywhere: At the turn of a tree-lined alley, across park lawns. But I did not have to enter, I was not called yet. Motorboats pulled up on the riverbank, paths in pine needles. It was getting dark early, no lights on the other side. I was going to attend the ball of ghosts and witches. A delegation would appear there in masks and wigs, And dance, unrecognized, in the chorus of the living. —CZESLAW MILOSZ (Translated, from the Polish, by the author and Leonard Nathan.)
November 1, 2025 at 1:51 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
Deciduous indecisiveness
A blur of fall leaves
October 30, 2025 at 9:30 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
The level of pumpkin carving to which I aspire
(By the artist Michael Cherney)

「忽肚痛不可堪，不知是冷熱所致，欲服大黃湯，冷熱俱有益。如何為計，非臨床。」
Pumpkin carved in Tang dynasty calligrapher Zhang Xu’s cursive style
October 29, 2025 at 12:16 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
Absolutely worth seeing on 35mm in theaters #bugonia
October 27, 2025 at 1:55 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
"Protests broke out in Chinatown after an ICE raid on Canal Street. Multiple people were detained. According to AMNY, 30-40 vendors were arrested, while ICE officials say 9."

[Susan Chen, Chinatown Block Watch, 2022 @brooklynmuseum.org]
oil painting on canvas, depicting a street scene on Mott Street in NYC Chinatown
October 23, 2025 at 1:58 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
Always great to have the opportunity to welcome Curtis Chin to Duke! I will be in conversation with Curtis, and the talk will be free and open to the public.
If you're in #DurhamNC area:
TODAY 10/22 Wed, East Duke Building 209 4pm
AADS SPEAKER SERIES Curtis Chin Please join Curtis Chin, the author of the humorous, award-winning memoir Everything / Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, as we discuss Chinese food, Detroit, and growing up in the 1980s. Everything I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A conversation with Curtis Chin Wednesday, October 22 at 4:30 pm 209, East Duke Building
October 22, 2025 at 7:01 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
You wonder who they mean,
but then you see. Their poison hemlock? That
is you. Their brown tree snake. Their killer bee.

-Amit Majmudar, 'Invasive Species'
#everynightapoem
We flower where we flower.
AMIT MAJMUDAR Invasive Species The bees are Africanized. All elm disease is Dutch. The carp is Asian, the python of the Everglades specifically Burmese. The plague bacillus sailed from India to Europe. Europe coughed khaki back at India. Everything is alien, especially star thistle with its spurs and bursts, unearthly, mapping its home galaxy like a foundling with a fleur-de-lys foot tattoo. Though even lilies hitchhike— every ditch lily was once a tiger lily, treasured in the garden of a Mughal. Everybody thinks the Mughals Indian, but Mughal comes from Mongol. Invaders make themselves at home and home remakes them into natives. Everybody comes from someplace else where they were royal refugees. We flower where we flower, flinging roots like ropes from runaway hot air balloons to snag a city's skyline. It never feels like an invasion when you're doing it. It feels like parenting, like cooking what you've always cooked, like dancing with your grandma at a noisy wedding But then you turn to see the horrified park rangers staring at you, calling in the experts-look at this, what do we do, they're everywhere. You wonder who they mean, but then you see. Their poison hemlock? That is you. Their brown tree snake. Their killer bee.
October 19, 2025 at 10:43 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
And of course this was the verso of my “Immigrant and Here to Stay” sign #nokings #durhamnc
But your hour is a stone My moment is a flower. Poet to Bigot
October 19, 2025 at 2:22 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
Got off the plane and went straight to #nokings #durhamnc. What a turnout.

(Love my neighbors- so many folks cheered my “Immigrant and Here to Stay” sign)
I need to be able TO TELL MY Great Grand Children I DID NOT STAY SILENT X NO KINGS Strong union nurses Lesbians for Democracy Liberty means justice for all
October 19, 2025 at 1:09 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
High school students representing!
October 18, 2025 at 3:05 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
This was startling yesterday
4:07 & Announcement Unfortunately, Bluesky is unavailable in Mississippi right now. A new Mississippi law requires us to implement age verification for all users before they can access Bluesky. We think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals, and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies. As a small team, we cannot justify building the expensive infrastructure this requirement demands while legal challenges to this law are pending. For now, we have made the difficult decision to block access to Bluesky in the state of Mississippi. To learn more, read our blog post. Not in Mississippi? Confirm your location with GPS. Your location data is not tracked and does not leave your device. • Confirm your location & Bluesky
October 18, 2025 at 12:00 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
Do you think there are more effective forms of noncooperation than the No Kings protest? Who cares. Take a couple hours out of your day to stand in solidarity. Go to the No Kings protest. Via Sunrise Movement IG @sunrisemvmt.bsky.social
October 16, 2025 at 10:17 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
On Beale Street.

In Memphis for the first time to give a public lecture at Rhodes College this evening, on the subject of southern Asian food, and tomorrow I'll be taking part in and delivering a keynote for the #1882Foundation Conference on Rural Chinatowns and Hidden Sites. 🩷 1882foundation.org
Beale Street store front of A. Schwab, brick building facades and festooned with small flags
October 15, 2025 at 4:39 PM
chowleen.bsky.social
I am the man. I suffered,
I was there.
-Whitman

In Baldwin’s hand, cover page for the manuscript of Giovanni’s Room
#everynightapoem
GIOVANNI'S ROOM novel by James Baldwin I am the man. I suffered, I was there. Whitman.
October 15, 2025 at 1:37 AM
chowleen.bsky.social
James Baldwin, May 17, 1963

Time Magazine cover palate cleanser
BIRMINGHAM AND BEYOND: The Negro's Push For Equality MAY 17, 1963 Time THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE AUTHOR JAMES BALDWIN VOL. LXXXI NO. 20
October 14, 2025 at 4:38 PM