User:Liamghewitt/sandbox

Wikipedia Assignment Reflection

From our experience with participating in the Wiki-thon, we learned that within the Wikipedia community that there is a pragmatic hierarchy to ensure the utmost standard of verifiable and unbiased information; some articles--prominent articles--are not to be edited unless the editor is of the editing ‘elite,’ otherwise, other articles are open to all contributions. Through the concise expectations, and guides laid out for the editor’s reference, we understood the article genre on wikipedia as one to be comprised of a broad summary as an introduction, and then proceeds to more specific information, which is in turn divided into appropriate sections, and lastly ends with a list of cited sources. The article genre on Wikipedia appears to be addressing an exigency of organised information, especially on notable events, places, people, theories, things, or organisations that should be widely known, if it were not so already. We also learned that the editors are constrained to a formal, and impartial rhetoric, as well as being able to efficiently paraphrase from sources--enough so to avoid copyright problems.

We chose to do the Madeleine Thien article in order to address the exigency of underrepresented community; we were interested in focusing on the lack of information about Canadian writers of Southeast Asian descent. We also chose Thien’s article due to our shared curiosity in "Do Not Say We Have Nothing" and the author's outspoken political views. After researching Thien, we were surprised that her wikipedia page lacked much mention of the diasporic/transnational themes that primarily characterize her writing. Additionally, the page was poorly sectioned and missing easy references. For instance, her entire authorial career, academic work and personal history were over-loaded into a single section titled 'life.' Thanks to Liam's technical expertise as well as the breadth of time allocated for the project, we successfully doubled the page's word count, re-sectioned it and made sure every fact was referenced. However, we found that there was a sense that the work is never truly complete, and wished we could have edited the article after the fallout of new information generated out of the awards run Thien is having this year. Due to the project's constraints, we would have liked to learn how to edit other article types besides the biographical, and cover Thien's statement on the Galloway case.  

Group compatibility is often a matter of chance, so we were fortunate that we functioned well together, communicating often and candidly. To improve, we could have sought a more systematic way of finding types of sources, letting potential sources guide the information as much as addressing the exigencies of the article. In addition to this, we found afterwards that we could have created a more comprehensive list of her various awards, as well as expanded on her personal life section. Overall, however, we were most satisfied with the article's array of different reference types, including academic books, journalistic articles and even a youtube conference interview.

What we learned about Web 2.0 from the Wiki-thon is that it is a highly collaborative and interactive space. Especially on Wikipedia, Web 2.0 allows for rapid production of user generated-content, which is also simultaneously maintained to a controlled quality-standard through the collaboration of other users, and their uptakes on different sources of media.

Madeleine Thien

Madeleine Thien (traditional Chinese: 鄧敏靈; simplified Chinese: 邓敏灵; born 1974) is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. She is primarily known for her novels and short stories that deal with the diasporic histories of Asian communities. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature

Early Life and Education

Thien was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1974 to a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother. She studied contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University and a Masters in Fine Arts specializing in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Thien made the decision to switch from Dance to creative writing for a few reasons, but mainly due to the fact that she felt inadequate in talent, despite her passion for the art. Prior to working as an editor to the Rice Paper Magazine, she worked at McDonalds, and a Chinese Restaurant in North Vancouver. Thien was a finalist for Writers' Trust of Canada's RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 1999, and in 2001 she was awarded the Emerging Writers Award (EWA) from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW) for her collection of short stories, Simple Recipes.

Career

Many of Thien’s works focus on the theme of time in connection to place and human emotion. In an interview with Granta from 2016, she states that she is concerned with “the way that women’s lives are expressed in literature at this moment,” and that she is interested in writing about women of colour and sexuality.

Publications

In 2001, her first book titled Simple Recipes was published. The book is a collection of short fiction pieces exploring conflicts within intergenerational and intercultural relationships. Following this, Thien wrote a children’s novel titled The Chinese Violin (2002) which follows a young Chinese girl’s journey as she and her father adjusted to life in Vancouver.

Her debut novel, Certainty (2006), follows a documentary producer as she searches for the truth about her father’s experience living in Japanese-occupied Malysia. 

Her second novel, Dogs at the Perimeter (Toronto: M&S, 2011; London: Granta Books, 2012) is about associates at Montreal’s Brain Research Centre, and their traumatic ties to the Cambodian genocide. It has been translated into 9 languages.[7]

Her latest novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), follows the life of Li-Ling, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, as she learns about her family history and heritage following her father's suicide. The story also focuses on her father and his friends’ lives as young musicians growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution.  

Academic

In 2008, Thien was invited to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and the IWP State Department-funded 2010 study tour of the United States, which invited eight international writers, including Kei Miller, Eduardo Halfon, Billy Kahora and Khet Mar, to explore the unresolved legacies of American history. 

In 2013, Thien was the Simon Fraser University Writer-in-Residence.[10] From 2010 to 2015, she was part of the International Faculty in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at City University of Hong Kong. She wrote about the Program's abrupt closure, and Hong Kong's crackdown on freedom of speech, in a controversial essay for The Guardian.[11] Her essay, "The Grand Tour: In the Shadow of James Baldwin," concludes the 2015 essay collection, Fall and Rise, American Style: Eight International Writers Between Gettysburg and the Gulf.[8] The study tour was the subject of filmmaker Sahar Sarshar's documentary, Writing in Motion: A Nation Divided.[9]

Awards and Nominations

Thien's first book, Simple Recipes (Toronto: M&S, 2001; New York: Little, Brown, 2002), a collection of short stories, won the City of Vancouver Book Award, the VanCity Book Prize and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. It received the praise of Nobel Prize laureate Alice Munro, who wrote, "This is surely the debut of a splendid writer. I am astonished by the clarity and ease of the writing, and a kind of emotional purity."[1]

Her novel, Certainty (Toronto: M&S, 2006; New York: Little, Brown, 2007; London: Faber, 2007), has been published internationally and translated into 16 languages.[2] It won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Ovid Festival Prize[3] and was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize[4] for Fiction.

Her second novel, Dogs at the Perimeter (Toronto: M&S, 2011; London: Granta Books, 2012) was a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2014 International Literature Award - Haus der Kulturen der Welt.[5] The novel won the 2015 de:LiBeraturpreis, awarded by the Frankfurt Book Fair and recognizing works of fiction from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Shortlisted authors for the 2015 Prize included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Shani Boianjiu, and NoViolet Bulawayo.[6]

Her short story, "The Wedding Cake", was shortlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story.[12]

Her 2016 novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction,[13] and the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.[14] In advance of publication in the United States, it was named to the fiction longlist for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction.[15]

Personal Life

She is the common-law partner of novelist Rawi Hage.[16] 

Bibliography

Simple Recipes — 2001

The Chinese Violin — 2002

Certainty — 2006

Dogs at the Perimeter — 2011

Do Not Say We Have Nothing — 2016

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Sugars, Cynthia. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature. New York: University of Oxford Press, 2016. (p. 71, 80, 421, 463, 574, 892)

574: She is primarily known for her novels and short stories that deal with the diasporic histories of Asian communities.