She speaks in an invented dialect that is really a mash-up of extant and extinct English accents. The book is part tour of the city, part tale of her past life as dissident in Korea. The book is about a tour guide who used to be a former South Korean dissident and works at a resort city set in the future. It was a collision of different obsessions I had at the time that managed to plait themselves into a narrative. Could you explain the project and tell us how it developed?ĬPH: I never intended to write a project book.
P&W: Dance Dance Revolution is what I consider a "project" book, one that centers around a specific framework, narrative, or conceit. I could go on and on, but to put it all simply, I stole the title of the game because there is a revolution in the book. I was also thinking the dynamism of the game and the title’s double-verb etymology related back to the dynamism I was attempting to create in the book's language and world. I loved the cultural zigzagging, which seemed appropriate since the book has much of that misplaced cultural bartering happening in the imagined city. I was fascinated by the origin of the game-by the fact that the Japanese appropriated Western dance moves to turn into a video game, a game which was then imported back to the West with explosive success. I abandoned the poem, but I kept coming back to the broader concepts of the game, its phrasing, and realized the title was an appropriate fit for the narrative I was creating for my new collection. I initially wrote an irreverent poem that was inspired by the game. Poets & Writers Magazine asked Hong about the title of her new collection and its significance.Ĭathy Park Hong: I can tell you it has nothing to do with my aptitude for the video game! Dance Dance Revolution, if you’re not aware, is a kind of “Simon Says” video game with a dance pad where you follow the arrows with your footsteps, and if you're a whiz at it-which I clearly am not-it looks like you’re break dancing. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Hong grew up in Los Angeles and received her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and a Village Voice Fellowship for Minority Reporters. Hong’s first book, Translating Mo'um (Hanging Loose Press, 2002), won a Pushcart Prize.
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