Product Description

On the edge of adulthood, self-discovery, coming out; in university towns, Europe, Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, the protagonists of the short stories in Calendar Boy unravel cultural heritage, community, identity on the road to - they hope - love, happiness and self-acceptance. Set around the globe, fifteen adventurous stories weave fictions with real-life smarts, guts and oomph underpinning them. In "How to Cook Chinese Rice," a recipe format - 10 Percent called it "the gay Like Water for Chocolate" - yields insight into what it's like to be young, Asian and queer in Canadian society. "Higher Learning" pitches a hormone-fuelled, Vancouver-bred, first-year university student into the alternate universe of a small Ontario community. A love triangle of sorts anchors "Maintenance," a story heavy with the ache of jealousy and unrequited desire. Throughout, Quan shifts gears effortlessly from street-smart colloquial voice to rapid-fire monologue to the bemused, exhilarated tone of immigrants new to Canada or to gay male culture. With one foot in urban Canadian life and the other in the global village, Calendar Boy will hit home even as it makes you see the world in new ways.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1703515 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From the Author
Objectives when I write? It's to observe and understand the world, to find my place in it, and to tell my story since others weren't telling it. Many stories were written to tackle not only prejudice within the gay community, but to tackle simplicity in any community. To counter all the ways that society expects individuals to either be all the same, or to remain within a particular identity or group. ... I want to tell stories that are specific but universal in our shared experiences of jealousy, love, friendship, and loneliness.

About the Author

Hailing from Vancouver, Andy Quan now makes his home in Sydney, Australia. An author, poet, singer, and songwriter, he has published three books: Calendar Boy, Slant, and Six Positions; nine tapes and two CDs. He contributes poetry and short stories to a variety of anthologies. A world traveller, he has lived in Ecuador, Denmark, Belgium and England.

Customer Reviews

Funny, inventive and punchy: this one's a keeper
A few years ago, a Yale graduate named Eric Liu published The Accidental Asian, an eloquent series of essays tracing the young author's quest to come to grips with his Oriental heritage after growing up under the Euro-dominant influence of continental USA. That book now seems rather quaint beside the Canadian-authored Calendar Boy. It isn't just Andy Quan's value-added "otherness" of queer sexuality that gives this book more edge - although some of the bitchy irony that drives these stories surely arises from that. It's rather that Quan is a lot funnier about cultural disharmony, less forgiving of polite society and more aggressive in taking the piss out of PC earnestness. In "What I Really Hate", there's as much disdain for the cha-cha-cha-ing Chinese dancers as for the drooling rice queens. His take on fetishism is refreshingly inventive, as in "How to Cook Chinese Rice" and "Hair", and yet there's a haunting sort of beauty in the darker subject of a Japanese girl's attempted suicide ("Almost Flying"). With a disciplined, poet's eye - short, punchy sentences and well-rendered visuals - this book's a keeper (review originally published on Red Salamander's website.)

When I grow up, I want to be Andy Quan
In reviews of this book, much is made of the author's race and sexual orientation; little has been said about his talent for fashioning words and sentences into crystalline, jewel-like stories. Quan explores themes of self-discovery and the search for identity among shifting layers and labels, and accumulates a number of exotic literary passport stamps along the way. This is fiction the way fiction ought to be written. Quan's prose is poignant, taut, and lucid: he finds just the right way to put things, free from excess, and achieves small miracles with this minimalist technique. ... his writing is so transparent, non-writers overlook his technical skill to yap about the politics. This does the book a disservice. Check this one out. Andy's a hell of a storyteller, and the themes he explores speak to a broad range of human experience. I had to get a friend to send me this book from Canada well before it was available in the States, and it was worth the effort. This is a writer to watch.

A strong and witty debut
An excellent debut - I'd read Andy Quan's "How To Cook Chinese Rice" in an anthology several years ago, and it struck me as inventive, adventurous and very tightly written. This debut collection more than lives up to the promise.

Quan's writing is culturally aware and very smart, but also very playful and unafraid of quirk and humor, and throughout he creates worlds where a refreshing directness, and an occasional willingness to jab at topics most writers (or most gay men) would prefer to dance around makes each of these stories very tough, in the best of ways. The wonder of "On The Paris Metro," or the what-needs-to-be-said qualities of "What I Really Hate" are other high points - all-in-all, a strong debut.

I look forward to reading more of Quan's writing.

-David Alston