Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talk began thirty years ago as midnight journaling to puzzle out a budding romance between a fortyish, Asian American single mother and a twenty-something white man. The personal experiment has stood the test of time, but the larger social battle for equality and respect between women and men is still being waged, one day at a time, one person at a time.
Many men don’t have words to express what’s deepest in their hearts. Lover or husband, father or son, employer or co-worker—each has different styles of wordlessness and different reasons for it. In today’s polarized world, breaking through the silence is essential, especially across divisions of race, class, generation, culture, or religion.
Shizue Seigel is a Japanese American writer, visual artist and arts activist who has supported 500+ writers and artists of color with workshops, events and publications since 2015 through her arts organization Write Now! SF Bay. Her nine books include books on the Japanese American experience and five Write Now! SF Bay anthologies. Her poetry, memoir and personal essays have been published in journals and anthologies such as Ginsoko, Porter Gulch Review, Colossus:Body, Memoir Magazine, Soundings East, Persimmon Tree, Away Journal, sPARKLE + bLINK, and others. She is a five-time VONA/Voices fellow whose work has been supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, Academy of American Poets, California Arts Council, California Humanities, Zellerbach Family Foundation and others.