I've just read
Wayne Yang's "
Nana Chen Interview" over at his blog,
Eight Diagrams.
Nana Chen, current e-Marginalia contributor and former travel editor par excellence, offers up some telling responses to
Yang's prying questions.
She offers an uninhibited snapshot of her itinerant existence:
"I left Taiwan when I was six. From then on, there were very feel constants in my life. As children we had no TV for many years and we rarely saw our parents. Having so much time to ourselves, it was natural to be creative. I rebelled against school, so that gave me even more time to get bored. As a result, I started knitting when I was seven, cooking at eight, gave my brother a horrendous afro perm at 11, got my first camera from a garage sale at 13 - just some of the things I remember doing. On weekends, I'd take pictures of my cousins and my brother while they posed in fashion disasters that I created each week. That was so exciting for me. The same year I started taking pictures, some girls at school were exchanging notebooks they'Â’d decorate the covers of, so I decorated one and suddenly became very popular..."
Born in Taipei (and currently back in Taipei),
Nana has lived in the Philippines, Chile, Argentina, and the United States. Across the wandering years she directed her creativity more and more towards photography, painting and writing of which she says, "I suppose writing was a sane and acceptable way to talk to myself." It's intriguing to read those words from her since I've long felt like Nana's photography and painting are a sort of internal conversation. They're dynamic and filled with life as if the subject is not frozen in time but merely framed for improved visibility.
Or perhaps that should be, "e-Margonaut Sitings!"
As you know, we love wanderers, adventurers, flaneurs, meanderers and basically all travelers who are as interested in the journey as the destination. And we're especially keen on celebrating e-Margonauts who inspire us to get off our duffs and plunge into that technicolor tapestry of otherness waiting outside our doors.
So it's with unchecked enthusiasm that I introduce to you a couple of intriguing wanderers who've fluttered across our radar. Although both favor similar monikers - 