Publishers Weekly
★ 04/08/2024
This exhilarating debut essay collection from art curator Wu uses cultural artifacts as springboards to reflect on connection, sexuality, and the immigrant experience. In “A Model Childhood,” Wu recounts how he was inspired by artist Ken Okiishi to create an exhibition displaying the miscellany Wu’s parents had kept from his childhood, suggesting that the preservation of McDonald’s toys, piggy banks, and plushies stemmed from a scarcity mindset borne of his parents’ move from Myanmar to the U.S. in the late 1990s. Fashion designer Telfar Clemens’s “downmarket collaborations with brands like Budweiser, Eastpak, UGG, and White Castle” blur the line between high- and low-fashion and create the possibility of “a more progressive cultural class,” Wu argues in “For Everyone.” Several pieces meditate on the liberatory potential of dance, as in “Party Politics,” where Wu discusses how at raves created by queer people of color, “partying performs a dual, somewhat self-contradictory social function: it can let you perform an identity, and it can let you forget you have one at all.” Wu blends tender personal reflection with probing analysis of the works of Ching Ho Cheng and James Baldwin, among other artists and writers. Throughout, exegesis of Robyn’s music provides a thematic through line, expounding on what the pop star’s songs can teach listeners about staking one’s independence and finding joy amid sadness. This dynamic first outing heralds the arrival of a promising new talent. Agent: Clare Mao, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (June)
From the Publisher
I will say you won't want to leave. Simon Wu’s debut, Dancing on My Own, is a genius melding of art criticism, autobiography, personal essay, and travel writing. Even more, it is an invitation into the art world from Wu’s particular Asian-American positionality and consciousness as he determines his place within it. Here, the life lived reflects back its adjacency to generations past through meditations on visual art & culture. Attraction, desire, identity, whiteness, liberalism, "queer ecologies,” family, joy, defeat, and survival are all given close readings. Wu—an artist, curator, and writer—layers experiences like translucent curtains through which we see the landscape of a past in the present making its future. I didn't want the book to end as it built dimensions and created depth while moving closer and closer to a completed installation of Wu's dazzling mind. A must-read.” — Claudia Rankine, award-winning author of Just Us and Citizen
"Simon Wu manages to be both a shrewd critic and enthused aspirant of what passes for today’s cultural capital. Whether it’s ethically branded handbags, Asian American pastiche, initiatives for racial inclusion in museums funded by dark money, and the ever-increasing blurring of art and fashion, Wu unpacks it all with a disarming lack of cynicism that is both keen and refreshing." — Cathy Park Hong, New York Times bestselling author of Minor Feelings
“This exhilarating debut essay collection from art curator Wu uses cultural artifacts as springboards to reflect on connection, sexuality, and the immigrant experience. . . . This dynamic first outing heralds the arrival of a promising new talent.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A beautifully ecstatic history of our present, and what it means to seek freedom in the things, institutions, and, most importantly, people around us." — Hua Hsu, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Stay True
“[A] devourable collection of essays. . . .Wu’s myriad observations on art, queerness, identity, and the trap of capitalism are narrated with a similar unfussy self-awareness, brimming with humor and depth.” — Hyperallergic
“A neon-bright picture of gay nightlife, leftist class strivers, the seductions of the art world, and what Wu critically—but fondly—calls the ‘empty orchestra’ of Asian America. In fact, there he is now in his mesh coattails, striking the empty air.” — Andrea Long Chu, Pulitzer Prize–winning critic at New York magazine
"In this striking and inspiring collection of essays, Simon Wu shows how art defines us, how we anchor our identities in particular pieces of clothing, works of literature, exhibitions in galleries, parties in clubs. His perceptive voice, observant of every detail, guides us into a different kind of vision in which objects glow with significance. With an insider’s eye for the operation of the art world, Wu introduces us to a lesser-known and unjustly overlooked side of the New York City scene of the past decades, not just Keith Haring, but Tseng Kwong Chi and Ching Ho Cheng. Like a great mixtape (or a digital playlist), Dancing On My Own is a thoughtful and intimate act of curation." — Kyle Chayka, author of Filterworld
“Wu…weaves himself in and out of this bold collection. . . . These smart, sly essays will appeal to lovers of both pop and museum culture.” — Kirkus
“Taking his title from an anthem of steely defiance by the Swedish pop star Robyn, Simon Wu offers writings on art (from the mind of a critic, curator, and Art in America contributor) and such other topics as ‘the complicated sensation of the Telfar bag’ and ‘clutter in his mother’s suburban garage and its meaning for himself and his family.’” — Art in America
“The subtitle of this collection (Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy), is all I need to know to want it immediately. . . . [Wu] infuses these essays with his own interests, longings, and experiences, even as he stretches them beyond himself, asking what it means to love and create in such a fraught and constantly changing world.” — Book Riot
“Inspired by Swedish pop singer Robyn’s eponymous song, this genre-defying work takes unexpected detours through contemporary America, as well as from places further afield, weaving heady late-night encounters with reflections on the state of contemporary art, identity, and politics. . . . Wu invites readers to watch him groove at his most personal moments and to witness his feelings of lust, doubt, bliss, and innocence, while reminding us that being human, with all the joys and challenges that come with that, is ultimately what makes us.” — Art Asia Pacific
“A curator and writer, Wu’s playful consideration explores everything from raving to art-world drama to Bushwick fashion, breathing life into the tired tropes that sometimes weigh heavy in what he calls ‘Asian American-core’ writing.” — Interview Magazine
Kirkus Reviews
2024-02-29
A young writer riffs on family, race, fashion, dancing, and relationships.
Wu, who is involved in a variety of museum-curation projects, weaves himself in and out of this bold collection of seven densely packed personal essays. The title comes from a song by Swedish singer Robyn, who also appears throughout the text. “A Model Childhood,” focusing on his mother, ranges widely: clutter in his family home and the need to organize it and let stuff go; getting along with relatives; video games; family shopping at Costco; Maggie Lee’s film Mommy, about her mother’s passing; Ken Okiishi’s photographic collage Wish I Were Here; and an installation Wu put together of stuff from his parent’s house and his imagining of the closing party he’d give with dancing and Robyn singing. “For Everyone” is about “cultural consumption” and the author’s experience working with art and living artists as an intern at the Whitney Museum, while questioning whom museums are for. In the same piece, Wu expresses his desire to get a popular unisex Telfar bag made by a young Liberian American designer whom Wu then profiles. In “Vaguely Asian,” the author delves into what it means to be Asian through the lens of the art fashion collective CFGNY. At a music festival in New York City, Wu describes the dance floor environment as a “place you couldn’t resist and the one you attempted to avoid at all costs.” Among numerous other topics, the author explores his experiences with drugs; clubbing in Berlin; dating apps, Ching Ho Cheng’s psychedelic painting Chemical Garden and its place in “queer ecology”; and Tseng Kwong Chi’s “selfie’s” photo art. Wu closes with a wistful piece on his visit to Istanbul and James Baldwin’s time there.
These smart, sly essays will appeal to lovers of both pop and museum culture.
