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May 2005 The Business of Words
by Alice Laplante Victoria Chang taps her business background to mix prose and verse in a dual writing career.Victoria Chang, MBA ’98, lives a richly rewarding dual life. On the one hand, she’s a researcher for the Business School, using her business training to interview executives at firms and nonprofit organizations and describe the results in case studies for use in the School’s curriculum. On the other hand, she’s a successful poet and literary editor, with one highly praised anthology under her editor’s belt and another book—her own creative work, already garnering prestigious prizes—to be released shortly. Chang’s recently released poetry anthology, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, published by the University of Illinois Press, celebrates the work of 28 young poets of Asian descent. The poetry of what Chang calls the “first generation” of Asian Americans was primarily about culture, identity, family, politics, and ethnicity. But with the second generation—the work of the poets collected in the anthology—anything goes, she said. They tend to be “bolder” about previously taboo subjects such as sexuality, and write less about ethnic or political issues, instead taking on more mainstream American themes. “The community is much more diverse than I had originally thought,” she said. Chang’s own book of poetry, titled Circle, is scheduled to be published this spring by the Southern Illinois University Press, after winning first prize in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, the way that many, if not most, first books of poetry get published today. Her poetry also has been published in The Nation, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Kenyon Review, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. One of her poems was selected to be included in poetry’s biggest anthology, Best American Poetry 2005 (Scribner). After earning a bachelor’s degree in Asian studies at the University of Michigan and a master’s in Asian studies at Harvard, Chang worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking and Booz Allen & Hamilton in management consulting—“the traditional corporate jobs, the things that MBAs do,” she said. But she continued writing poetry and taking poetry workshops. Upon receiving her MBA, she went to work for Guidant, a medical device company, and then an Internet company that didn’t survive the dot-com crash. Four years ago, she accepted a job as a case study writer at the Business School, something that has turned out to be “a really wonderful experience,” she said. “I have to be very professional and talk the talk, think very quickly on my feet, and efficiently encapsulate a company’s environment and strategic issues. All the things you learn to do in business school I’ve been able to apply to writing case studies. It’s also very intellectually stimulating, and I’ve always enjoyed that aspect more than the actual practice of business.” Chang also appreciates the flexibility of working from home and notes that the eminent poet Wallace Stevens worked as an insurance executive. “I think there’s a misconception that you can’t simultaneously be interested in business and be a poet or do something creative,” she said. “I’m not a traditional MBA,” she added, “but I learned so much at Stanford and met the most interesting people, and was inspired by the quality of the professors and senior managers and everyone around me. … You learn things that you never forget your entire life, no matter where your career path and life goals take you.” Limitsby Victoria Chang The brown-headed cowbird sleuths like a witch “Limits” published in Circle (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005) |
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