Diaspora Dialogues

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Writers Spotlight

Insight, Experience & Meaning

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The work-in-progress explores the complexities of the Chinese-Vietnamese-Canadian diaspora and its entanglements with language and loss, family and ancestry. These themes are fairly new in my body of work as an artist, and were first explored in my performance-based collaborations with my mother and sister two years ago. I moved my artistic research into the terrain of poetry to explore how the medium of written language can provide new insight, experience, and meaning to the larger project.

I often approach writing and art making as research and start with a series of questions. This process often leads to more questions. The goal however is not necessarily to seek answers, but to engage deeper into the topic of inquiry.  I’m using the mentorship as an opportunity to explore and develop a poetics suited to my inquiry-based art making approach.

It’s hard for me to imagine where I will be in the next ten years in terms of career goals. What I can envision in the next decade is a more inclusive and diverse writing and publishing scene in Canada, where the ‘cultural appropriation debate’ is dead; teachers’ who teach literature by BIPOC authors are BIPOC themselves; and poetry continues to thrive as the next generation’s medium/weapon of choice.

In a perfect world I would not be the ruler. But if I were a ruler of some other world, a writer’s life would be…easier.

My biography will be written by a Chinese-Vietnamese female author born in the distant future, who will search for me, as I have searched for my ancestors.

The Joy of Curiosity

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I am used to tight deadlines and working under pressure. I am also a complete workaholic. I think the playwright program will allow me to allocate more time to myself and my writing, and give me the space to wrestle with big ideas on and off the page. It also gives me a huge confidence boost as an actor-creator and writer, knowing that there is support out there for young artists like me wanting to experiment.

At some point, I became increasingly comfortable with, and excited by, the theatrical possibilities of a one-man show. The first Canadian plays I ever read were the solos of Daniel MacIvor, which, I suppose, are now embedded somewhere in my psyche. This simple but significant decision–daring the audience to watch a single person on stage transforming in front of them–has continued to fuel the work. The goal to bring to light my privilege in spite of the current crisis in Venezuela, however, has always been (and will always be) crucial.

With so much uncertainty as a young artist, I decided to stop looking for answers to the questions my work poses and explores. I was not going to get any. I began answering questions with questions; a “joy of curiosity” that never really lets me get too comfortable – which I think is a terrifying and necessary place for a writer (or actor, or artist, or audience member, really) to be in.

I’m really grateful for Jiv’s encouragement to not set the structure of the piece too early. It’s an interesting piece to create, because it is composed of seemingly separate segments of writing that then need to be stitched together in a meaningful and logical manner. I’m really interested in writing “from the body” and self-directing – seeing what ideas and writing arise on my feet, in front of a mirror. Anything can happen.

Dramaturgy is such a broad term; everyone has their style. I appreciate Jiv’s ability to let me rant and spew ideas, while being able to condense it into thematic cores. Similar to my experiences with Guillermo Verdecchia and Djanet Sears (my previous and current playwriting teachers) having an outside eye reminds me that the work is never precious and there is always something universal.

My earliest memory of “theatre” as an audience member would have to be going to Catholic Mass. (It seems I learned something from a degree in Performance Studies!) My family was not “explicitly” artistic. In Venezuela, the Church is often a space for community, family, and healing, and I grew up around these sacred spaces. Now, at a more “reactionary” age, let’s call it, I’m questioning a lot of that faith that was imposed on me, including the whole performative aspect of it. I’ll let Chicho talk about that, too.

The Nuances of Desire

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Becoming a Diaspora Dialogues mentee and working with Shani Mootoo is a dream come true. In my creative writing training so far, I have often found myself stranded in classes and spaces that privileged white and straight perspectives. This is a time when I feel like I can write without constantly censoring myself.

The manageable scale of a short story is what drew me to write in that form to be honest. In terms of my writing process, I fill a notebook a month for now and then I harvest the cherries on a regular basis for interesting and workable starts.

The stories that I’m currently writing try to make sense of impossible desires that straddle chasms of gender, generation, race and class to find intimacy in an absence of shared language. They explore hopeful beginnings, ghostly endings, and stubborn attachments that often fail in the face of what is inherited. They stay loyal to cores that are constantly dissected and shaken up by an oppressive world. The light that they shed, on family, friendship and unruly love, is at once brutal and tender, irreverent and dark. The stories that I’m trying to write carve out spaces and imprint themselves onto landscapes and architectures that were not constructed with queer and trans of colour bodies in mind. They forage through the dirt in search of treasures to keep and share.

If I could choose anyone to write my story it would be the young Hanif Kureishi. Kai Cheng Thom!

In an ideal world, we would all do that thing called art. We would do other things, too: organize, care, nourish ourselves and others… Chances are, we are already doing all these things, but are not being recognized as writers and other artists because the mould of bodies and identities that are validated as such is just so narrow.

When I became a full-time academic, books morphed from my best friend into a chore. I stopped reading and writing creatively altogether. Ten years from now, I will have found ways to integrate creative writing into my everyday. Since I teach in a Faculty that has a community art practice focus, there is a real possibility that I will transform my day job into a site of creativity. And who knows, I might have a collection of short fiction or two out as well.

Writing To Discovery

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The feedback I’ve gotten from my previous instructors is that I need to “step into” my pieces more deeply. With my mentor I want to learn how to set up great scenes but also ones that carry a depth of meaning.

I get asked all the time what it’s like to wear the Niqab (face veil) and why I started. It’s a long-winded answer and I’m never quite satisfied with my response. Sometimes I tell myself I don’t need to answer the questions facing me about the veil…even though I’m fully aware of its foreignness in our society. And other times I am the one reflecting on my decision and what it means to me. I started this book as a quest for self-discovery and for it to serve as a personal reminder when my uncertainties creep in. I want to remember why I began and the ways the veil has shaped my life since. Hopefully by talking (or rather writing) myself through my journey other readers can gain a perspective of the life of a Muslim woman they’ve never had before.

My writing process being with me coming up with a prompt and all the things I want to talk about in that prompt. Then I write it and throughout the process I refer back to the prompt details to see if I’ve spoken about each. I find that writing about my experiences to be both painful and liberating. I don’t think the actual experiences are painful to relive but squeezing them out with close accuracy is the hard part. I think the feeling of relief at the end is worth it.

If I could choose one author to write a book about my life it would be Na’ima B. Roberts. She’s a writer and poet from the UK that I admire. Although she’s not well known to Canadian readers her writing reminds me of Thomas King and his subtle yet powerful voice. She’s Thomas King with the perspective of a Muslim woman.

If I ruled the world, I would make it so that writers would never work. They would never have to do anything except working on their craft and learning about the world. I would give writers a monthly allowance of $6,000 and their only mandate would be to stay focused and work on producing quality literature.

10 years from now I hope to have published 3-4 pieces of literature. I want to get a masters in Islamic civilization and bring the exciting period of 6th century to the 20th century into writing.

Inch by Inch, Line by Line

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The goal is to walk away with a final draft by the end of the program as such, to have my work reviewed by professionals in the industry is critical. Feedback on its creative and structural elements further improves my ability as a writer and the quality of my existing draft, through subsequent edits.

Originally a YA story when I began writing in 2001, my novel remained unfinished for years before I picked it up again in 2008. It has been slowly taking shape ever since. Occasionally I outline. I should do this more often because it can be quite helpful when you’re in a rut. More oft than not, I free write. This means I write whatever comes to me and as much of it as possible until I’m completely out of steam. Then, I’ll print, read and revise the hard copy before returning to the screen.

If I had to choose someone to write my story it would be George Elliot Clarke.

If I ruled the world, I suppose there would be more opportunities for writers to earn a steady income, though I’m not certain how exactly I would impose such a thing, even with all my power. 

Ten years from now, I imagine I’ve published three novels and a collection of creative non-fiction short stories, and have written multiples essays for various magazines. In addition, I’m teaching writing in some capacity, and am an advocate for mental health wellness, homelessness prevention and literacy. I have experienced a low point where feeling overwhelmed with doubt, I seriously considered a fulltime return to my ‘traditional’ job in the technology field. Although I’ve had many unexpected and rewarding experiences during my writing career thus far, one particular highlight kept me going. It’s the day I shared the good news with my family and friends – that I finally landed a publisher for my first novel. After which, I surprise them each with a signed copy, to their surprise and elation.

Capturing Continuities

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Late last year, I took a leave of absence from my Ph.D in History and began living as a writer. As part of this transition, I began journaling regularly and revisiting past journal entries dating as far back as to when I was 14 or 15 years old. Though the people and places varied from entry to entry, many of the themes remained consistent. Throughout my teenage years, twenties, and even now into my thirties, I’ve consistently found myself searching for ways to live in a world littered with contempt for Black bodies. This collection reflects the intersection of my personal search for meaning with my academic interest in contextualizing events and experiences in time.

I expect the mentorship to bolster my technical ability and increase my confidence in my decision-making. At present, I agonize over decisions about line breaks and titles. While some of this is part-and-parcel of writing poetry, it would be nice to approach these issues and others with intention rather than apprehension.

I have a tendency to pursue wildly ambitious projects and Portraits in Black Face is no exception. On one hand, it is extremely difficult to marry history and present. How do I speak to a history of (anti-) Blackness in Toronto given my positionality as cisgender, heterosexual millennial of Caribbean descent? I ask myself this question all the time; I represent a very particular voice in the telling of this story. On the other hand, I spent time looking at Contrast Newspaper (1969-1991) and it revealed many similarities between Black past(s) in Toronto and Black present(s). The continuities are there; it’s capturing them through image and text that is the challenge.

I fill the holes in my schedule with as much reading and writing as I can bear. I write on the train, I write in cafés, I recently wrote from a hospital bed. I read and write as much as possible. When I read I try to read slowly and with intention, noting sentences, words and ideas that are particularly well-crafted. I aim to analyze and internalize some of the skill and craft that went into the piece I’m reading. When I write, I get as much down as I can and then edit, edit, edit.

In a perfect world, writers would have financial stability, access to writing time and space, creative support, health benefits, and community. At present, writers have varying permutations of these things but they are far from being mainstays for most. Consequently, many writers end up playing a game of trade offs, compromising health for time or community for stability and so on. In a perfect world, this would not be so.

I would love Junot Diaz to write a novel about my life. His writing is so rich and steeped in nuance. He wrestles with questions of identity while blurring the lines between hero and villain, past and present.

In ten years, I would love to have a few books published and be part of network of writers committed to honing our skills and helping each other grow and flourish.

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