That realization that over the course of my conscious, known life, I had spent less than 24 hours with my mother, did not occur to me until very late in the writing and editing process. That realization changed the writing of the book, it changed the arc of the book, it made the book what it is. Which is wild, because it’s a very simple thing: how much time have I actually spent with her?
Community has always been important to me, both personally and professionally. I think that’s a value I picked up from my parents, with a healthy boost from my own extroverted tendencies. I also spent my early career as a magazine editor, which is an extremely collaborative job. So all of these things naturally affect my writing practice now that I am self-employed.
I love writing about animals and nature. I write about animals as well in my short fiction, and it just occurred to me that Dolores is an octopus. Octopuses change color. I love octopuses and am fascinated by them. That was where I went initially with that image. Then I started thinking about who it was that was telling us this, who it is that’s observing this. Why is she interested in this?
I think that’s kind of the point of an MFA. There are obviously a lot of reasons for an MFA, but one thing it affords you is this community of writers to say, “Oh my god, I love your work. Can I talk to you about this? Can we talk and trade work?” All that is invaluable. I didn’t realize how much of writing is being with other writers and reading each other’s work and talking about each other’s work.
I birthed twins this year. That’s how it has been with three of my poetry collections, each written alongside a novel. They weren’t published together, but Jubilee and Landscape with Headless Mama are twins, Trinity Sight and Rosa’s Einstein are twins, and Belly to the Brutal and River Woman, River Demon are twins. In both the poetry collection and in the novel, I am healing bloodlines of mother-daughter.
I was nineteen, the same age as Mary Shelley when she initially wrote Frankenstein. I was a sophomore in college, and I read Frankenstein in a Romantic Lit course. I was drawn to it on three levels. As a biracial Asian person, I was really taken with the Creature’s story, as are many people of color, because the Creature is clearly defined as Other.
I feel like I took a relatively non-traditional path to where I’m at right now. I think it involved a little bit of ignorance early on in my writing career. When I say that, I mean, I never planned on being a writer in the traditional sense of like, “I want to get a book published.” I wanted friends, I wanted to engage with people, and I wanted community.
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