FICTION | NONFICTION | POETRY |
TRANSLATION
SUBMIT STORE DONATE OPPORTUNITIES INTERVIEWS WRITERS WE PUBLISH
Horror is not ambiguous and it's clear purpose is to scare. I find that clarity, freeing. It is as if by submerging yourself in a horror story, you will be unmade, but you can also re-emerge, different than before, if you choose. The overused adage is true: we imagine horrors in order to cope with real ones.
Bonnie Chau reflects on being Asian-American, the ideas and motivations of representation and visibility, the Amanda Gorman translation debate, and translating out of whiteness.
“The universe has been listening to my conversations, threading everything together. It began last April, when I picked up Swann’s Way for the third time in ten years. Each time it surprised me that the resonant moment everyone seems to know about — the moment when the narrator eats a madeleine with tea, and the aroma, the feel of it in his mouth, the motion of dipping and then bringing it to the lips, sets loose a slough of tender and animate memory — happens quickly, on page 60. Each time I’ve thought maybe no one else has ever finished this book either.”
“I write poems, and mostly my work doesn’t weave itself whole. There are no rhymes; no child would ever demand to hear it during snack. If I have anything resembling a signature move, it is to write something and then write an additional part—sometimes this becomes the introduction, sometimes the conclusion—that explains why the other sections don’t hold together.”
As we moved through the “Know Thyself” syllabus, I grappled to articulate the elements that went into knowing myself. I hammered away at myself like an interrogator. Does it help, knowing that everything you do is fodder for future stories? Are new experiences better for providing you with new material, or scarier for removing your history and the foundation of your stories thus far?
