In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Gen Del Raye
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Gen Del Raye
In “Home Burial”, your short story published in Volume 24, the speaker’s grandmother attends the funeral of a man she worked for whose job was to recommend men in the village to draft in the war. How did the idea for this story originate?
I had already written several stories involving the character of the grandmother, and in researching one of them I came across an interview with a man named Maeda Eiichi who had been put in charge of delivering draft letters in his hometown when he was just sixteen years old. This is the same age that my own grandparents were in 1945. They lived through the war in a village that is very similar to the one described in my story. My grandfather tried to enlist, which would have been tantamount to a death wish in the final year of the war, but failed the physical exam. It would have been someone like Yashima, the man who works in the village office in my story, who would have had the final say and, in effect, saved my grandfather’s life.
One of the strange things about reading first-person accounts of the war is realizing how young many people were when they were forced into taking actions that would dictate the course of another person’s life. For example, Tago Kyōtarō, who described his wartime experiences to the Asahi Shimbun in 2020, was only nineteen when he was put in charge of writing deployment orders for kamikaze bombers in his air division in Taiwan. Seventy-five years later, sitting at his writing desk at home, the weight of what he’d done was so large in his memory that he was able to recreate the exact wording of those deployment orders on a sheet of paper for reporters. I was drawn to the idea of a character who delivers draft letters because it seemed to be an example of this where the consequences were particularly personal and immediately apparent: the delivery person would have to walk up to a person who was often a neighbor or acquaintance and, after saying a few rehearsed lines, hand over the document that would upend their lives. In the interview with Maeda Eiichi, he estimates that he delivered the draft to around 60 people in his small village, and that only about half survived the war. This was a time when, as was made famous in Hanamori Yasuji’s long poem 見よぼくら一銭五厘の旗 (“Look Upon Our One-and-a-Half Sen Flag”), the running joke in the military was that a person’s life was only worth one and a half sen, the price of a postage stamp, because each dead soldier could be replaced with a single draft letter. The grim reality, of course, was that the military was exempt from the cost of postage and, in fact, draft letters were free.
The grandmother is also responsible in this process of war; she was the one who notified the village men, and she also notified the women when their loved ones were killed. You wrote the line “So much was asked of her” which is a simple sentence, but a very delicate and telling way to describe this character. Can you tell us a little bit about how you created such a complex woman who is pulled into many directions of servitude? What was it like creating her?
Thank you for this question. I’m glad the line you highlighted read as strongly to you as it did to me. My idea in this story was to explore the ways in which the very people who were most victimized by the war were often asked to become culpable in the suffering of others. So I think the complexity of the grandmother’s character has a lot to do with the complicated situations into which many people were placed during this time. As a survivor of the firebombing of Osaka in March of 1945, the grandmother in my story is intimately familiar with how the burdens of war have often fallen disproportionately on ordinary civilians. But when she flees the city to the relative safety of a small village in the mountains, and the man who ordinarily delivers draft letters in the village is immobilized by an injury, her status as an outsider makes her the perfect candidate to become his assistant.
One thing that surprised me in my research was how much control local officials had over the draft process. It was essentially left up to people like Yashima, the grandmother’s boss in my story, to decide which and how many of his neighbors would be fast-tracked for conscription, what roles they would fill, and how much persuasion would be used to convince boys aged fifteen to seventeen, who were allowed to join the military but exempt from the draft, to enlist voluntarily. This was a secret at the time, but has become widely known partly thanks to the work of Debun Shigenobu, a former draft-delivery person who has written and spoken extensively about the draft process. After the surrender in August of 1945, people like Yashima and the grandmother in my story were often forced to reckon with the ways in which they had been complicit in allowing the war to go on for as long as it did, but of course this complicity wasn’t limited to people like them; so many people allowed the war to happen and continue to happen whether through concrete actions like building balloon bombs (a type of bomb that was designed to target civilians) at munitions factories or through intangibles like publicly voicing their support of the war effort—one of the big differences with Yashima and the grandmother was that their complicity was harder to forget because the people impacted by their actions were easily identifiable and close at hand.
Every time I’ve read your story, in my mind I see a seed that ruptures and splits, and this slow unfurling of truth spills out. Your story requires patience from the reader because time moves both quickly and slowly, but it’s not a story that relies heavily on plot elements. Did you have to employ a lot of patience while writing and revising in order to achieve a consistent pace throughout?
I usually rewrite stories rather than revise them, and for this story I ended up writing several versions in different styles and from different points of view before I arrived at the final one. So in that sense this story required a lot of patience, and especially belief that all the failed rewrites would eventually lead to a story that works. I think partly because of how long I had been writing in the world of the story, a lot of the things that are revealed in this final version were already known to me, and some were things that I discovered in the process of writing them down. The pacing and tension of the story were things I struggled with, but I tried to believe that so long as I could convey how deeply the grandparents care about each other in the story, that this would do a lot of the work of keeping readers engaged and invested in the outcome.
Without going into too much detail for people who haven’t read your story yet, what does forgiveness for the grandmother look like?
I think the forgiveness she is afforded is always temporary, whether this is in the sense of the grandfather forgiving her or the grandmother forgiving herself. I wish it were different, but I think that’s her reality. On the other hand, there is the long history of kindness that the grandmother and grandfather have shared, the way that they have devoted so much of their lives to caring for each other, and this is a testament to the fact that if she hasn’t exactly been forgiven for what she did, she has at least become more than that version of herself in a deep-rooted and enduring way.
In the past two years, the world has experienced a lot of upheaval and turmoil. Has this impacted your creative process, and if so, how?
For various reasons having to do with the pandemic and also the vagaries of my citizenship, I haven’t seen my parents in person since January of 2020. And even my parents, who live in Japan, haven’t been able to visit my grandparents, who have been hospitalized for much of the pandemic, for nearly two years. It was a strange experience, to write a familiar setting in this story, from such a long distance away and during a time when, for much of it, I believed that I was barred from going home.
You also write poetry. How do these two genres intersect in your writing? When you have an idea for a new project, what makes you decide its form is better suited for a story or a poem?
My initial inspiration to write a story or poem tends to arrive in the form of a sentence. The form the piece takes often depends on the pacing of that sentence: if it needs to be read slowly rather than quickly, I will usually end up writing it as a poem. I love poems that are structured as stories, and prose that rhymes or (however briefly) holds and maintains a meter. I think poetry often has a wider scope than fiction, in that poems can address ideas and arguments about the world that can’t easily be reframed in terms of character and plot, although sometimes flash fiction, which I also write, can be a way to bring more of those poetic concerns into the world of fiction.
What projects are you working on now?
I’m working on finishing a short story collection that will include this piece. I’m trying to write one last story to complete the collection, although I started telling myself that a few stories ago now, so who knows if that will turn out to be true.
Gen Del Raye is half Japanese and was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. Currently, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best Small Fictions, Best New Poets, and Poetry Northwest, among others. You can learn more about Gen and his work at his website.
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Heather A. Warren
In The Field: Conversations With Our Contributors—Heather A. Warren
We selected a phrase from a line in your poem “What Wounds Become”, which acts in conversation with the poet torrin a. greathouse, as the subtitle of Volume 24 because it perfectly embodies thematic and imagistic elements in this issue from a multitude of contributors. What does the line “what becomes of a ghost still living” mean to you?
I think about the concept of Ghost as an occurrence of the past that I cannot see with my eyes. But it’s possible, I can feel a Ghost’s presence with my body. “a ghost still living” is something of the past that continues to be very real – and what can we do to move past what haunts us? This ghost is something still real to the body.
In my poem “What Wounds Become,” I also saw the ghost as a past identity – a gendered identity. I am trying to move past that to be who I am – yet that ghost still lives through the perception and actions of others.
I love the duality of meaning in “Clipped”, the second poem we published of yours in Volume 24. I noticed that the concepts of split binaries and performativity are often represented in your work, both here in Vol. 24 and in other publications. This makes me curious about how you see the world. Can you tell us how you approach thinking about or making sense of something that contains multitudes?
Alongside my artistic life, I have worked in mental health / social services for almost a decade. I want to do my best to be a pro-active learner and to meet people where they are at. I think what I have discovered so far in this particular type of work – is that maybe sometimes, I cannot make sense of something at all. But I do my best, to approach my thinking from different angles and lenses when there’s a complex subject.
How does the act of writing allow one to process, and perhaps, rehabilitate a wound? Writing on any subject of trauma can be another form of that trauma; do you have advice that you can share with other writers on writing about what wounds them? 
For me, the act of creating is a therapeutic process. Sometimes I set out to write about a specific topic – and then suddenly, I am surprised to discover that I am re-writing a wound. When I re-write a personal trauma, I want to transform it, claim my own healing and this process is empowering for me. I really value art-making as a relational process – I never want to be isolated in my practice and I want to write or play music with the intention of building community as its end product. My experiences are in relation to others, my process is in relation to others, and the finished performance (even on the page) is in relation to others. Certain poets like torrin a. greathouse provide visibility that I never had in reading poetry – I am able to know that I am not alone and I hope others feel the same when they read my writing too.
There are some personal experiences I have had that I am not ready to write about – and may never write about. And that’s okay. I wonder sometimes if there’s a trend in the art/literary world that pressures – especially marginalized folx – to produce content relating to their trauma. My advice would be to approach trauma subjects in your craft with the intention of benefiting in a therapeutic way – and not succumbing to any pressures to create anything you don’t want to.
The past two years have brought about a lot of collective and individual upheaval. Has this impacted your creative process?
The past two years have been traumatic and harsh in its difficulty for so many people. I have felt very anxious and isolated and it’s been really tough to feel motivated to write or play music. But that’s okay! We are still living through a global pandemic and I hope that everyone can give themselves permission to do what they need to do. I really had to confront some personal realizations about equating self-worth with producing.
What projects are you working on right now?
My debut collection Binded is forthcoming with Boreal Books / Red Hen Press and I have been working on the copy-editing process! Because the past two years have been so tough for so many, I have been trying to have fun! I am working on a chapbook of really silly poems about my dogs. I am also playing around with beat-box poetry, making weird sounds into my microphone with intentions of a sound art poetry album. This is in collaboration with a friend and the working title is A Parrot With Teeth.
Heather A. Warren (they/them) is a poet and musician from Fairbanks, Alaska. Their writing and music is featured on the full-length album Mother Carries, by Harm. Warren is a 2019 Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award recipient, and their first poetry collection, Binded, is forthcoming from Boreal Books / Red Hen Press. Warren received their MFA in creative writing from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and they are currently finishing a master’s in social work with the University of New England online.
A Conversation With Kao Kalia Yang—WSR Contributing Creative Nonfiction Editor
What are the types of essays you would like to see in Volume 25?
I want to see essays from a diverse array of perspectives on a wide range of issues in Volume 25. I want to cull from talent from different communities and put together exciting contributions that will push creative and craft boundaries in necessary directions.
What is an ideal submission for you? What would set a submission apart from the others for you?
I’m a generous reader. I am not coming to this particular role with any fixed ideas in mind. I love powerful writing that surprises, captivates, and creates opportunities for both the writer and reader in the experience.
Who are some writers you admire? OR What are some individual poems/stories/essays that you admire?
At the moment, I’m reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and I am underlining lots of things because I’m excited by elements of the writing, the integrity of the ideas, and the wisdom that has been so thoughtfully distilled and communicated. I appreciate the love of language that Ocean Vuong and Mai Der Vang carry and share in their works. I love Shannon Gibney’s fierce honesty on the page and in person. Sun Yung Shin’s intellect is dazzling.
Is there a form of literature that you find most rewarding to read?
I am a writer of prose but I have a deep fascination with poetry. Poetry is like a flower in the world. I love all the things that bloom.
Name three books that could be used to define you as an editor?
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, and Quilting by Lucille Clifton.
What current journals or presses do you admire, and why?
Graywolf Press, Milkweed, and Coffee House Press are all making incredible contributions to American literature by bringing works in translation, publishing innovative voices that are pushing against the mainstream forces at play.
What projects or pieces are you working on now?
I am neck-deep in a memoir about my mother titled Return of the Refugee. It is a book that’s been simmering inside for a long time. I’m ready to get it into the world. I’ve just finished a draft of a fictional work for younger readers titled The Diamond Explorer about a Hmong boy on the Minnesota prairie, a boy who is destined to become a great shaman but he doesn’t know how. I’ve a children’s picture currently being shopped titled Waiting for Bloom about a rose garden planted in a pandemic.
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer. She is the author of the memoirs The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang is also the author of the children’s books A Map Into the World, The Shared Room, The Most Beautiful Thing, and Yang Warriors. She co-edited the ground-breaking collection What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and garnered four Minnesota Book Awards. Kao Kalia Yang lives in Minnesota with her family, and teaches and speaks across the nation. https://kaokaliayang.com
A Conversation With Ed Bok Lee—WSR Contributing Poetry Editor
What are the types of poems you would like to see in Volume 25?
Poems that feel like microcosms of something larger.
What is an ideal submission for you? What would set a submission apart from the others for you?
When you make chocolate chip cookies, the most important thing is that you are making them exactly the way you think a chocolate chip cookie should taste and feel in the mouth. Make the chocolate chip cookie you want to eat and can’t get anywhere else. Your dream cookie. So too with poems, except poems can be even gooier, if that’s your thing.
Who are some writers you admire?
Lately, I really admire the poets in Myanmar who protested the coup in that country this past year. Some lost their lives, some have been arrested for giving voice to the people’s frustration, anger, hurt, fear, and power. I don’t have a type of poem I love most, but I was reading and listening to some of the poems by these “street” poets in Myanmar, and the story they individually and collectively tell is so powerful and timeless. There were many different types of poems: devotional, satirical, avant garde, political, confessional, absurdist, etc. etc. Without romanticizing things, it seems to me that any poem that can get you jailed or killed is a poem that every single person still free in the world ought to read.
Is there a form of poetry/fiction/creative nonfiction that you find most rewarding to read?
No. Literature is a forest; the more diversity of forms and subject matters, the more beautiful and healthy and grand the symphony.
Name three books that could be used to define you as an editor?
On any given day, this would probably change. Today, it’d be: The Upanishads. Anything by Yuri Herrera. And, because it’ll be coming out with Rain Taxi Press in just a couple of weeks, Smiling in an Old Photograph: Poems by Kim Ki-taek, which I worked on as both a translator and editor.
What current journals or presses do you admire, and why?
Every single one of them. Everyone involved is doing it first and foremost out of a passion for books and literature. Also, just like how I like my coffee and vegetables and eggs, I really admire local journals and presses who put a lot of energy into working to make the social soil they exist in as rich and fertile as possible, then spanning outward from there. Coffee House Press, whom I know most intimately, is a stellar example.
What projects or pieces are you working on now?
I’m always writing poems toward a next book. Lately, I’m also working on what might be considered lyric essays. “Pandemic Love” coming out this month in a new anthology: We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. Again, I also co-translated and edited a chapbook of poems from the original Korean, which is due out in mid-October from Rain Taxi, as I mentioned above. And then there’s The Uncommon Speech of Paradise: Poems on the Art of Poetry, due out at the end of September. Some work of mine is in it. So I’ll be doing readings this October and November for those things.
Photo credit: Ted Hall
Ed Bok Lee is the author most recently of Mitochondrial Night. Honors for his books include the American Book Award, Minnesota Book Award, Asian American Literary Award (Members’ Choice), and PEN/Open Book Award, among others. He attended kindergarten in Seoul, South Korea, and teaches Fine Arts at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. You can learn more about Ed and his work at his website.
A Conversation With Mona Susan Power—WSR Contributing Fiction Editor
Mona Susan Power is the contributing fiction editor for Volume 25. Below is an interview conducted with her via email exchange.
What are the types of stories you would like to see in Volume 25?
Authenticity is so important to me. When I used to teach writing I would encourage students to find the truth of their fiction. Sometimes we have great plans for our characters, we show up with agendas, specific thematic ground we want to cover. But then as we put our plans into action on the page, some events ring hollow and don’t quite work. To serve the fiction we have to set aside our own choices and allow characters to dictate what they’ll do, what they want to say. I’ve learned to grant my characters a kind of agency that exists beyond my original intentions. I’m most impressed with fiction that feels so true; the world around me falls away and I step into the pages with the utter conviction that what’s happening there is real, and couldn’t have happened any other way.
What is an ideal submission for you? What would set a submission apart from the others for you?
There has to be “juice,” urgent creative energy that comes from a compelling voice or image or situation. I don’t mean flashy—the energy can be quiet. I’m a writer who quickly puts down a book or story if it doesn’t demand my attention, or coax me with a gorgeous line or description. There’s so much to read in the world and so little time!
Who are some writers you admire? OR What are some individual poems/stories/essays that you admire?
Many of the voices that first made me admire the ability to tell an amazing story or to use language in a powerful way, were people from the Native community of Chicago who weren’t writers. They used captivating metaphors, dramatic tension, hilarious humor. But I was also a person of the book, coming from a family of voracious readers. I adored fairytales, and Alice in Wonderland. As an adult I admire so many writers: Louise Erdrich, LeAnne Howe, Ernestine Hayes, Kelli Jo Ford, Alice Munro, Sheila O’Connor, Maureen Aitken, Ire’ne Lara Silva. The list could fill a book!
Is there a form of literature that you find most rewarding to read?
Not really. My tastes are very eclectic in both literature and music. Probably my least favorite form is Experimental Literature, though there are pieces here and there I absolutely admire. Work that focuses purely on form tends to leave me cold because from the outset I see the magician’s hand at work, and can’t stop seeing it. Therefore I never believe.
Name three books that could be used to define you as an editor?
I honestly don’t know how to answer this question. While I clearly edit all the time when I’m writing, I don’t think in terms of “editing.” I’m an intuitive writer who is most effective when I surrender to the Flow and get out of my own way. I edit by reading the work aloud, and it’s my ear and heart, more than my head, that step in to smooth whatever jars, whatever feels false or incomplete. This is true for how I respond to other authors’ books as well – how I process what works or doesn’t work for me is more intuitive than cerebral. I operate on instinct.
What current journals or presses do you admire, and why?
I’m so grateful for the existence of Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought, which discovers unpublished indigenous authors as well as showcasing the works of those who are already established.
Water~Stone Review, The Paris Review, Granta, and Ploughshares are favorites because there’s always a wondrous surprise in the pages, a voice that’s new and compelling to me.
What projects or pieces are you working on now?
I just finished writing a novel that came as a surprise. I was working on another novel, Harvard Indian Séance at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, which follows the adventures of five Native students at Harvard who are about to graduate. My creative writing was on pause since I’d broken a shoulder and was typing one-handed for a couple of months. As I worked to regain mobility I wrote flash fiction pieces (one winning a ghost story contest which paid a month’s rent!). Once I could type for longer periods of time I launched into a new novel inspired by the experiences of three generations of girls in my family. I felt compelled to cover this ground. Each day I wrote a few pages and in a handful of weeks I had a completed book. (This doesn’t happen to me, I usually take forever!) What was eerie is that a few days after finishing the novel which focuses in part on the horrific experience of Native children in the Indian Boarding School system, the news broke about the discovery of a mass grave of indigenous children at the Kamloops Residential School in Canada. Tragic discoveries of these graves at Indian Boarding Schools have continued since then, both in the U.S. and Canada. I now understand what made the subject matter of my fiction feel so imperative. This is the time for stories that have been swept under the rug or judged to be exaggerated fictions, to come forward.
Mona Susan Power is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and a native Chicagoan. She’s the author of three books of fiction, The Grass Dancer (awarded the PEN/Hemingway Prize), Roofwalker, and Sacred Wilderness. Her short stories and essays have been widely published in venues including: The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Granta. Her fellowships include an Iowa Arts Fellowship, James Michener Fellowship, Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellowship, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, USA Artists Fellowship, McKnight Fellowship, and Native Arts and Cultures Fellowship. She lives in Saint Paul, MN.