(CSA): A quick note to listeners before we begin: we had issues with Muriel's microphone that surfaced partway through this interview, so you might hear a little bit of distortion on her line after about the 20 minute mark. This Story Behind the Story. I’m your host, Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is poet Muriel Leung. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop, and the Community of Writers, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, and the Fairy Tale Review, among others. Her first book of poetry, Bone Confetti, won the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. Of it, one reviewer said, “It made the words into a bell, and the bell made me stop what I was doing.” Her newest collection, Imagine Us, The Swarm, will come out on May 25th, and it’s the topic of our conversation today. In it, Muriel contemplates the death of her own father and “reconciles a familial history of violence and generational trauma across intersections of Asian American, queer, and gendered experiences.” Muriel Leung, welcome to Story Behind the Story! Murieil Leung (ML): Thank you so much, Clara! I'm really excited. I also love that you're doing the air quotes that no one can see. Our own family history, which is accurate because that's exactly… it's complicated. (CSA): Thank you for making that visible to the audience. (Clara laughs) I’d like to start by doing something that I don't often do, which is asking you to describe your work, because it is so unlike anything else I've read. It's not just the way that you play with typography and white space, or the annotations you use, it just feels like its own unique form. So what are you looking to create when you write? (ML): Imagine Us, the Swarm started out, for me, as writing traditional essays; a fairly linear narrative. I just realized that the breadth of what I wanted to explore just couldn't fit that form. And so what came out of it were these… you know, I call them, “essays in verse.” You can call them lyrical essays, You can call them… some of these are more prose poems — essentially a hybrid of forms throughout the book. There's seven texts within this book that are constellated, and each one explores some different aspect of Asian American identity; From personal history with mental health, to larger collective histories (especially dealing with Asian American histories of racialized labor). Essentially trying to capture everything which I saw a very distinct connection between all these various aspects of Asian American identity. I just felt it all had to be there, but also it has to be somewhat legible in some way — at least to me, to the person who's reading it. And I want to find a way in which a book could hold that complexity, but also be something that you can hold, that makes something tangible. So that's the focus of my book: is to highlight the experiences of Asian American history, my personal history, and especially the experiences of the women and femmes in my family and in my community who are especially impacted by a lot of the forces that I explore throughout the book. (CSA): When you're creating a collection, of course, it brings a narrative into life, whether intentionally or not (though I think usually at least a little bit intentionally). What is the narrative that you are looking to create in this book? What's the through line? (ML): In thinking about how to order the different essays in verse in this book, I suppose, it started off with “this is to live several lives”: the long essay-in-verse that explores my relationship with my father, and how I came to understand labor from an early age, and how there is this long history of racialized labor in the US in which a lot of Chinese immigrants started off in the US working in very specific industries, the restaurant being one of them. For my father — being someone, then, who started working in the restaurants in the US in the 1970s and then came to own his own restaurant later in life — had always had this notion that if you work hard, you can succeed. He was very much committed to this idea of the “American Dream,” and that's very much “the model minority” myth that a lot of Asian Americans are sold on. I wanted to really explore that and consider the humanity of that pressure that he felt, and how eventually, I think — everything! All of this! — made him very sick. It causes me to then reflect on my own life and how I consider labor, and just even how I think about the body and the toll that this pressure has on Asian American bodies, just through and through. This pressure and that weight is something that I explore in the following essays in verse where I think through, ‘What does it mean to be a body that people are scared of? That people want to punish? That people want to violate because they think they can?’ And all the vulnerabilities of that: wrestling with ideas of then, ‘What does justice mean?’ Finding a place for that anger, and to feel like that is justified and that you can have that. Then finally arriving at the last section, which are a series of poems that aren’t titled, but are part of this section that I call, “When I Imagine All the Possibilities of the Swarm,” and each of these pieces begin with the refrain, “suppose.” It's a way of, I guess, imagining a different future for the things that we can't change; that I can't change. It's just trying to imagine what would it look like if this happened another way? How can we reinvent these moments? Almost like a speculative tool, like, how can we alter our past with just the shareability of our imagination, our will, and our collective desire to be free of these painful histories. And then, what do we learn in the end? Is that it is very frightening to do this alone. And this is where it comes full circle. We started off with thinking about labor and the loneliness of that labor, and that experience of being in this country and feeling torn between the pressures to belong, but also knowing that you're experiences will always lay outside of that. At the end it’s just, ‘Okay, but we still need each other. What can we do now?’ (CSA): There's two things that you mentioned that I want to pick up on. So one is this idea that you just were talking about — that there's this huge pressure to conform, and to belong, and to negate yourself in all of these ways that bring you closer to (air quotes again) “America” and white culture but also doing that is inherently isolating and lonely. So you're not reaping the rewards that are promised you by doing that conformity. I found that really fascinating thread going through, as you're talking about all these pressures: the pressure to work, the pressure to try to find ways to belong — at the same time, loneliness is weaving its way through all of these things. (ML): Yeah, absolutely. I try to approach it with a sympathetic look. When I think about my familial history there are people who passed that I just recollect through memory. It feels almost unfair to force a certain reading on it. And the only thing I can do is to just imagine how when you're put in a situation where you have only one or two options in order to survive, what do you do? I think in the history of race in the US, which has heavily been structured along a Black and White dichotomy of folks who identify as neither Black nor White have to think about their identity in this liminal space. I think a lot of the assimilative practices of Asian Americans often, I think, turn to anti-Blackness in order to uphold these forces of White supremacy. We know what's socially and politically happening, but then emotionally and psychologically, assimilation is a failed project to begin with. It is devastating and lonely. You earn approval perhaps on the surface, and then what? (CSA): What's being approved of? How much of that is you? (ML): Exactly. The people I love still suffer in the end, so if we can acknowledge that this project is flawed to begin with, then perhaps we just need to imagine a different alternative. So what would that be for us? (CSA): The other thing I wanted to pick up on was the way that you talk about bodies, and particularly your body, and your father's body in this book. Because so much of that failed project is, like you were talking about: when people perceive your body as dangerous or as consumable, it creates in you this desire to negate your body, and to ignore it. Your father spent a long time not acknowledging his cancer because he felt it might be something else, and it was something that he’d gotten used to, ignoring it. I really felt for you and for him in that moment of how painful it must be to realize that you haven't seen something that is so deeply a part of you. (ML): Yeah, it's, in so many ways it's exactly that. The writing of this project is also this really huge moment of introspection for me where I can write about the people in my life, but I have to think about how this has impacted me and how I hold the lessons that I've witnessed from the people that I love who have passed — especially from my father, and especially for, even as I think about it just now with everything happening in the pandemic, and this pressure to be productive in this highly capitalistic way — I mean, we haven't learned our lesson, right? There's still more demand, even as people are literally suffering and dying out there. I think about how that is part of the American project, too. So I think about this book, and I think about what I've learned from it, which is, it’s not that there's anything inherently wrong with labor; I love feeling satisfied about doing work that feels good. I love work that supports community, and uplifts voices that are struggling to be heard. But at the same time, there has to be a limit. And I don't think my father ever had that, and I think we tried to instill that sense of limitlessness to me, and I have to challenge that. I can hold so much affection for who he was, but also acknowledge that, in so many ways, the lessons he imparted were very flawed. (CSA): I was thinking as you were talking about the part on page 15 where it says, “Is it work if it doesn't hurt? If you like it? Are you allowed to like it — the work? If it hurts, and you're not sure if you like it, is that also work?” (ML): Mmm. Yeah. What did you think about that? (CSA): I mean, a lot of this resonates with me. I am currently reading Can't Even, which is the millennial burnout book about how forces of capitalism have conspired to really make millennials and Gen Z-ers… like, we have no chance of escaping burnout in the way that previous generations might have. I think that there's so much wrapped up in the way that we talk about work, and the way that we, now (in our commodification of work), have come to treat it like it should be a calling, and you should be passionate about it, and that the passion means it's not about the money — But also, it's still constant. So I think that evoked a lot of things for me around just the way that what work IS is changing. (ML): Yeah, thinking about early conversations early on in the pandemic about: what does it mean to be zooming from your own bedroom? You’re literally bringing work into your home space. There is no divide. Thinking about how digital technological platforms, like social media, operate today, and how your own person is your brand, is your work; so you can commodify yourself, too. Your whole body is sellable, and by participating in it, it is your implicit consent in these ways. And I do feel that that in itself is a type of invisible work that we're only just starting to define or find language for, and I and I think digital technology is just evolving so fast that we're like, well, what is work? Does this feel good? We are constantly asking ourselves that, and we are looking to other people for answers, and then no one's figured anything out because I think that's exactly how capitalist productivity works — is that, it's always changing its shape, and it makes it hard to recognize in that moment. But all the more reason to keep asking, right? (CSA): Well, and I think it also encourages us to do that looking outward, to try to figure out what's normal rather than what feels right within ourselves. (ML): Mmm. Mmmhmm. Yeah. (CSA): I was fascinated reading your notes at the end of this book, by the way that you weave so many texts and ideas into your writing — which makes sense, if it started as essays and expanded out from there. There's direct quotations, there are clear references, retelling of other stories; In the story of Lady Revenge — the Lady Revenge poems — and these are layered on top of your reflections about some very personal topics and personal experiences around death, violence, race, and healing. Do you feel like they contextualize those reflections, or are they there to do something else? (ML): As an academic (currently am a PhD candidate at USC), I think a lot about the political implications of citations, and especially how infrequently a lot of women scholars — a lot of women of color scholars in particular — are not acknowledged for their intellectual work. We're talking about work throughout this conversation, and I do think that intellectual labor is one of those things that become erased. I could easily have just included them as an epigraph or something, but the truth is is that their work has deeply influenced me, so why not cite the full passage within the body of the text, because don't they deserve that space? For instance, like Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s work has really taught me so much about what does it mean to be a queer Asian American person in the world, and I still look to her activism and her writing even now. She deserves more than a footnote. She is very much a part of that poem, so I really want to hold space for all these voices that typically become erased through more traditional citation practices in the world. (CSA): Yeah, and one thing I found really interesting is that even when the physicality of the citations is that more traditional footnote, the footnotes in, say, “the Plural Circuits of Tell” — that section? They are the majority of the actual text. So, there's one or two lines and then a footnote that is one or two paragraphs. And there's something really evocative to me there about, and I hope you'll forgive my interpreting your work, but it felt to me like it's really making visible the mountain of history that's behind any single phrase that we might write. (ML): Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thank you for that interpretation. Yeah, it reminds me that when I was an undergraduate student I would gloss through a lot of the footnotes in a lot of the text I read because I just couldn't hold space for the primary text as well as the footnote; And now I'm just thinking about how do we read for information and what how do we view what's important and what's not? And what if everything is vital, and there's a purpose to everything, and you have to read it all to understand the various layers. The footnotes, definitely, in “the Plural Circuits of Tell” really try to play with that intentionally. :::AD BREAK::: (CSA): If you’re just joining me, my guest today is Pushcart Prize nominated poet Muriel Leung whose forthcoming book Imagine Us, the Swarm explores the death of her father and the nature of his legacy. Your work is really personal, as we discussed a bit already. How does exploring your personal experiences in this way shape your understanding of them? (ML): I think I was initially so worried about how… I mean, I think all of my work is, obviously, very autobiographical. When I think back on my first book Bone Confetti, It was an entirely speculative landscape. Everything was highly figurative. Unless you read interviews you wouldn’t know it was a way of exploring personal grief and heartbreak? So in some ways, things were a little bit protected then. In this one, I didn't feel like I wanted to — not that there's anything wrong with doing that in Bone Confetti, but I wanted to showcase people that have influenced me in the forefront, and I wanted to do it in a way that feels like it's purposeful; That the people that I talk about are represented with dignity and the complexity of their experiences are highlighted, and for also my own voice to be heard too. It was an exercise in thinking about, how do you write about ancestors? And how do you represent them in this way where you can acknowledge the roles in which they've enacted harm or violence, or held certain systems of harm, and how I have a certain responsibility, then, to alter the course of unlearning the things that my previous generations have been taught. But to also acknowledge that a lot of my family made decisions in times of scarcity, and I also have to acknowledge that, too, because I wasn't there. I wasn't impacted in the same way as they did and my experiences are different, so how can I think about their experiences compassionately while also not negating my own, too? (CSA): I think this would be a good time to have you read a bit from the book, so that we can ground our discussion in your actual words. Can you set it up for us first? What are we going to hear? (ML): This the first essay-in-verse that opens Imagine Us, The Swarm. This is entitled, “this to live several lives,” and I will be reading the first half of the essay-in-verse right now. this to live several lives .................... .................... Once, when I was very, very young, I studied the curious lives of bees— their steadfast and synchronous labor thinking of what it means to be at once [a colony] and [alone]. .................... .................... ................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................ Some nights, I am thinking of the colony of my father and me and what the bees know to be true. A bee learns to become a Müllerian mimic, dressed as some other creature with a deadlier poison. A bee who is sometimes a wasp sometimes a stinging beetle sometimes larger than it’s small self Each one working so hard to perform a sense of safety Some nights, I am thinking of the colony of my father and me and what the bees know to be true. ......... ......... ......... To survive a history in the wild requires arduous labor of some effortlessly seeming toil as in ......... ......... ......... I want to tell you about his commute. He smelled like leather and tobacco. He was a type of burning. He said "Yes" often. The restaurant was a hole he fell into. Most nights I waited for him. When he was home. He was tired. That's all. ......... ......... ......... Maybe I'm making this up. I can't remember. I asked my father once, "Do you ever get lonely?" Did he answer? .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. I set out to write a book about [ ] but it was about [ ] instead. After he died, [ ] was all that was left. ....................................................Let me posit this now........................the book. ..............a labor................................a means to measure.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................the contradictions of one's [life] against [another] ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................He wrote to me in a letter................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................."You have to work hard". .............................................................................................................................................................................................."Your dad loves you" ......................................................................................................................................................I am trying to be both..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................a daughter .........................................................................a ghost ................................................................................................................................ In Ghostly Matters, Avery Gordon writes on the drive to narrate the history that hurts: "It is about putting life back in where only a vague memory or a bare trace was visible to those who bothered to look. It is sometimes about writing ghost stories, stories that not only repair representational mistakes, but also strive to understand the conditions under which a memory was produced in the first place, toward a countermemory, for the future." To write a book is to write into a future and I am not ready. There was a time I worked so much I couldn't sleep. R said I was a dense bubble of worries. They pressed my body onto the bed and said, "Rest, rest" and it was like a game, how awful I was at it that I would shoot up from the bed, out of their arms. Back on the train, on the bus, to a far away borough. I carried a suitcase with me as if I was going somewhere that was not the job and not the hive. I left too soon, the house, the bed, the quiet weight of R's couch where we were watching each other. They said, "It's like you're a stranger." I don't know where this comes from. I know exactly where this comes from. We mimic the species that perform a certain ideal means of survival. ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................I think it's funny that the book is not about bees at all.. ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ I wanted to write a book about Orpheus and Eurydice, how they lived and died and died again. How hellish discovering that the journey was not enough, even at its end, that impulse to look back, which is like admitting grief is a form of self-sabotage. ............ ............ ............ And then she was ash. ............ ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Another myth: my father swimming from China's mainland to then British occupied Hong Kong. When he was caught, he disappeared for a while into the fields. One can say he worked there and discovered the body as an ox that could keep on even if ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................the migration as a broken history ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................we don't talk about ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ How do you write a history that is both [yours] and [not yours] but an extension of an improbable future? ....in which the girl writes the book. "to become subject" by way of the labor.....a movement. ...into this future of unknowns....what language we are making with our bodies.. .....with work. ...with hard work. "The story of labor is that it goes on. The hive hums its vacant sound. In the comb, the honey is slow and its obedience bruises me." Noise falls out a frailty of many cells My father, inside a cylinder of white smoke, was an efforted alive. He came harsh as a tyrant bell. I swear, love is a hollow tune and the rest of us, We carried him We were the tune. (CSA): Thank you for reading that, it’s beautiful. You play quite a bit with the physical layout of words on the page, which, some of that I think comes through in your reading, but of course people can't see it. (TRANSCRIBERS NOTE: I found most of the text as a pdf and used google lens to paste it in with as much of the author’s intended layout as I could capture in this format.) In this first poem, you separate lines both with white space, and with these strings of periods that are hung at different places on the page; and each page in this interacts with those elements differently. Of course the idea of playing with physical layout and punctuation is part of the tradition of poetry, but I think the way you make use of these elements is also really unique, and it also makes this book feel especially like a work of visual art in addition to poetry and essays. What's your process like when you're writing and where do elements like those come into it? (ML): I think as someone who works across genres, I like to think of, ‘What does the text emotionally and psychologically want to guide you to do?’ And so, in thinking about even if I started to write an essay, and I think, ‘What are some poetic forms I can borrow? What are some elements of experimentation across genres that I can integrate into this work?’ Because all of these tools are open for us to use, so in writing “this is to live several lives,” for example, it started off as a pretty linear essay. I had a friend, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, who read this essay when it was in its initial state, and was like, ‘Everything's really compressed here. It feels really congested. What are you trying to say exactly, and how can you say that better?’ I think the best way to say it better is actually to disassemble a lot of its parts and to address what is behind this essay? What is the true core of it? And it is the fact that there is silence but in silence there's also noise, too. There is this balance, then, of white space and these ellipses — which to me are a way of punctuating the space, and saying that this a quiet moment, but not quite, because there's this buzzing that's happening. In a work that is so much about loneliness and wanting to populate a life with so much meaning beyond what is prescribed for us, it felt right to think about the page as a way to acknowledge what's lost, but also we're all haunted. I think the different people we've lost in our lives and also the lessons that have been imparted to us we carry with us in our present life. I think about experimentation in form, and the visual elements of this particular text as a way of doing that; To speak to the things that text alone cannot say. (CSA): So let's talk then about ghosts, because they come up a lot in your work, both here, and I think in your previous collection as well. There’s a line in this passage that you just read, “I'm trying to be both a daughter. a ghost.” What is the significance of ghosts to you there and elsewhere? (ML): Growing up, there's no direct translation for the kind of ghostliness that I want to describe, that I grew up with. As part of Chinese cultural practices, we have a holiday once a year — Qingming — which is where we gather with extended family to visit the graves of the people we've lost in our family and we bring food, we bring drink, and then we burn these paper representations of things that we want to give to our ancestors in their afterlife, and we're encouraged talk to our ancestors as if they're there. So even at an early age, I was talking to my great-grandfather with my great-grandmother, and my mom would say, ‘Ask them to help you do well in school!’ I was like, I don't know if they can do that. I mean can they? And then I thought is ghostliness, then, close to godliness? What's the capacity of our spiritual connection here? What are our ancestors capable of? Ghosts for me are not the terrifying Western imagery that's often attached to them. It's actually just that the people who've passed that are still living alongside us that have left their imprints in our lives, and that one specific excerpt that you reference, it’s seeing myself as someone who is trying to fulfill dual obligations. Recognizing that this present role that I am is very much at least socially obligated to these ideas of piety and filial piety and being a good daughter, and at the same time, that experience makes it feel like I am someone who’s passed, and that is possible, right? Based on how I've understood spiritual connection growing up. I think ghostliness just takes so many different forms throughout the book, and to me it's not terrifying; it just simply is. (CSA): I find your comment about, or, your wondering about whether ghostliness is as close to godliness, really interesting. My academic background is in linguistics, and there are many languages that have much more complex systems of animacy than English. In English, we really only have animate and inanimate, and so we have pronouns that are “she,” “he,” and “they,” and then we have “it,” which is the inanimate one. But in a lot of other languages, there are more complex systems and there are a large number of languages (well, maybe not large by some people's standards), but there are languages where ghosts are more animate than humans. Something about what you said really evoked that for me. This idea that ghosts are beyond human. (ML): Yeah, I mean if you really think about it, that's so true because if, in some cultures, ghosts are able to traverse different planes, including this one, then they actually occupy more knowledge of the world than our life on this earth currently — like those that are living — possess. There are things that we won't know unless we are ghosts too. I think it lends a certain power to it. I do agree that, especially in a lot of Western configurations of ghostliness, that animacy and inanimacy is binary is so real. It can be so limiting, too. (CSA): There was another line in that that I wanted to discuss that goes back to this question of labor; it's, “The story of labor is that it goes on.” Can you tell me about that? (ML): It just means that, in this particular passage, I'm thinking a lot about how this idea of work is very much inherited. This is very much a piece about intergenerational trauma, and so here's this idea of work that my father imparted which is that you always go beyond your means. You have to work hard, and that is exactly what he wrote in his letter to me very close to his passing. The last note he ever wrote for me was, “I love you” and “You have to work hard.” I think back on that. I just think that's so sad to me. Even up until the very last moments of his life is still very committed to this belief that “everything's going to be okay” — even though things are clearly not okay. And I still perpetuate that in so many ways; Every time I betray myself when I work beyond my means, when I perform labor that betrays my own identity in favor of those who are more privileged, when I stay silent about certain things or don't speak up — these are the ways in which I inherit that fear of what happened if I broke away from the mode that my father has learned his entire life, and is very much ingrained in me because I was brought up by him. And to some extent, I did admire a lot of what he's gone through — but how to hold space for that, while also acknowledging that things have to be different this time around because I don't want that fate for myself, and I don't want that from my community either. (CSA): In “Dear Intimacy of [Theory],” you reference Bell Hooks on healing, and add, “Your gratuitous sorrows falling out a bell sleeve, asking, how do I repair?” Tell me about that. What does “repair” look like in the context of these kinds of intergenerational traumas? (ML): The “Dear Intimacy” poems are very much about thinking about the epidemic or intellectual violence that happens, particularly in academic spaces; and how theory has often been weaponized as a way to justify ill treatment of people. I'm thinking about how to approach theory in this more intimate way, and Bell Hooks is the most appropriate person I can think to reference here, because so much of her work is about ‘How do you make a theory accessible to all experiences?’ Because theory is essentially, thought and is generated often. The most complex theories that are close to the heart are generated by people who have been most impacted, so why do we pretend like this something that is beyond us? So thinking about theory as a way of understanding that there are forces beyond our immediate life that impact the way that we move through this world, and we understand why the world is the way it is, and that there are certain things that are looming, but also, we are agents in our life. It gives us some tool to think about, ‘how do we move forward?’ At least I think if I didn’t know, for example, what capitalism was, or racism was, I wouldn't have the terms to define. The things that are happening to me are not because I didn't work hard enough, or I wasn't good enough, or that I am not worthwhile in this in this world — but that there are these forces that create the circumstances around me, and I am oppressed by it, but I'm also not beholden to them. This idea of repair is to say, okay, how can we think about new theories that will help us not just absorb these ideas and just acknowledge them, but also just imagine different ways the world could look in the future. What would the theory of that look like? (CSA): Tell me a little bit about that, because you do have these futures that you imagine in those supposed poems. What are the qualities you're looking for in those futures? (ML): I mean, I'm still working it out. (Clara laughs) (CSA): That’s fair! (ML): I know. I mean, I was like… I could keep writing these poems, but I have to stop at some point. It was a struggle to figure out, ‘What do I want to do?’ In part, not that I have an obligation to tie everything up neatly in a bow for everyone, but I do think that if I'm going to present all these complications to people, I should at least think about, ‘What have I been trying to say all this time?’ And I think that last poem in the book for me is… that last section references so much about celestial bodies and I just kept thinking about looking outward and beyond this immediate earth, and just thinking about knowledges that are beyond us. And I also am thinking if we started off with loneliness and being alone, then wouldn't a type of resolution be thinking about collective liberation that requires us to truly understand where our traumas are coming from, while also not neglecting that there are people in this world who need you there and also want to connect with you on these experiences too. This last poem is very much inspired by… I finished this very last poem in Blue Mountain Center, and my friend, [inaudible], he was telling me the story about how one night in the forest, at Blue Mountain Center it got really dark, and he was with a friend — another resident there — and they were talking about the state of the world at that point and how desolate things are, and it got really dark. But there are these fireflies that appeared, and they provided this light to guide them back home. And I just love that imagery so much, especially because it is this idea that this collective light allows for these people to move and find their way back in a certain way. What if we can imagine that… metaphorically, to me, this looks like the amassing of people who see a common goal to a freer future in which we are actively working on healing ourselves and our communities, and we find some way to come together across these differences. And I mean, that's just a metaphor, right? What does it look like literally? I don't want to propose that there is a fixed way that that can look, but I think people already have some idea about what that looks like. This is happening right now. The ways in which, even now, with the vaccination roll out I think people are imagining ideas of community, and what does it mean to connect and care for each other? I think it is literally happening, and this metaphor is just something to hold in mind and heart as a guiding post, as it does for me in these moments when I feel really great despair about the future. I just think how can I be true to myself in the swarm, and, how can I truly believe that we deserve better in the future for us? :::AD BREAK::: (CSA): If you're just joining me,my guest today is Pushcart Prize nominated poet Muriel Leung, whose forthcoming book Imagine Us, the Swarm explores the death of her father and the nature of his legacy. There’s something that I noticed in this book, too, which is that there are a couple of places where you talk about apologizing, or the book talks about apologizing but it… it's not exactly an apology, but especially early on, three’s this part where you express this desire to apologize for writing a sad book. What purpose is that serving for you? (ML): Gosh I feel like my therapist just asked me that question. (CSA): I'm so sorry! (both laugh) (ML): No, it's good! This will be good because this book is dedicated to my therapist. Hello Dr. [unintelligible], if you’re out there listening. I think apology is so hard. It's hard for me. It's hard for so many of us. If we're talking about repair, apology is just one of the many ways that can happen. And sometimes the apology, for me, is tongue and cheek too, because there's a lot of heaviness out there and sometimes it requires a little bit of levity, too. I had this idea — this running joke — where I was going to start a greeting card business where I was going to print cards that said things like, “I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings because of my unresolved trauma” and things like that, where it's like, okay, if we were to truly capture what that means in a succinct way, what would that look like? And of course when I made that joke on social media, that joke was lost on some people. Some people were like, "Take accountability for your trauma" and I was like… that's the point of the joke, is that people struggle to do that. It's very hard to do that in a way where it’s truly self-reflective. I struggle with that myself in terms of just the guilt I feel constantly about… in writing this, I feel so much guilt about presenting trauma and this heaviness; I feel like I've said the word trauma so many times, within the book and within talking about the book and I feel bad when someone picks this up and is like, ‘Oh I wasn't sad before I read this, and then I read this book and I feel sad.’ Bone Confetti I felt bad about the deep dive into grief that it is. But when I really think about it, it's only for a moment. I know consciously that people actively seek that out for catharsis. Very much I think that apology finds its fitting in this book because… I understand this is heavy, but if you trust me, I'm going to provide spaces of breath for you. And I want to remind you that you can stop at any time, and that I'm going to (at times) focus on the individual, and sometimes, I'm going to span out because I don't ever want there to be this feeling of stuckness for anyone reading it. I want it to be an experience where you can feel like you can go from page one to the very last page and feel a little bit lighter in the end. I think it's really hard for poetry to do that. I don't know if I've done that, but I'm trying. (CSA): All of the themes that we've talked about in your book, they circle around these big social forces, but they push up against them. This is a, I would say, fundamentally anti-capitalist book. How do you think about those forces in your day-to-day life versus when you're writing? (ML): You mean like, in terms of going to the market or down to the lake? (both laugh) (CSA): Sure! (ML:) Yeah I mean I'm thinking about things like theory and practice. For example, it's very much for me if I'm making these critiques, I should also try to live my life accordingly to the best of my ability. I try to pace myself with work, or I try to have more generous expectations of other people, especially during this time. I try to be forgiving if deadlines are not met, or create opportunities. And if I'm asking someone to do labor, to make sure that they’re paid for it, especially writers. It doesn't always happen neatly. I get frustrated all the time, or I become heavily depressed because things don't feel like they're changing. I think the theories are there, again, as guideposts, but I think our actual lived experiences are so much more complicated. I can tell myself, like, “I'm going to go and walk and meditate today!” And then I realize I hate meditation, and it makes me deeply anxious. But I should try! I think we're all just trying, and that along with giving myself permission to be kind to myself is also part of the work, and helps me be kind to people, too. (CSA): What gives you hope? (ML): I will answer that question, but I also want to hear your answer too! I don't know… I think those moments where people break free from the constant momentum of productivity, and where someone says, like, ‘hey, I still will love you if you've never write another book ever in your life.’ Or making the decision to depart from a career path that one's been working so long for, in order to imagine a different way in which work can have meaning for someone's life. When I see people speaking up about injustices in the world, and when I see people being vulnerable and telling their truth, and when people express themselves with such clarity about their experiences, especially if it’s an experience that is marginalized and it's not frequently heard in the world. I think poems/art that people are making during this time have really given me a lot of hope, and selective cat videos, memes (both laugh), when other people send me their pet stories, that gives me hope too. What about you ; what gives you hope? (CSA): I think community in general. Seeing community community care. I was talking to a friend today and I asked how she was, so she said that she felt like she was having a breakdown in a way that felt out of control, and that weirdly gave me hope because she was being honest about it. So I think that's a lot of it — is seeing people care for each other and make room for other people to care for them. (ML): Yeah, yeah so true. (CSA): I think that's a great place for us to end so Muriel Leung, thank you so much for joining me today! (ML): Thank you so much for having me! (CSA): To learn more about Muriel or to pre-order a copy of Imagine Us, The Swarm, visit her website at MurielLeung.com. Catch Story Behind the Story the first Friday of every month from 5 to 6 p.m. on KSQD 90.7 FM. To share your thoughts on this or other shows, drop me a line at Clara@KSQD.org. The Story Behind the Story is produced for KSQD 90.7 FM by me, Clara Sherley-Appel. Our sound engineer is Lanier Sammons; He also wrote our theme. Join me next month for a conversation with San Francisco’s own Ethel Rohan about her new collection of short stories, In the Event of Contact.