Talusan’s work teaches us that the more we try to fit in, the further away we get from who we really are, and how it gets harder to go back to being present in our bodies. She also teaches the reader to question the ways we frame our own narratives, to wonder what it would be like for it to be confronted by documentation. Her memoir is an invitation to question our relationship with our version of events. 

In this interview, I set out to find out what nonfiction means to her, and how she labors to write through the inherent contradictions of the undefined and constantly evolving genre of memoir writing. Grace and I spoke over the span of a day via a Google Doc.

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Orlandoni: I wanted to start our interview with a difficult question disguised as simple one. How do you define nonfiction? 
 
Talusan: This is a difficult question. I thought about it a lot and perhaps the best way to respond is with a simple answer that is more complicated once you dig into it: Nonfiction is writing that tells the truth. Of course, so does fiction, perhaps in ways that nonfiction can’t. I think it’s important not to trick the reader. That’s how I think about nonfiction writing. 

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O: Was there a moment when you were writing the essays in The Body Papers that felt like you were tricking the reader? How did you deal with that?

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T: I am very sensitive to being believed. I did not want to do anything to jeopardize my credibility. So, no, I tried to be vigilant and not ever trick the reader. When possible, I checked and double-checked my memories against documents and other records and with others’ recollections. I don’t think that’s required of memoirists, as this is writing based on memories, but I always found more things to write about that way. 

     That said, in a way, the narrator is a trick. The narrator who frames the book is a version of me that feels fixed in time from several years ago when I was on my Fulbright trip to the Philippines. Writing that narrator felt like taking a photograph of my insides, my consciousness. There’s a way that snapping a picture can fix us in time and space, even if we look different a moment later at a different angle. Writing that version of me from that time period feels like a sort of trick as I feel like I change in big and small ways constantly. 

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O: The Body Papers starts with that version of the narrator. In “How to Make Yogurt in Manila,” the narrator is on a Fullbright trip to the Philippines. The rest of the chapters feel like they are following a somewhat chronological order. We are witnesses to the narrator’s process of uncovering memories as we read along and we work our way towards the narrator in the Philippines again in “Balikbayan.” How did you make decisions regarding the organization of the pieces? Did the structure of the book reveal itself as you wrote or did you have a meta-structure in mind when you first wrote them?  

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T: I wrote the pieces over several years. Maybe even a decade or more. I wrote what I wanted and needed to write. I never thought I was writing a memoir. What became the book was previously published in bits and pieces as essays; some as paragraphs in long-form piece of journalism, some passages even in fiction. Once I decided that I was putting a book together, I gathered all the bits and pieces that felt like they were part of the book and started working with that giant mass of pages to find what became The Body Papers. I made decisions about organization through trial and error. (…) At some point, which felt very late in the process, the frame of the journey of the narrator back to the Philippines emerged. 

What I’m saying is that I found the structure of the book by trying many structures until I found one that was satisfying. (...) This forced me to see the material in new ways. In some ways, months after publication, I’m still discovering what this book is. Maybe this is another version of faith, perhaps blind faith, but I felt like the right version of the book existed, I just needed to try and try again until I found it.     

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O: It is hard to find books that speak to the experience of being undocumented in the United States, and even harder to find books that do so while tackling other monumentally important issues. As a reader who was once undocumented, I felt seen in several of the passages. During all of those years of writing, who were you writing for? Who did you imagine as your reader? 

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T: Thank you. I am so glad that you felt seen. It’s a wonderful experience, to feel seen, but also sad because it reveals how invisible we’ve felt until then. I’ve certainly felt vital moments of recognition in books and I am thrilled that I could pay that forward in my own writing. 

     In my early days of writing, I made the mistake of writing for people I wanted to impress-- teachers, classmates, editors, critics, people whose approval I desired. I had to break myself of that habit. I was also experiencing a lot of rejection and disappointments related to my writing. I gave up the idea that I’d ever publish a book. I resigned myself to the thought that I might not publish a book in my life and I would just have to accept this. Once I did, I realized that I still wanted to write. I liked writing enough and got enough out of it to want to still do it. And that was freedom because then I wrote for myself. For my lonely, younger self who needed to both tell and hear these stories, and for the people I would leave behind once I died, these imaginary, general people in generations after me, as well as specifically my nieces, nephews, siblings, and my many students, who I care about deeply and who seemed interested and curious about my writing. I thought, at least they would want to read my stories, even if others didn’t. 

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O: I was amazed by your decision to include documentation in the memoir. I thought it was the ultimate testament of transparency to the reader from the narrator. As I read, I kept thinking about the fact that not having ‘papers’ can cause people to develop a complex relationship with documents and documentation. Childhood trauma can also cause people to develop a complex relationship with certain types of documentation, like family photographs, yet you fully confronted these documents and included them in your book. 

     In an interview for the Rumpus, you said that including documents in the memoir writing process provided you with material to respond to. When you made that FOIA request to see your immigration records, or when you went back to look at your father’s old photo slides, were you looking to respond to something specifically? Did that thing you were responding to ever become embodied? Could you visualize what you were responding to? How did the documents help? 

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T: I appreciate how you recognize the specific reasons why I might be so drawn to documentation. I know this might be an odd thing to reveal, but I think all the kinds of traumas I experienced for most of my childhood made me sometimes question whether or not I existed. I was constantly looking for reassurance that I did. 

     Maybe this obsession with documentation is something many of us who have been marginalized, oppressed, and discriminated share. We are used to being questioned and challenged and being asked to prove ourselves. I needed those receipts. Even now, there are people who want to reshape my story and tell me that what happened didn’t happen in the way that I remembered. 

     When I went through my father’s old slides, I was not prepared for what I found. Those slides are chilling and I asked that we not include them in the book. Perhaps to someone who doesn’t know me, the slides are innocuous--scenes of an Asian immigrant family in the American suburbs of the 1980s. The slides are almost unbearable for me to look at because I can see all over my body and face what I am being forced to endure out of the frame.

     At first, I thought the documentation was for backup, but now I realize that those papers are essential to the story I’m telling. I am aware that there are many potential versions of the story I’m telling. If I made a scrapbook of the documents and images, without any of my reflections and memoirs, those would create its own version of the story of my life and it would be a correct version. I’m also aware that there are facts and there are ways to read facts to construct various narratives. I tried to be as candid as possible without also losing the reader by being too much. Sometimes I’ll turn to a spot in the book for a reading and be surprised that I published some of this, as I assumed no one would read it except for me and maybe my writing group. Maybe that’s the best way for me to write-- with a primary engagement with the process, total privacy, and an initial lack of concern for a reader or perceived audience. 

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O: How do you begin writing an essay? How do you know when an essay it’s finished?

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T: At this point, I can feel the process of essaying bubbling up. The seeds of thoughts, observations, details, reflections, or contradictions that might grow into a part of an essay. I write some of these down and even if I don’t return to these notes, the act of writing them down helps me remember them. I organize all these notes under a bad title like “essay about what it was like to. . . “ or “maybe essay yogurt” and when I’m ready to write, I’ll look over the notes to remind myself what my ideas were and then start writing. 

     Sometimes, I’m aware-- when I’m recounting a story to someone about an experience-- that I’m rehearsing bits of what I might later write into an essay. I trust the process at this point. If there’s an image or fact or conversation that won’t leave me, I write the section and figure out later where it might go. 

     I know an essay is finished sometimes out of exhaustion. I don’t mean just physically being tired, but I feel like I’ve squeezed out all the toothpaste from that essay tube. Sometimes I know an essay is finished because I’ve reached a stopping point. To go further with an essay topic will double the piece, which to me means that I should probably start a new essay that is related to the one I just finished, but should have its own container. Sometimes I know I’m finished because I’ve run out of time. In order to make a deadline, I need to find a way to end the piece. At that point, I have to let go and give it up. 

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O: What is your writing routine like?

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T: I’ve been traveling so much for months now that my schedule is erratic. But I hope to get back to my writing routine because I really enjoy it (when it’s going well). Sometimes I am so into a piece that I can work on it all day and then read a draft before I go to bed and then hop out of bed so excited to get back to it. That’s the best kind of writing routine. 

     When writing is not going as well or easily, I try to build in ways to reward myself and make the experience as pleasurable as possible. I’ll try to find a table in the library or cafe that has a nice view or is quiet or warm. I’ll allow myself a treat--lately it’s been a lavender biscuit from a nearby cafe--for completing the writing I wanted to get done for the day.  

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O: Are you working on any other projects? Do you have plans for future writing? 

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T: I’m working on some new essays now that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I also have a bunch of fiction--short stories, half-finished novels--and I want to see if anything is there. It’s almost impossible for me to write right now, but I’m hoping I can soon.

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The Body Papers is Grace Talusan’s first book. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection, and the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. 

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Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. She graduated from Tufts University and earned an MFA from UC Irvine. Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. 
 

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