New England Review

Behind the Byline

Matthew Lansburgh

Matthew Lansburgh talks with Malka Daskal about nonlinear narratives, friendship, and the inspiration behind the characters in “Hasina,” published in NER 42.1.

Malka Daskal: “Hasina” opens at a remove of “two-plus decades” from the events of the primary plot, which allows Stewart to consider his relationship with Hasina from a detached distance, one with the benefit of extensive therapy. Was this story always structured as a retrospective narrative? At what point did you determine that Stewart’s and Hasina’s paths would cross again via social media?

Matthew Lansburgh: The basic structure of the story—as well as the use of the retrospective narrative stance—did provide the spine for the first draft. It was one of those wonderful, rare instances when a story came to me (more or less) fully formed. As is quite common when I write stories, the initial draft emerged quickly during a feverish spell, and then I put the pages aside for several months and came back to them with fresh eyes. This allowed me to see areas where I’d rushed through scenes and needed to flesh things out, and other areas that needed revision. I tend to work on writing projects iteratively: I write in bursts, put drafts aside, then return with—hopefully—a new perspective. This process can take years to complete. The final section of the story always included the interaction via Facebook, but the ending was much shorter and less developed than it is in the published version.

MD: The principal characters in your story, Stewart and Hasina (not to mention Stewart’s mother, Heike), are so meticulously rendered, they seem to spring fully formed off the page. Where did you find inspiration for these convincing characters and how do you decide which details to include and which to omit when writing for authenticity?

ML: I’m so glad you think they’re convincing! Stewart and Heike are characters I’ve worked with, on and off, for a long time. On the other hand, Hasina isn’t a character I’ve worked with before. She is, I suppose, an amalgam of various people I’ve known over the years.

My goal in writing the story was to explore the ways that friendships can evolve over time. I’m interested in how people can form incredibly close bonds and then grow apart (and, in some instances, reconnect years later). One of the best things about growing older is that I’m now able to see the trajectory of my life—and my relationships—in a way that I couldn’t when I was younger. I used to think about friendships in binary terms: X person is a close friend, or X person isn’t a friend; I love Y, or I dislike Y. Over time, I’ve come to realize that most friendships are complicated and multifaceted. X can be a close friend in some, but not all, circumstances. X can be someone I can trust to keep a secret and look to for support if I’m going through a period of work stress, but if I tell X about a fight I had with my boyfriend, I need to watch out, because X will probably try to hook up with him behind my back! Friendships can be the source of so many emotions we experience: love and joy and passion; frustration, disappointment, and anger.

I’m guessing most people learn this early on in their lives. This is often how people feel about their siblings or other people in their family. But I grew up as an only child and my relationship with my parents was defined by extremes. I tended to categorize the world in simplistic terms: things were either good or bad, safe or dangerous, trustworthy or untrustworthy. I suppose that, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to accept that most relationships are complicated and can’t be seen through a single lens.

MD: One of the most intriguing choices made in the crafting of this story is your divulgence of major plot points out of sequence—Hasina’s alleged betrayal, Geshna’s suicide, Hasina’s casual abandonment in Baja. These events are disclosed nonlinearly and then expanded upon later in the narrative. The effect makes for a hypnotic manipulation of time as well as compelling reading. Can you tell us more about your process of revealing and withholding information to create narrative momentum?

ML: This question fills me with tremendous excitement and joy! Thank you for asking it.

Like most writers, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to generate suspense and narrative momentum; and, like most writers, I find it hard to pull off. I’ve studied and taught many stories with this very question in mind—especially Alice Munro’s “Runaway,” in which she creates mystery and suspense out of small (seemingly insignificant) facts and narrative elements. From the first paragraph, she withholds key information to great strategic effect.

I’ve probably studied that story twenty times, and each time I’m in awe of how Munro turns the mundane into something mysterious and electric. Part of the way she achieves this effect is through her masterful use of time. I’m quite certain that—even if unconsciously—“Hasina” is borrowing some of these narrative tricks. Having you comment on my use of time and the way I withhold information to create narrative momentum is thrilling for me, because these are techniques I admire not just in Munro’s work but in the work of many of my favorite writers.

MD: At the heart of “Hasina” is the power dynamic between Hasina and Stewart. In the final paragraph, Stewart chooses not to Google Hasina because it would “give her more power than she deserves,” but, of course, the choice not to Google her gives her power as well, as does his mounting excitement while waiting for her phone call. It seems Stewart, for all the years and therapy, cannot quite break free of Hasina’s power—his actions and inactions determined by her influence. What do you think it is that Stewart admires so much about Hasina? Do you think Stewart’s infatuation with Hasina in some ways mirrors Heike’s clinging dependence on him?

ML: I’m intrigued by the idea that Stewart’s infatuation with Hasina might somehow mirror Heike’s dependence on Stewart. I hadn’t seen this possible connection or thought about this parallel. Of course, it makes sense that, as much as Stewart resists his mother and judges her, he does also mirror aspects of her personality. I certainly have noticed this in my own relationship with my mother.

As for what Stewart admires about Hasina, this isn’t something I’ve thought about either. I’m guessing he admires her confidence. I see her as someone who spends less time in her head than Stewart does—someone who doesn’t second-guess herself all the time.

MD: At first reading, I was appalled by Hasina’s actions and believed her to be heartless, someone reveling in her power to shock and wound others. But after giving it some thought and rereading, I feel a greater sense of sympathy for her and wonder if her actions are not more indicative of a sense of insecurity, of genuine pain over Stewart’s lack of reciprocated feelings. Do you have sympathy for Hasina? Was your intention for the reader to view her with compassion?

ML: I love the fact that you’re seeing sides of these characters I hadn’t thought about previously. It means, perhaps, that I’ve done my job as a writer by creating multidimensional characters who evoke a range of reactions in readers.

I must admit I don’t find anything about Hasina appalling—everything she does makes sense to me, even leaving Stewart behind in Baja California. I’ve always felt tremendous sympathy for her. Indeed, she embodies impulses I very much identify with. (I hope that doesn’t make me come off as too much of a psychopath!)

MD: “Hasina” captures the impressionable quality of young adults experiencing life on campus, their bid for independence and forging of identities in opposition to authority. The intensity of Stewart and Hasina’s friendship is distinctive to that place and time of life. Was your writing influenced by other literature featuring college-aged characters?

ML: Not that I’m aware of. I don’t think I’ve read much about college-aged characters I’ve found extremely compelling. I suppose I tend to be more interested in people who’ve been knocked around by the passage of time—people who’ve faced more setbacks and accumulated more wounds. (There are, of course, many exceptions. I find Nabokov’s Dolores Haze and J.D. Salinger’s younger characters, for example, fascinating and marvelous.)

MD: Stewart and Heike are characters from your linked short story collection Outside Is the Ocean, winner of the 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award. How did writing a series of linked stories better serve the narrative than a more traditional novel form? What challenges and opportunities did you encounter by choosing to structure your book in this way? Can we expect to see more stories about Stewart and Heike in the future?

ML: When I first started writing fiction, I didn’t set out to write a book. Writing a book felt too daunting and ambitious. My goal was simply to learn how to write a short story. Gradually, over time, as I began to work with Stewart and Heike as characters, I found myself becoming obsessed—with who they were, and what motivated them, and what fueled their dysfunctional relationship. (Full disclosure: Though my stories about Stewart and Heike are fiction, elements in this work are inspired by my relationship with my mother.)

I found writing about Heike and Stewart incredibly cathartic and therapeutic, and, over time, I realized that I was amassing a corpus of work that might be shaped into a novel-in-stories. The idea that I was working on a book didn’t occur to me until several years into the process. Outside Is the Ocean has a bit of a kaleidoscopic feel. As in “Hasina,” my use of time in the book isn’t linear. I guess that allowing myself to learn about the relationship between Stewart and his mother through narratives that occur at various moments in time allowed me to tackle a project that might otherwise have felt too intimidating to take on.

As for your last question, yes, I am continuing to write about Stewart and Heike! I’ve spent the past few years working on a novel—provisionally entitled The Miraculous—that has nothing to do with them, but, recently, I’ve been writing more stories about them and am considering writing a novel that examines how Stewart’s relationship with his mother changes after she dies: If she were to come back from the dead to visit Stewart, would his attitude toward her be different? Would they be able to break free of the conflict they experienced when they were both alive? What would happen if Stewart died and went to heaven? How would their dynamic change in an entirely different world/setting?

MD: Can you tell us more about the new novel you’re currently working on? Was it a challenge or a relief (or, perhaps, both) to populate your work with new characters?

ML: It’s about a woman (Klara Ozoliņa) from a small town in Latvia who is born with wings. People believe her town was cursed, centuries earlier, when a hermaphrodite was burned at the stake, and the book falls squarely into the realm of magic realism. In the novel, Klara emigrates to the United States as a mail-order bride and is disappointed to learn, when she arrives, that the man she’s been corresponding with is neither wealthy nor handsome.

The book explores the themes of fitting in and marginalization and what it means to belong. (These are themes I notice myself revisiting in a lot of my work, but it’s been fun to explore them through characters who are completely different from Heike and Stewart.) As for how Klara materialized, I’m not sure I know the answer. Many years ago, I wrote a scene about a woman with wings who was bawdy and irreverent, and even though that project never gained traction, the character stayed with me…

Matthew Lansburgh‘s collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean (University of Iowa Press, 2017), won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award and the 2018 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. His fiction has appeared in journals such as One Story, Glimmer Train, Ecotone, Alaska Quarterly Review, Guernica, and Epoch, and has been shortlisted in the Best American Short Stories series. Recent honors include fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony.

Malka Daskal, a fiction reader for NER, received her master’s degree from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Kind Writers, december Magazine, The Dalhousie Review, and Adelaide and has been anthologized in The Bookends Review’s “Best of 2020.” Her short story “Symbology” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband and two sons.

Behind the Byline

Odette Casamayor-Cisneros

Odette Casamayor-Cisneros talks with Megan Howell about her short story “Patriotic Sex” from her collection Una casa en los Catskills. Erin Goodman’s English translation of the story is available in NER 42.1.

Megan Howell: In “Patriotic Sex,” an Afro-Cuban woman reflects on her tumultuous relationship with Humbercito, a white Cuban American. Her allusions to slave barracks, sexual violence, and intergenerational trauma are more reminiscent of James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” or Gayle Jones’s Corregidora than, say, the euphemistic depictions of interracial sex in shows like Always a Witch and Escrava Isaura. At the same time, she’s not a complete victim; she has agency, going out of her way to seek out Humbertico.

I’m wondering how you were able to make the protagonist free-willed while also showing that a violent, terrible history is influencing her actions. How do you write about the intersections between sexual liberation and anti-Blackness in a meaningful way that doesn’t feel fetishistic?

Odette Casamayor-Cisneros: The answer is in the flesh. The flesh does not lie.

I am always suspicious of grandiloquence, of all attempts to explain a phenomenon, a feeling, especially our emotions, with only words. I know, it seems paradoxical, since, as a writer and a scholar, words are my tools. And, perhaps, this extreme familiarity with words is what prevents me from trusting them.

Aware of the impossibility of words—and the discourses woven with them—to properly express our experience, I seek to convey the unspeakable, which silently lies in the flesh. That’s why I called these “stories written from the flesh and for the flesh.” That was the leading thread when I was writing the stories included in my first book, Una casa en los Catskills [A House in the Catskills], in which the Spanish version of “Patriotic Sex” was first published, in San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Havana (Cuba).

Everything I have been writing since the publication of this book continues to explore the Black experience, particularly the Black female experience in the Americas.

Thus, under the title “Con tinta negra” [With Black Ink], goes one of my current projects, a biweekly column I write for OnCuba News, in which I gather my intimate reactions—trying to keep the writing as close to the flesh as possible—through my daily experiences. There, I teach, I walk, I love, I read, I hate, I suffer, I cry, I laugh, I am attacked and loved and misunderstood and forgotten as a human being with black flesh, which, everywhere in the Americas, means that my experience today is linked to the enslavement of my ancestors and subsequent anti-Black racism.

When I am teaching, I have to use facts, dates, well-constructed arguments. In my stories, I find the freedom to allow my flesh to talk. And I believe this is what keeps the stories from falling into that fetishism you are talking about.

MH: In many ways, your story is one of contrasts. It juxtaposes New York with Cuba; Cuban Americans with cubiches; black with white; violence with pleasure; Soviet boarding schools with a commodified, Americanized replica of a Cuban ghetto; femininity with machismo, etc. The protagonist reflects on these conflicts without explicitly saying which ones are preferable. Do you think she’s resigned? Or is she still searching for what she wants?

OCC: She is not resigned. She is not searching either. She just goes beyond the excluding polarities, the juxtapositions.

The protagonist of “Patriotic Sex” is not in the either/or dichotomy, discarded, for instance, by the Black feminist conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady. Instead, and like O’Grady, my character follows the infinite possibilities offered in the “both/and” logic, which actually gives title to her latest show, at the Brooklyn Museum. (Don’t dare to miss it if you are around, it’s exquisite.)

Why should she express her preference between concepts, institutions, and ways of thinking that, ultimately, have not been conceived to make her thrive but, rather, to systemically exclude her, as a Black Latina of Cuban origins? She does not fit in any of these structures: she is constantly shifting between them, ungraspable and slippery like a snake, maybe a little bit venomous as well. And she likes that. She prefers to be a monster rather than feel victimized.

MH: The protagonist describes herself as being “not a political animal” even though her thoughts and mere existence are deeply political. Do you think she’s wrong? Or does being political require actively participating in political revolutions and reading up on geopolitics?

OCC: Everything is political, even the unspoken expression of the flesh. But I believe there is a way of being political that doesn’t involve getting immersed in a simplistic scheme, in which everyone repeats, without thinking, the same ideas, taken from social media, dictated by obscure gurus and old politicians. This is the political plot she is trying to avoid: the superficial repetition of slogans and old mantras that unfortunately shape the leading conversations about Cuba today, in which there are, again, only two mutually exclusive sides. Two ways of being Cuban and thinking about Cuba, in favor or against the island’s regime, in favor or against the US embargo, without the possibility of introducing nuances. Each of them determined to win over the other, without concessions. Withdrawing herself from this never-ending game becomes her way of adopting another political stance—a nonconventional one, in which possibilities multiply and a real conversation would be possible. But Humbertico/Andy is too embedded in these binaries, and the conversation is precluded by a Fidel Castro–like speech that convinces our protagonist to seek pleasure, listening to her lover’s naked flesh, rather than his Manichean monologue.

MH: Rather than forming her political opinions after telling readers so much about herself, the protagonist leaves both Andy and the entire narrative for Starbucks. Do you think her passivity is sustainable for a Black woman living in America? Is the story’s ending a coda? Or a small break in her life before the next racial upheaval?

OCC: I don’t think she is passive. Passive would be to fall into Humbertico/Andy’s narrative. Instead, she acts. She knows what she wants, which is to have good sex. She gets it, avoids supporting his monologue or confronting him, and then she leaves. All that matters is her satisfaction, and this is an extremely radical position for a Black woman in the Americas. Our bodies have, since enslavement, been used, objectified, raped, discarded, exterminated. The protagonist takes agency and ownership over her body and her desire. She is her own master, and her actions do not satisfy the expectations of her white lover or most readers. Just her own.

MH: There’s been a recent resurgence of interest in socialism, especially among young Americans online. I’ve noticed that many of them do a poor job of reckoning with race when discussing a subject as nuanced as Third World socialism. On the one hand are neoliberals who continue to demonize countries like Cuba for eliminating very exploitative, corrupt, extractive economic systems that benefited only an elite (i.e., white) few. And on the other are leftists who believe that socialism is postracial. As someone who writes extensively on the myth of Cuba’s postraciality, do you believe that this new wave of socialist thinkers is less or more open to Black voices?

OCC: This is subject to their position in regards to racialization here in the United States. There is a lot of arrogance in both ranks; imperial views prevail among all of them. Again, we have these two poles that present themselves as radically divergent, although they might not be so different after all. If leftists and neoliberals allowed themselves to listen to voices coming from other contexts, particularly the voices from the Global South, the systemically silenced voices, maybe they would be able to more effectively tackle the problems they supposedly want to address. Concerning their openness to Black voices, it would require them to reflect on the White privilege that most have enjoyed and continue to enjoy. Only if they are genuinely acquiescent to doing that, and to reckoning with the fact that this is not so much a Black problem as a problem created and globally reproduced by the Eurocentric hegemony, a real talk on racialization might be possible.

Odette Casamayor-Cisneros is a Cuban-born writer, scholar, and Associate Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The author of the short story collection Una Casa en Los Catskills [A House in the Catskills], published by La Secta de los Perros in 2011, she has also published a book of literary essays Utopía, distopía e ingravidez: Reconfiguraciones cosmológicas en la narrativa post-soviética cubana [Utopia, Dystopia and Ethical Weightlessness: Cosmological Reconfigurations in post-Soviet Cuban Fiction] from Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft in 2013. Focusing on the Afro-Latinx experience, she is currently completing several fiction and nonfiction book projects.

Megan Howell is a fiction reader for NER and a DC-based freelance writer. After graduating from Vassar College, she earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland in College Park, winning both the Jack Salamanca Thesis Award and the Kwiatek Fellowship. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Nashville Review and The Establishment  among other publications.

Behind the Byline

Ji Hyun Joo

Alicia Romero talks to fiction writer Ji Hyun Joo about mothers and daughters, the risks of assimilation, and the Korean bathhouse.

Alicia Romero: Ji Hyun, as I reflected on your story, I wondered how you came to your story title, “Queen’s Luxury Spa” (NER 41.4). How does it become symbolic in how Mother and Daughter communicate? How does the scrubbing and washing at the spa reflect the emotional condition of both of your main characters?

Ji Hyun Joo: I’ve always found the Korean public bathhouses, called mokyoktang, to be really interesting spaces, mainly because my relationship with them throughout the years has changed. When my mom used to take me to them during visits to Korea, I was terrified of them. I was terrified of being naked around so many other women, whose bodies had progressed and experienced so much farther than I ever imagined for my own. There was a violence in scrubbing so hard that rolls of skin fell off. Now, I understand it as a form of bonding, one of the best kinds, and I yearn for access to them in ways that I didn’t before. As I was writing this piece, I continued to return to my altered view of this space. For Mother, the scrubbing and washing is a form of solace, the mokyoktang a space where she can bond with women who have experienced similar pains. While for the daughter, there is still a level of detachment from finding comfort in these actions.

AR: Assimilation for those of us who come from immigrant families can be complicated and sometimes painful. Can you discuss how the tension between the mother and daughter characters gets amplified as they adjust to a different culture? How, in your opinion, does assimilation manifest itself differently in parents and in their children?

JHJ: For Mother, she’s had a specific way of envisioning life for herself and her daughter, which Daughter finds suffocating. When daughter is unable to follow these dreams that Mother has set for her, her view of Mother shifts; in a way, Mother has become fragile. Daughter hides important details of her life from her, which, of course, creates distance, even though the intention is to protect Mother from the drastically different person she’s become. I can’t speak for everyone because the experiences of immigrant families are different. I feel they shouldn’t be grouped simply into one collective bundle. But from what I’ve experienced with my own family, assimilation has created significant emotional distance on both parties. My parents live in Korea now, and the few times that I get to see them, I am someone different. I’m constantly taking on an altered shape, but they can’t articulate what the shape is, just the complexities that contribute to the changes I exhibit.

AR: As part of the plot in your story, the reader gets a glimpse of your character’s life on the East Coast in New York and even in her marriage to her white husband. Can you explain why her life there unravels?  

JHJ: I’m always so interested to see different interpretations about the ex-husband, as information about his background is very sparse. The ex-husband is not white. Her life unravels because she can’t handle the heaviness of the secret she’s keeping from Mother, that she married a man outside of her own culture. Within the secret of the marriage hides the truth that she’s become someone unrecognizable to her only family.

AR: What were some of the decisions you had to make while editing your final text, and what did you learn from them? How does having two languages and two cultures play into your editing choices? Does it affect it at all? 

JHJ: I wanted my readers to understand my characters deeply. Both Mother and Daughter may not be likable. In a way, they are both selfish in their wants for their own lives, and their expectations for one another. I wanted them to be understood. Even for those who’ve never had to hide parts of themselves to their family, I wanted them to see why Mother and Daughter chose to. For this piece, having two languages and two cultures didn’t sway my editing choices. I think both aspects made space in the story quite naturally in the writing process.

AR: The ending of your story presents some questions for the reader.  For example, what will life be like for these two women in the future?  Your story suggests that Mother and Daughter are more similar than they are aware. If you were to look into the daughter’s future, what do you think it might look like? Are you hopeful for her?

JHJ: This is such an exciting question, one that I hadn’t thought about! My hope is that Mother and Daughter will better understand one another. I’m not sure what that might look like because I think it’ll take lots of time and dialogue, but I’d like to think it’s a possibility in their far future.

AR: Tensions between mothers and daughters run deep and complex in all cultures. How do you think mothers and daughters can learn to support each other and improve their relationship in difficult times?

JHJ: This may be the most obvious response, but my heart is very honestly grabbing on to this one answer: Talking to one another. 

AR: How do you, personally, feel about immigrants assimilating into a second culture? How much is too much or too little and do you think there are consequences for both?

JHJ: Again, I can’t speak for anyone but myself. It’s very complicated. I remember when I was growing up in San Diego, within a very small, tight-knit Korean community, assimilation was both applauded and frowned upon. Assimilation was both survival and the catalyst for abandoning one’s roots. Personally, I don’t like the idea that one must assimilate, primarily because assimilation indicates change on a deep level. It instills the belief that people must alter themselves completely to belong, and I don’t believe that’s productive.

AR: How is decoding more than just words, in your opinion? 

JHJ: Decoding is love. Understanding what someone is saying without them having to say it, or saying something completely different, that’s a level of intimacy that’s deep, born from lots of observation.

AR: Thank you, Ji Hyun. Your story reminds this reader of the indelible value of reading between the lines.

Ji Hyun Joo is a writer from San Diego based in Astoria, New York. She is currently pursuing her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where she is a recipient of the 2020 Felipe P. De Alba Fellowship. Her works have been published in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s online magazine the Margins, the online publication Winter Tangerine, and the journal Bomb Cyclone.

Alicia Romero is a fiction reader for NER.

Emily Hunt Kivel

Restful Creatures

Fiction from NER 41.4 (2020)
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Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

The turtles are restful creatures, of course, once you get them fed, cleaned up, lolling about by warm rocks, breathing quietly under the sunlight. They’re restful creatures in general, even in times of duress, which is why I’ve got to be here, and why they’ve got to be here, at the sanctuary near Coconut Grove. Their restfulness has gotten them into jams. These turtles have choked on plastic bags, been scarred and broken by motorboats swimming on the surface of the water (sometimes I imagine how our boats must look from down there, black shadows moving at lightning speed above the blue—apocalyptic, really).

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