ISSUE 06 || FALL / WINTER 2009
Interview
with
Nami
Mun
Interview by
Christine Lee Zilka
As with all
writers we court for interviews at Kartika Review, I
sent Nami Mun a shy
and hopeful email, asking her to engage in a dialogue with our litmag. Requests for interviews often receive
polite
replies, with only a few silent responses or vociferous exceptions, and
so I
crossed my fingers after pushing send.
Nami Mun’s
responses via email conveyed a
charisma that is second to very few writers out there (she rivals Junot
Díaz’s
ability to woo a crowd), and I found her one of the most delightful and
fun
people I’ve ever met. At a recent
reading at a local bookstore, with a row of wide-eyed teenage girls
listening
to her read about Joon (the main character and narrator of Miles
From Nowhere) in a particularly gruesome, rated R scene, Nami
was able to turn something awkward into an act of bonding.
“I’m so sorry I picked this scene to read!”
exclaimed Nami with dismay, to the giggling teenagers.
“It’s okay,”
they replied, as she continued to
banter with them and then, turned back to read.
She made them feel at ease and thus, the rest of the crowded
bookstore,
using great intuition (something in Korea we call “noon-chi”), just as
she made
me feel at ease.
She and her
debut novel, Miles From Nowhere, have earned a healthy
and growing list of
accolades affirming that her work will continue to make a lasting
impact on
readers. I am looking forward to reading
her future work.
On the heels
of receiving a Whiting Writers’
Award, Nami Mun engaged in an interview with Kartika about how she
first met
fiction writing and her subsequent life as a writer.
Nami Mun is
the author
of the debut novel, Miles from Nowhere (Riverhead), which was
shortlisted for the Orange Award and selected for Booklist’s
Top Ten
First Novels, Amazon’s Best Fiction of 2009 So Far, and Indie Next.
Named Best
New Novelist of 2009 by Chicago magazine, she is a recipient of
a
Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize.
Mun, who
currently lives
and teaches in Chicago, was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up
there and
in Bronx, New York. She has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a
photojournalist, a waitress, an activities coordinator for a nursing
home, and
a criminal defense investigator. After earning a GED, she went on to
get a BA
in English from UC Berkeley, and an MFA from University of Michigan,
where she
received the first place Hopwood Award for short fiction. She has
garnered
scholarships from the Corporation of Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Squaw
Valley
Writer’s Conference, and Tin House Writer’s Conference, and her stories
have
been published or are forthcoming in Granta, Pushcart Prize
Anthology,
The Iowa Review, Evergreen Review, Witness, Bat
City
Review, Tin House, and elsewhere.
ON
WRITING AND PROCESS
CHRISTINE
ZILKA:
You have gone through your share of occupations--Avon lady, a
journalist, a
waitress, and a criminal defense investigator, to share some. Which job did you hate the most—and which job
did you enjoy most? And why?
NAMI
MUN:
I had a job once that involved me sitting alone for eight hours a day
in a gray
room with no windows. The room was small—a vertical coffin of sorts—and
very
bare, except for one fold-out table, one fold-out chair, and one analog
gem
scale. The job was this: use tweezers to pick up tiny bits of Cubic
Zirconium
(the size of rice kernels) and weigh them on the scale, one by one. Let
me
reiterate: I did that for eight hours a day, five days a week. I was
maybe
fourteen then, with the energy of a pogo stick. By the seventh hour, I
would
actually feel vomitous.
The best job,
hands down, was criminal defense
investigations. Unlike the “CZ” job, investigations allowed me to get
out of
the office and visit different places every single day (for example, I
would
visit freeway underpass encampments to look for witnesses for a drug
case; heavily-secured
buildings to serve a subpoena; county jails to speak with defendants;
people’s
homes to interview character witnesses, etc.). The job gave me access
to a
variety of voices and setting, which I feel only helped me as a writer.
ZILKA:
And what led you to writing? (It feels like you might have settled on
your
“final job” as a writer—do you feel the same way)?
MUN:
An English Composition instructor at Santa Monica College gave a
writing
assignment on the first day of class. She said to write whatever we
wanted, so
I wrote a short story, my first one ever. I don’t know why I chose to
write
fiction instead of, say, an essay about my hometown, which is what most
of my
classmates submitted. What I do know is that it didn’t even occur to
me, not
for a second, to write anything else but fiction. At the end of the
semester,
the teacher asked if I had ever considered becoming a writer, and
apparently
that was enough of a nudge for me. I signed up for a writing class the
following semester. Of course, I can’t end the story there because that
would
imply all was peachy keen afterwards. The truth is, my first fiction
writing
class did not go well. My instructor—the poor man who had to endure the
awful
stink of my first real attempts at fiction—tacitly and gently posed a
very
different question by the end of that semester, which was: are you sure
you want to be a writer?
ZILKA:
You earned your MFA from University of Michigan where you earned the
Hopwood
Award. What do you think is the most important thing you learned and
took away
from being in an MFA program? Do you
think you would have learned these things otherwise?
MUN:
University of Michigan, the best MFA program out there right now, gave
me what
every writer could want: the time and money to write; ridiculously
generous
professors; and a solid writing community. I learned so many
unquantifiable
things while I was there—it’s difficult to try and articulate the
lessons.
Maybe I can just say what’s been on my mind lately, which is, I think I
learned
how to be a teacher by being a student of some of the best teachers on
this
earth, namely, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack and Michael Byers.
ZILKA:
In a previous interview you mentioned that you find el trains a great
source
for dialogue. Alexander Chee, in a
previous
interview with Kartika mentioned that
he often writes on trains and subways.
(And John Wray wrote Lowboy on
the NYC subway)! Where do you
write? What is necessary in your
environment for you to be able to write?
(And can/do you write on trains—I wonder if we should all go
write on
trains)!
MUN:
I really wish I had a writerly answer to this but I don’t. Because I
have
certain needs while writing (cigarettes, food, caffeine), I’m afraid
I’m pretty
much bound to my apartment, or a bar that’s open but dead, or a quiet
coffee
shop. I suppose I have written in a few places that other folks might
find
strange, i.e. the IKEA in Emeryville (it has plenty of parking as well
as
Swedish meatballs). I do write down snippets of dialogue I hear on
trains and buses
but that’s about the extent of my writing on public transit.
ON
THE CRAFT OF WRITING
ZILKA:
The editors at Kartika loved your book (and we cheer every time you win
an
award—congratulations on winning a Whiting Award)!
I personally
was very excited about the premise
and the voice of the narrator. But there
were critics who stated Miles From
Nowhere was “episodic” (as a criticism, oddly enough) and might
have been
better off as a short story collection.
You explained the episodic nature was consistent with Joon’s
character
and life—but was Miles From Nowhere
originally a short story collection? Or
did you always intend for it to be a novel?
And why do you think episodic is widely considered a criticism
(as
opposed to a compliment)?
MUN:
The first story I wrote for the book was “Club Orchid,” now chapter
three of Miles. In that story, Joon is both
vulnerable and strong, and I suppose I liked the tension this dichotomy
created
on the page, especially when she tries to describe the very adult
setting and
situations. I went on to write a few more stories about her, and a
little while
later, I noticed how the stories revolved around Joon working odd jobs
to make
money. (For example, she works as a dance hostess in one story, sells
Avon in
another, sells newspaper on subways, etc.) That’s when I realized that
these
stories, while self-contained, could also be cogs working toward a
larger
narrative arc. I also made a crucial decision right then—to keep the
episodic
structure, primarily because I felt it gave a truer, more visceral
reflection
of Joon’s fractured mindset.
And to answer
your second question, I’m not
really sure why an “episodic novel” or a “novel in stories” carries
negative
connotations. The format certainly isn’t anything new; it’s been around
for a
long while, I would say, the Bible being an early example. But maybe
certain
readers don’t feel comfortable with gaps. Maybe they feel all the dots
should
be connected by the writer. In Miles,
the gaps in time, the gaps between chapters are crucial. It provides a
sense of
jaggedness, of unevenness, which mirrors Joon’s present-action life, as
well as
her ruminations about the past. And I also see the gaps as an
invitation for
readers to connect a few dots on their own.
ZILKA: How do you
know when
to end a narrative? Obviously, the ending of a novel will be different
from
that of a short story. Still, in either case, and especially in the
context of
your episodic novel how do you know what that last line(s) will be?
MUN:
I never know what the last line will be until I land on it. And when I
do land
on it, it feels a little like the aftermath of whiskey drunk slowly.
Something
warm happens to my chest, which unlocks the spine and sends signals to
the rest
of the body. Tiny, humble sparks of joy go off in the brain. A fog of
gratefulness surrounds the heart. The lungs relax. You know it’s the
last line
because everything inside your body tells you that it’s the last line.
Now, how do
you know when the book is done?
That’s a different story.
ON
WRITING & IDENTITY
ZILKA:
I have to admit that I was one of the legions of people who thought
that this
book might have been a memoir-disguised-as-fiction.
But the MOMENT I met you in person it was
very, very obvious to me how very different you are from the character
of
Joon. Recently you wrote a fabulous
essay called “The Kernel of Truth” in Omnivoracious
where you address the question about whether or not your work is
autobiographical by stating, “Maybe this is what writers mean when they
say,
"All fiction is autobiographical." As fictioneers, we make things up:
stories, people, events, cause and effects, connections— fabricating
these
things is our job. But nothing comes from a vacuum. Every character,
every
story, has its root in something that makes it unique, so that only
that
particular writer could have written it.” [1]
What do you
think is unique to your
writing? What about your writing makes
it something only you could have written?
MUN: I’m
going to be honest here and say that I feel a little goofy trying to
talk about
the uniqueness in my own writing. So I’ll speak in more general terms
and say
that, for me, character and voice are the two main elements that make
one book
distinct from another. As a writer, I try my best to create singular
characters
with a particular point of view. That was certainly my aim for Joon (as
well as
Knowledge and Wink and even the tertiary characters). The way Joon
thinks, what
she chooses to see, what she chooses to see as meaningful, her
stoicism, her
capacity for empathy, her ability to feel numb at a moment’s notice—all
of
these things and more hopefully come through in her voice and work hard
to make
her a fully developed character who is both unique and relatable. The
more you
develop your characters—the further you dive below the surface of your
characters and make them as unique as any human being—the more the
reader will
sense your undeniable fingerprints as the creator of those characters.
ZILKA: Some claim
that it is
easier to get published when you're a writer of color, because there's
always a
market for "ethnic" or "different" writing. Others claim it
is harder to get published when you're a writer of color, because the
literary
mainstream is white and therefore cannot relate to our experiences, and
cannot
relate to characters of color. Which claim rings truer for you?
MUN: God, I
really hope
people aren’t walking around thinking that it’s easier to get published
if
you’re a writer of color. Really? Why? Because there’s always a market
for
“ethnic” writing? I mean, isn’t there always
a market for “non-ethnic” writing?
Hasn’t there always been space for “non-immigrant”
stories?
And the other
side of
the argument seems just as mired in fallacy. I think it is our job as
writers
to make characters at once singular AND relatable to the larger
audience. I’m
certain that a majority of my readers didn’t run away from home when
they were
thirteen, but I’m also certain that they’ve probably experienced
moments of
alienation and loneliness in their lives. Even if I were reading a book
about
walnuts, I would still expect the writer to somehow show me what that
nut was
going through so I could relate.
The truth is,
it’s
difficult to get published. Period. And it’ll be a lot more difficult
to get
published if one is more concerned about the politics of writing than
the
writing itself.
ZILKA: Has your
joining
academia changed your writing and/or how others perceive your writing?
Academia
hasn’t changed
my writing, but working full-time in a profession I truly love has. And
not so
much the writing itself but my writing schedule. It’s all about the
summers
now.
ON
MILES FROM NOWHERE
ZILKA: What was
your favorite
part of the book to write? What was the
most painful part of writing Miles From Nowhere?
MUN: I really
can’t choose
which part was my favorite to write but I can definitely say, very
easily,
which part wasn’t. The trouble child. The bane of my then existence.
The
chapter titled “Avon.” I say chapter, but I was also trying to write
that
chapter as a self-contained short story, which means that the chapter
had to
carry an important arc of the novel within the sometimes-limiting
framework of
a short story. And it just about killed me. I think went through maybe
50
rounds of revisions and I still wasn’t happy. I couldn’t identify the
problem.
And how can you fix a problem you can’t see? At some point, I was
certain I
didn’t have the chops to make all the bizarre elements work. (We have
Joon who
is pregnant and working as a door-to-door Avon Lady. A melodramatic
“nun-lady”
who takes confessions in an apartment hallway. A drug den of sorts
where Joon
resides with sweet but insane heroin addicts who give her possibly the
worst
advice on abortion. An attempt at self-abortion. An attempt at suicide.
And a
guy who falls off a ladder and onto a tree branch, which skewers his
body
clean.) I was a breath away from giving up on the chapter/story, but my
professor, Peter Ho Davies, wouldn’t let me. So I kept at it, and ended
up
eventually adapting it into a one-act play, the process of which
unveiled the
source of the problem. Structure. With all the prose all but stripped
away, I
discovered that its structure was far from sound. It was a tough
lesson, but a
worthy one.
ON
MUN’S NEXT BOOK
ZILKA:
I do want to ask that if Miles From
Nowhere was based on personal experiences, what is your next book
based
upon (if of course, you can oblige us with a hint of what your future
work may
bring)?
MUN:
My current project is about crime, a topic I became engrossed in while
working
as a criminal defense investigator.
MISCELLANY
ZILKA:
I have close ties to Berkeley…if you drink coffee: what was your
favorite café
in Berkeley?
MUN:
My favorite place to write in the entire world is a pub on Solano
(they’re
actually acknowledged in the book). When working on Miles,
I’d get there at noon, as soon as they opened, so I could
snag the window seat by the heater. Sometimes I’d work there for ten
hours
straight and watch regulars come and go. I could set my watch by them.
And the
folks who worked there always took such good care of me, never minding
the fact
that I drank tea all day instead of beer
FINAL
WORDS OF ADVICE
ZILKA:
What words of advice do you have for Asian American writers? For emerging writers in general?
MUN:
I still feel like an emerging writer myself so it feels strange to be
giving
advice. But I do have one advice for beginning writers: read a lot of
books and
try to see the craft behind the writing. And for all writers working on
their
first long project: at some point you’re going to have moments of
self-doubt.
Instead of trying to “overcome” self-doubt, try to learn how to ride
it. I am a
person who is both plagued with and fueled by self-doubt, which might
explain
the eight years it took to finish my book. But my self-doubt was also
the force
behind the 30 or so revisions each chapter went through, which in the
end gave
me a certain confidence about my writing. As for Asian-American
writers:
perhaps it’s a little passé to say this but try not to write what
others expect
you to write and instead focus on the story that you
want to write.