by Caroline Wright
Lois-Ann The Warrior
NOTE: A highly abridged version of this interview with writer Lois-Ann Yamanaka, which took place in May 2001, appeared in the June issue of IS Magazine. Below is the (mostly) unabridged transcript of our conversation.
As she knuckles down to work on her seventh book, writer Lois-Ann Yamanaka, author of Father of the Four Passages, takes a moment to ponder proms, pidgin, and beekeeping in Kalihi.
First of all, what did you read when you were young?
When I was a little girl there was an author here in Hawai`i. Her name was Ruth Tabrah, and she had a book called Hawaiian Heart and I remember reading that book over and over and over, because... you know, it was set on the Big Island, and I thought it was incredible that there were words in a book about someplace that I was from. And then she wrote a book called The Red Shark.
I also read a lot of Beverly Cleary... all of that. S.E. Hinton. But I think my favorite book was To Kill A Mockingbird.
What are you reading now?
I hadn't realized - or I guess I did realize, but I didn't want to admit to the world - that I spent my entire college experience reading Cliff's Notes. [laughs] Cause I read real slooooowwwww [very plaintively]. I'm a very slow reader. And I was like that from the time I was little. My mother, she just had a cow over how much help I had needed.
So I decided that I was going to now educate myself [laughs] with works that I should have read. And so I have been discovering, for the first time in my life, William Faulkner. And it has been, like, earthshaking. I know, the ground just, like, fell right out from under me, and at one point I just said, I was reading The Sound and the Fury and I called my best friend and said that I was going to stop writing. I said you know what? I'm in the presence of immortals. I mean, I am so mortal in what I do. I said, 'You know what? I'm in the amateur club.' I was just so shaken up, right? I thought 'Oh, my goodness!'
So I've been reading Faulkner, and then I just finished reading -- you know, I read things that come to me. I just finished reading The Red Tent. And I just went whoaaaaaa. It just came to me, from somebody, and then somebody, and then somebody, and after the third time I said, 'I guess I better read this book.' I've read a ton of books. Oh, and you know, for the first time, I read The Bell Jar. I shoulda written them -- I was writing them all down... what am I currently reading? I'm reading C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. And then I'm going to read The Bear, and three novellas by Faulkner; that's sitting on my desk. I also picked up Jeannette Winterson, Sexing The Cherry.
What accomplishments am I proudest of? Well, with writing, or with my life? [laughs]
It's a very open question.
A very open question. What am I proudest of? I'm proudest of the fact that, despite debilitating depression [laughs], when I am well... you know, my son is autistic. So I feel like a warrior. I give him a voice when he doesn't have a voice. I've gotta fight for him. That's how I spent my day yesterday, and the day before that, always advocating for him, and fighting for him, and...
My mother used to always say that from the time I was really little - actually, from the time that I was very little - that I had a martyr complex. [laughs] and you know for a little girl, your mother tells you stuff like that, and you're kinda like, Huhhhh? And not understand it, and fight it, yeah? [Her voice softens with the memory of the little martyr she used to be, and she adds...] But I think that I was born to it, because what was coming was this boy. And I would have to fight for my life for him. So I'm proud to be a martyr. That's my proudest accomplishment. [laughs]
A martyr/mother, right?
You didn't decide to start writing until you were 27. What took you so long?
Because we grew up speaking pidgin, and then I think our stories had to be told in pidgin, because your first language is closest to your feelings and your emotions, and in order to access what you really feel about the world or people or your characters, you gotta access it through first language. And then when you are denied that, or told not to do that, or you feel ashamed by it, you just cannot [emphatically, sounding astonished that anybody would ever expect a writer to do anything differently]!
You just can't tell the story the way should be told, because separating your first language from who you are is just the fracturing of the self, and then all of a sudden, you're told to write a story, you cannot bring anything - because with language it's the food you eat; language is your parents, your grandparents, where you live... all of that becomes real shameful all of a sudden.
I can't imagine having to write about my childhood in a voice that didn't come naturally to me. That leads me to the next question... when you taught in Kalihi, you were chastized for speaking pidgin in class, and then when you wrote Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre, it was banned at some schools because of its high pidgin content. How has Name Me Nobody been received in Hawai`i schools with all of ITS pidgin content?
I think the problem with Saturday Night was also the text, the kinds of stories I was trying to tell in the narrative. And also the obscenities... you know, like, they no talk bout that, yeah? And also with Name Me Nobody, it's interesting, because it comes a few years later, and then a lot changes, yeah, on the literary landscape here. A lot more teachers are... you know, the Department of Education has slowly been able to help the teachers to understand the importance of honoring the first language and you know, stuff li'dat, all those validating words... [laughs] I hate those words! 'Embrace', 'validate'... agggghhhhh! And sometimes I gotta use it cause you know I'm like, stuck for a word. I just feel sick when it comes out my mouth.
I teach a writing class on Friday nights with these kids that are very different in socioeconomic backgrounds, emotions - all kinds of different kids; I've been with them for three years. So as a joke, when I was writing the book, I would throw their names in whenever I could so that they could find themselves and crack up, right? And then so one of the older brothers that's a junior at one of our public schools here said, 'Hey Aunty, I reading the book!' I said 'Really?' He said, 'For my class.' Because his brother and sister, their names are in the book, yeah? He told his teacher and the teacher didn't believe him. I said 'Tell the teacher that... no tell, I just going come to the door!' [laughs]
I hear people talking about it being on the Book List... I don't hear the banning stuff so much.
How much do you write every day? Are you pretty disciplined?
I don't know why I always have to, what you call that, do my thing about if I'm well. I have these different cycles of self, with regard to what project I'm working on. So you happen to have caught me at a time where I'm beginning really anew on my book. I'm maybe six chapters in, and it's the hardest, hardest part [emphatically] because you don't know even if your narrator is supposed to be telling the story, and you don't know where the story is going, really, yeah? But I've done a SHITLOAD of research. And so the research part, if you ask me about my schedule was THEN, it was like, SO engaging and SO fun because I was at the library, and I was in the archives, and I was in the photo-archives... I mean, it was so engaging that I had to tell myself to STOP. Because I could have researched forever. I mean, it's a turn of the century novel and it's so much fun... even my doing stuff... part of the novel is about beekeepers, so I was researching the arrival of bees in this part of - you know, I live in Kalihi Valley. So I contacted a beekeeper as part of the research, I was going out to the apiary, and I was going check out his hives, and then I told myself, 'You know what... stooooppppp. Just stop!' [laughs]
The next step is getting a hive for your backyard!
[laughs] 'You know what, can I have one of your queens?'
But now I kinda cranking along so I will take my son to school, and then I have a real good schedule. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I go to the gym because exercise kinda helps me get my head together. And then Monday Wednesday Friday I come home about 10:30, and I work from about 10:30 till about 1:30. So 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 1:30... and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my husband can take my son to school so I can start from the mornings, but what I choose to do is sleep in... until I have a headache the size... you know when you sleep too much? Kinda like today. This is the first time in like, ten years that I have this luxury, right? And then I just do it, and then I go, auwe, why did I do it? But I start from about 9:30.
What are some of the unbreakable rules for writing pidgin?
The unbreakable rules for writing pidgin. Well, you don't censor what anybody says... because I think when people... well, YOU know: pidgin is a brutal language. It's an honest language because it's short and fast. You don't waste for words. So I think that you don't censor your characters. And the next thing is you don't censor yourself.
Pidgin is real difficult. That's why we fight over here - about sound, about oral language being put into print. But I just be real true to what they saying, how they say it.
It seems to me that your images of poverty and racism in Hawai`i are pretty universal. The story of Ivah, Blu and May could have taken place anywhere. I see children like them here in rural South Carolina all the time, children who aren't taken care of and who have really a pretty desperate lot. Was that your intention, to make it a sort of universal thing? Or were you just writing what you know?
I think I didn't intend to make it universal... [disturbed] But then again, maybe you're right! You know, I read, like, Bastard Out Of Carolina... how far is that experience from my experience? Not very. And The Beans of Egypt, Maine. How far is that? Not very far at all.
So that wasn't my real intent... I've been criticized for that too. 'You're always writing about the spare parts in your backyard. Is that art?' You know what I mean?
The criticism surprised me more than anything! Things are like that everywhere; that's just the way it is. I was looking at some of your readers' comments for Father of the Four Passages on amazon.com, and one of the women wrote, 'It's like nobody in her book has ever heard of a condom or any other form of birth control. As soon as girls start looking like women, they have sex; male sexual responsibility isn't even mentioned.' And it surprises me that people don't even realize that life is like that for a lot of women, even now!
She must not watch Jenny Jones! [laughs]
Hey, you read the comment from my former student?
On amazon.com?
She called me by my married name. Because that's how she knew me when I was teaching. That was my most... I mean, talk about one hardscrabble life! I taught her out in Waimanalo... real hard life. Homestead kid, and gosh, she had two babies... at one point, she contacted me through the Lizard Loft, y'know, on Kapahulu, when Lynn Ackerman was running it, and Lynn forwarded the letter... and then I wrote back, but I had to send the letter where she was. And she was at her father-in-law's and they were already having a bad time, yeah? She was having a bad go. But it was this three-page, single-spaced typed letter, and all her troubles: she has two babies, she's stuck, she's being hurt, and I don't know what to do, and I love you... and this is a girl that showed up on my PORCH on Saturday mornings!
So I wrote back, and said I was going send back her and her kids, you know, like, 'CALL ME'. Or write to me, or contact me quickly. I even tracked down that father-in-law, and he was in Virginia. And I asked where is she? I called him on the phone, and he wouldn't tell me where she was! Urgent, urgent, urgent. And then my friend told me that somebody was teasing me about my married name on amazon.com. I said 'Who'?
Okay, I didn't see that. Did she say it was under Father Of The Four Passages?
Yeah!
You're talking about helping this student... do you have any altruistic goals for your books when you write them? Do you hope that they will serve some specific purpose in the Hawaiian community?
Oh yeah. I just want - I just want one kid like me to see themselves in literature - to see their lives, their families, their experiences, the sound of their voices... because I think that's so important! Darrell Lum said, 'Until you see yourself in literature, you don't exist.' When he said that, he was speaking at a reading conference, a conference for educators. That line just struck me, yeah? It made me want to cry because that was my experience. He was talking about the power of books and the power of the written word, yeah? You can see a facsimile of yourself, a facsimile, because I did, but it was never enough - you can see yourself in film... But then, it's Flower Drum Song, you know, when I was a kid. So you see yourself, and you know who's Japanese, ya know what I mean... James Shigeta! But you know the other one is Nancy Kwan and Jack Soo, ya know what I mean? Miyoshi Umeki, but she was a Japanese national. It's real different! You know, you KNOW. But that's not enough; it's a Chinese experience, if it is even THAT... and then you see yourself in print, you know, when you're a kid, A Pair Of Red Clogs. It's a Japanese book from Japan, translated. Still not quite. You can see yourself in magazines rarely when we was kids. I don't know... the power of that written word!
You write children so well! You have such a sense of their voice, and their concerns, and what frightens them... My next question: you've been criticized for your portrayals of Filipino men. But it occurred to me that if I as a writer wanted to write about the bogeyman, I would model him after the scariest man I'd known in my childhood. Was there actually an Uncle Paulo in your childhood?
[quickly] No. No. You know, but... [pauses] I mean, maybe yeah! You know what I mean?
When I was a kid, and we were all... you know when you menstruate, and you're at that age, and it's hormonal, and then your mother really starts pouring on the folklore, right? 'You better watch out, ya ya ya ya!' All that kine stuff, yeah? Not that she specifically aimed it at a Filipino-American, but at that time, in the town I was growing up in... it was a very small town on the Big Island... my classmates were being raped! They were being picked up, one by one, on their way home from school, on their way home from the movies... you know, three of 'em! And you know, when you're in a class of, like, 25... [laughs] that's a really large percentage! And it so happened to be... he was a Filipino young man, he had just graduated from high school, and then when it happened to my best friend as she was walking home... and she wasn't raped, yeah, but she was frightened. And then the story that she told, and... you know, they could have all been stories. They could have all NOT been stories. But man, we were frightened.
That made such perfect sense to me. You wrote about the guy who scared you most in the world, and he just happened to be what he was.
That's why I give Joyce Kukaua so much credit, because in her first book, she says. And she names the person. And she did it deliberately. It was an act of healing, it was an act of taking power and control back to herself. You know, and I just thought, Hey, what the FUCK, you know what I mean? Hey, I don't have to be afraid of you anymore!
How do your peers perceive you, now that you've become a well-known chronicler of the flavors of your childhood?
The people I grew up with in Hilo, you mean? It's real different. Hilo is a very interesting place... because when I go home and give readings, none of my classmates come! I mean, rarely... a few of 'em... but then my best friend, growing up in that town, now is a stylist in New York City. Not da kine hair stylist, his recent job was - do you know what a stylist does? I didn't know either!
Yeah, I have a friend who is one... like, for photo shoots and that sort of thing?
Yeah, for magazines. He freelances doing that, but he makes a shitload of money. So he was my best friend growing up in Hilo, and he was gay. Me and him were this really odd couple... I dunno, it was really rough, growing up with him like that, and me like this...
So he wanted to go home to our class reunion, which was in 1999. I said, 'Stupid! They not going to roll out the red carpet you know, you idiot! We still mental to them! We still gross!' Then he said, 'We're going, we're going, we're going!' He had a point to prove, yeah? Because he is SO successful.
So me and him, and this other friend we managed to drag along, crawwwwl into the Kilohana Room of the Naniloa Surf Hotel, where they held the prom that we never went to... [laughs] It was so nice... I guess people change; they were different, they were happy for us... we were, like, the photo-opportunity of the evening... [laughs heartily] It was just so funny! Just so nice...
Did you work for hours to find your dress?
Yeah, it was like the prom! It was so funny, because I went to the prom with him. I mean, he went with the girl that came along with us, and we double-dated. But my best friend and I were at my house getting ready... and just that excitement... it was just so funny, cause even my mother said, she's like, 'You guys going prom, yeah, again!' I was like [mock horror] Don't EVEN!
How much does your own body image affect your life? How did you come to know that you're beautiful?
Well, I don't know if I have come to know that yet. [laughs] I'm always on a diet, my weight always fluctuated... you know, thin, fat, thin, fat, thin, fat, all through my life. So I really understand that. Even if maybe when I had written the book I was tiny... you still have that image of yourself, you know? You look in the mirror and you go euuuuuw and you're the grossest thing in the world. It's adolescence.
I tried to explain myself to my mother years later: 'If something happens to me, even though you're a good mother, and I had a good dad, and a good home, and everything like that... I had sisters and family... that event would have been... because I was so ultra-sensitive, but on the outside I wasn't, so my mother thought I was tough, yeah? Because I could just fight, fight, fight, fight anybody! Fight back, and my mouth was vicious! Especially with him. Anybody picked on him, my mouth was so horrid! The devil's mouth, I had. And I could cut somebody to the ground with my words, make them fall to their knees. That's why I was so hated, but... [laughs]
I think that I would take things, and take events right to my mother, it would multiply ten times larger than what it was, and I would internalize it. That's why I took things real hard, even though I wouldn't let on that I was.
What Island writers do you like?
Well, I love Nora Keller... she's my buddy. I really love Darrell Lum. You know, all my friends! I really love Wing Tek Lum. I love Gary Pak. Island writers, Island writers... oh, of course, Ruth Tabrah. I was doing this workshop for kids, committed to it every year even though they pay me only enough money to buy a good pair of shoes. It's called the Teeny Reading Festival and it's really cranking on. I was at last year's one, not this year, and I was sitting outside smoking cigarettes - I don't care, I'm not a teacher anymore, and the kids are all around... This one kid approaches me and he says, 'Hi, my name is...' I don't know what his name is, Chris, I think his first name was. I said, 'Oh, hi , Chris!' And he says, 'You know my grandmother.' I said, 'Do I?' He said, 'Yeah, my grandmother is Ruth Tabrah!' And I just died! [laughs] Oh, and Milton Muriyama...
How much time do you spend on Molokai now? Do you still have family there?
Oh yeah, my grandmother! She 82 years old, she still alive and kicking on and feisty as ever... Molokai, yeah, I go maybe once a year at most. Because I see her every two to three months on O`ahu. She comes down to go to the doctor, so I take her to the doctor... so I don't go home that often, unless I need really, like, malama, yeah? And then my grandma... oh, she so wonderful. I mean, she cook my favorite foods, I mean, I step through the door, and my favorite foods are all on the table, hot! That's the only person still on this earth that treats me like a child, like a baby. She really, really is a wonderful grandma. I've been so lucky.
She must be incredibly proud of you. Has she read your books?
No, because I told her not to, yeah? Because I kinda go at Christianity. And the kind of spiritual upbringing we had was kind of as a result of her. She was a kanya convert in the 30s. So everybody got raised as a foot-washing Baptist. All my mother them. And then the kids, all us grandkids - if there wasn't a Baptist church, we went Methodist. If there wasn't a Methodist, we went to the closest thing, you know? My grandmother, I told her Don't read my books! And I think when the first poems started coming out, she'd read them and get really disgusted, yeah? She's very proud of me, I think... [her voice trails uncertainly, and then she adds, sounding miserable] I don't really want to talk about it, yeah? [peals of laughter]
Is Pahala still comfortable for you?
You know, I don't really have any family there, or friends... but every time I go home, we going drive through the town and take pictures, and walk around, and it still feels the same, yeah?
Which of your books has the most of YOU in it?
The most of me? [she is startled]. Hmmm... I don't know. It changes, yeah, every so often. But I'd say... I really like Wild Meat And The Bully Burgers. A lot of them have me in them - different times, different... yeah...
And a lot, I think, of your buddy the stylist, too.
Yeah.
I remember him, of course, in Blu's Hanging, and I remember him in...
Heads By Harry?
Yeah, and Name Me Nobody, too. That character is a recurring personality, and he's lovely.
Even Father of the Four Passages, you know, the character's not gay... but to understand that kind of friendship, that kinda... really long time and I mean... yaiiii...
And my friend Don the stylist, me and him been friends since we was in preschool together. It's so funny that when Wild Meat came out, he and I had been estranged for a number of years, because - and I don't know why; I gotta ask him, I guess, but - he was dealing with his own sexuality issues, coming out, and there was some resentment because... I guess I never asked. I just assumed, and... you know, we talk about it now.
So finally, after the Wild Meat tour, I was at a hotel in New York City, and he finally came to see me, and we had like two hours together, and we cried and everything. And then when the limo driver came to take me to the airport, Don said, 'Can you give me a lift to 26th Avenue?' or whatever he said, yeah? So we got into the limo, and it was this stretch limo, and it was so nice, and we kinda looked at each other, and we laugh, laugh, laugh laugh!
And then he said, 'What happened to Lovey and Jerry at the end of the story?'
And I said, 'Wellllllll, they got into a limo in midtown Manhattan... and they drove off into the sunset!'
At that time he was doing work for Italian Vogue; he was flying to Milan every other week, practically, and I sent him one of the galley proofs. And he said while he's reading on the flight, that he's bursting out laughing and people are looking at him like 'What's the matter with you?' [laughs]
How are you going to spend the summer?
This summer? [moaning] I gotta finish my book! I'm on deadline! I've gotta finish this book; I have to be committed to the work! No futting around.
You've said, and this can be off the record if you like, that you've fought depression all your life. How does that affect your writing?
It does! It doesn't even have to be off the record. I mean, it's something that I struggled with. I always thought it was a character flaw. My mother would say 'Snap out of it, snap out of it, what's the matter with you', yeah? And then, what I was finding when my son was diagnosed... I went for help, because I just went spiraling downward; I just couldn't stop! And so then I got diagnosed with clinical depression, and then I started tracing back... but you know what happened during this time? This is exciting! I'm gonna do a depression diary, if it's possible... because you know, when you get there, it's like you ain't even lifting your hand off the bed sometimes. That's why that C.S. Lewis account... every sentence, I've gotta stop, because the metaphor is so powerful when writers write about it! The metaphor for the feeling: instead of saying 'I feel sad today', he going say, 'I feel like I have a blanket over my...' You know what I mean; it's gonna be like, HOLY SHIT!
The other person whose book really halted my breath - well, The Bell Jar was real interesting - and then the other one was Darkness Visible. William Stryon. Just so intense! Intensely honest. And that's what I going do. I'm gonna keep notes on. And maybe later on, just, you know, write about it, or talk about it.
More power to you... as you said, sometimes it's just hard to get up and brush your teeth in the morning. Are you on medication?
Well, now, yeah... coming out of the latest one. You know, it gets harder to come out of. You know when you were a kid, you could kinda... I don't know. I'm finding that every episode that comes is harder to get out of than the one that came before. Especially if it's a big one, yeah? Cause you know the tiny little ones... if you have a... what you call that? I forget the question.
It's not as easy any longer just to say, 'Well, I'll wake up tomorrow and everything will be okay', is it?
Yeah, it's just not. But I get medication. And now I'm on - I've done this before - I'm on vitamins, yeah? And they really affect the way... and I try to get more sleep... cause once the insomnia comes with it, it's like ohhhhhhhhhhhh... it's so painful, yeah.
I guess if writing was an easy process, everybody would be doing it, yeah?
That's true... definitely is work.
Lois-Ann Yamanaka is the author of Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre; the trilogy Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, Blu's Hanging, and Heads By Harry; a young-adult novel, Name Me Nobody; and Father of the Four Passages. She is the winner of a Lannan Literary Award, an Asian-American Literary Award, and an American Book Award. She lives in Honolulu with her husband and her son.
Caroline Wright is a freelance writer. She can be reached via e-mail at c@wrightforyou.com or by phone at 808/622-1077.
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