the TONIC:

How have the challenges of being both a writer and a woman of color changed over the course of your career? Has your authorial voice changed or shifted as you’ve grown into your own body of work?.

Kyoko Mori:

It’s hard to track these changes in my own work because every piece of writing feels like it’s the thing I’ve been waiting to write—that everything I’ve written so far has prepared me for the project at hand.  In that way, every project feels both new and not new at all.  The challenges and the rewards are unique for each essay, story, or book I’ve finished. 

 I do feel that over the years, as more writers of color and women writers have joined the conversation (my first book was a novel published in 1993), each of us feels the burden of representation to be a little lighter. There is a lot of freedom and joy in knowing that mine is only one of the many voices of Asian-American women writers, that I am in conversation with writers who are like me and not like me in so many different ways.

It’s really important to have diversity within diversity in the world of writing and publishing.  We have definitely been moving in the right direction for decades even though at times, it may have seemed we were moving too slowly.

The challenge now, in the last half year, is that the value of “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” has come under attack in every sphere possible: politics, education, business, social relationships. Writing in that environment will affect all our voices (writers who identify as diverse and writers who don’t). It is yet too early to tell how my own voice will shift as I write in this newly challenging cultural and political environment, but change—even those we didn’t ask for—is part of a writer’s (or anyone’s) life.

the TONIC:

Writing can be a weighty endeavor - how do you find joy in your process, and do you feel like it’s necessary to translate that onto the page for readers?.

Kyoko Mori:

Writing can be so frustrating; it’s certainly not “fun” every time we sit down to practice this discipline.  Whenever I start a new project, I feel like I am walking in the dark without really knowing where I am going—that I can only see just a few inches in front of me and I may not even be headed in the right direction.  Most projects take several false starts before I know what it was really about.  This investigative part is challenging because I’m not going to write my way through to clarity unless I keep writing in some way, which means I spend months writing in a mediocre or purposeless manner.

But once I start understanding what the essay, or the story, or the book is about (and it’s always related to what I thought it was about but not exactly the same thing), I do love being able to move forward and finally writing down some words, sentences, and even paragraphs that are right, or more or less right.  And I love revising once I know what I really wanted to do.  Whenever friends (who have not yet studied writing or practiced the discipline on their own for long) tell me that they would like to learn to write because they have good stories to tell or they have something important to say, I don’t want to be discouraging but I try to make clear: the only reason that anyone should try to write an essay, a story, a novel, or a memoir is that they really, ultimately, love to sit down and look at a page full of words they’ve written the day before and cross some out and put new words on the page and move things around. They have to find joy in actually sitting down to write.

I don’t know how to communicate that joy to my readers except to try to write with purpose and clarity.  Working with a good editor also helps.  For example, if my editor—a person who is invested enough in my work to want to publish it—tells me that something I labored over is boring or unnecessary, I ask myself: Wow, if this person who already is invested in the work finds this passage to be boring or unnecessary, just imagine how a reader who picked up the book and encountered this passage might feel.  Then I cut that passage.  Often, less is more.  And that may be a way to translate the joy of writing to a reader: giving the reader only the best parts.

the TONIC:

What is the last text that truly moved you?

Kyoko Mori:

This is a difficult question because—even though I am somewhat critical and there is a lot that I don’t love—I am easily moved by a good piece of writing: a good story, a perceptive thought, beautiful language.  Mako Yoshikawa’s memoir, SECRETS OF THE SUN, was a book that truly moved me—such a great combination of narrative and investigation.  I also loved Michael Lowenthal’s story collection, SEX WITH STRANGERS, for the way each story delved into hard questions and truths about human love and intimacy.  At one of Lesley’s residencies about a year ago, Hester Kaplan read the first chapter of her upcoming memoir, TWICE BORN, in which the narrator goes to witness the cremation of her father’s body: it was so darkly funny, perceptive, and tragic that I was mesmerized.  I think I’m moved by texts that are results of the writer taking a risk (to go to an uncomfortable place whether in fiction or nonfiction) and capturing truths to share with the reader.

the TONIC:

What is one piece of advice you have for emerging writers?

Kyoko Mori:

That writing is a discipline that needs to be studied and practiced.  I don’t mean that we have to write everyday no matter what.  Some people write everyday and other people go for months without writing and then write very intensely for the next three months.  I don’t think there is only one way to approach how to be disciplined about what we do.  But it’s important to be committed.

the TONIC:

What is your favorite thing to teach students about creative writing, and why?

Kyoko Mori:

How to read as a writer.  Because that’s something we can talk about in a group (as a class) or one-on-one.  It also brings together the two things a writer must do: read and practice; observe what other writers do well and then sit down to create our own version of what we love to read.

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For a little intro to the Mako Yoshikawa piece, we’d like to know: What led you to showcase Mako Yoshikawa? Can you say a couple of sentences about why you chose this piece for print in the journal? 

I wanted to showcase Mako Yoshikawa’s work and especially this essay because it’s an essay that is related to the main story of her excellent memoir, SECRETE OF THE SUN, but also apart from it.  It’s like a gem that didn’t quite fit into the necklace.  I love how she investigates our (very justifiable) fear of illness and mortality and asks how anyone can possibly make a commitment for life.