A finalist for the 2018 Newfound Prose Prize chapbook contest, this piece details her experience of obtaining a “Genius Visa” so she could continue to live and write in the United States. She was gracious enough to chat with me more about her process and underlying beliefs on immigration and belonging.

Delaney Kochan: Tell me about the structure of the essay. Is there something significant about the number 82 or the way you chose to structure your piece?

Ploi Pirapokin: The essay is numbered to reflect the eligibility criteria to qualify for an O-1 visa, as though it were a checklist that needed to be ticked off once completed. I wanted the seemingly never-ending numbers to mimic the arduous process of waiting, and of constantly proving my worth as though it were easy as arithmetic—if I only did X, then I would get my visa; what do I lose when I do Y; what risks do I take if I do Z. 

Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets” and Weike Wang’s “Chemistry” played a huge part in guiding how I braided my narratives. I had the entire chapbook up on a wall and made sure to find a pattern I could follow. If I hadn’t mentioned Justin Bieber in a while, or needed a poetic image, I’d slip it in—all in service to the through-line.

I wish I had a reason to end at number 82, but that’s just where I’ve stopped for now. I’ve since found out that number 82 is one of the magic numbers of protons and neutrons that can make an atomic nucleus exceptionally stable, filling out its shells without any room left for adding more. The number also refers to Messier 82, a starburst galaxy more luminous than the whole Milky Way. I’d like to think that my essay, with its alien imagery and space metaphors, is in itself a container stable enough to hold the light within me. Doesn’t that sound literary?

Kochan: What is it about Justin Bieber that made him an accessible parallel for you in this essay?

Pirapokin: I’d like to think that we’re comparable in looks and talent (Hello, J.B.!)

What about the Biebs is inaccessible? He’s a young, fresh-faced, neighborhood kid, plucked out from obscurity, forced to grow up in the public eye only to be the butt of all jokes. People didn’t like him because he was feminine, famous, and rich. What made me empathize for him was when I read about the White House petition to deport him. I realized how quickly Americans turned against a non-U.S. citizen by using Bieber’s immigration status against him, as though his immigration status would be the thing that would hurt him most. Instead of saying, “We’re going to take away your money, your fan base, and your voice!” people (and who are these people who have the authority to decide?) believed that he didn’t have the right to be in this country when they so willingly welcomed and claimed him before.

He could only be in America if he was this cute, bubblegum-popstar, and if he showed any signs of failing to meet that, he didn’t deserve to be here, whereas American celebrities are allowed to have flaws and make mistakes.

Kochan: What is your favorite song of J Bieb’s?

Pirapokin: “Where Are Ü Now” from Purpose. Also, he has enough fun songs to warrant an entire 45-minute SoulCycle class dedicated to him.

Kochan: You depict so clearly how the political and personal spheres merge. How do we reconcile policies and ideas with the complication and grey that is the people they’re created to serve?

Pirapokin: I strongly believe policies need to serve the ideas of our time. However, people are not willing to risk their immediate safety and financial security for strangers that don’t concern them. I’m not going to protest on the streets because if I get caught, I could get deported. But I’m going to find ways where my skills and my experience could be more helpful and useful. That is how I make peace to coexist. Collectively, every nation needs to show those desperately holding onto power that there are other ways of governing, that power is earned through respect and in service of others.

Kochan: While many would expect your immigration status to affect work opportunities, the effect your non-citizenship had on your personal relationships – even so that some questioned your character – is entirely unfounded to me. The trustworthiness of a human based on his or her citizenship follows faulty, and yet not uncommon, logic. Can you speak to philosophy of origin and belonging, and its influence on practical identity and how we view others?

Pirapokin: Immigrants and foreigners everywhere will always be used as scapegoats to avoid solving the shortcomings of a nation. Americans use citizenship as a way to discern between “us” and “them” because it’s a piece of paper that separates one from being authentically American or not. The problem with that is that anybody can be or become American. So if the borders that define a nation are penetrable, then there needs to be a new way Americans, and those of us living here, view and speak of “the other.” Who are we “othering” and why? Who gets to “other”?

Kochan: Considering all the extreme hoops to jump through and the distasteful treatment, what about America kept you interested in staying?

Pirapokin: Because I’m legally considered a genius in America and just some regular person in Hong Kong! I’m joking. I’d like to turn that question around: what is the reason you aren’t immigrating? I have a creative career here, friends, and a beautiful place to live.

Kochan: For yourself, how do you identify yourself?

Pirapokin: Isn’t the process of identifying oneself always in relation to another? That changes for me. I discover how like or unlike I am to someone else every day. Some of the things I liked I have grown to dislike over the years. For me the beauty of writing is making that moment in time when you’ve defined yourself permanent before it changes again.

Kochan: Something profound that you noted was the difference between nationality and ethnicity – that being an American can only refer to being of a nationality, while being Thai can refer to either. How do you think this complicates (or simplifies) the American identity?

Pirapokin: It’s a simplification of the American identity people don’t want to hear about because it upsets the balance of power and calls into questions of those in power.

Kochan: What is your favorite thing about being Thai from Hong Kong?

Pirapokin: That I could opt out of the cultural expectations of being Thai and Cantonese whenever I pleased. Since I wasn’t considered “truly” Thai or “truly” Cantonese, I could pick and choose what worked for me. My favorite thing too would be eating a fusion of Thai and Chinese food that my family makes.

Kochan: Is there something you like about being Thai from Hong Kong living in America?

Pirapokin: I have cultivated a multi-lingual lexicon that tries to find the common elements between each culture. On a practical level living in San Francisco, I get discounts at massage parlors, first seats at dim sum restaurants, and can order myself a drink at the bar. Being able to switch from “foreigner” to “native” in these spaces have been very helpful.

“How to be Extraordinary in America” is a Newfound 2018 prose prize finalist.

Delaney Kochan is a poet and essayist published in Under the Gum Tree, Ruminate, Red Clay, and other literary magazines. She served as Managing Editor of The Forager, a lifestyle magazine, and now writes for the online city guide, My Colorado Springs and various online publications in addition to Newfound. Find her work at www.delaneykochan.com

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The day after the essay was published, one colleague congratulated me for the publication, while another, joking, said he had no idea his office was right next door to a “psychopath.” Earlier in the day the same co-worker stood in my doorway looking a bit astonished and perplexed. He said he’s realizing there’s a darker side to me. He’d always thought of me as Talented and Nice Jen, rather than this dark, more complex person that rears her ugly head in her essays. I didn’t do anything to reassure him in the moment, but it’s not like I sit in my office plotting the deaths of others—though it’s true that my temper occasionally gets the better of me and I lash out in ways that are unexpected, even to me.

After the hubbub over the essay died down, I began thinking about why I’d wanted to expose myself (and family members, since I often write about them), laying bare my terrible tendencies. Much of our lives are spent managing others’ impressions of us, curating our public identities on social media and beyond; why would I show others my darkness? Why would any writer do such a thing to herself, whether through creative nonfiction, fiction, or poetry? Artists work to expose what is real, creating pieces that act as mirrors.

Some might say that in my work I’m making excuses for myself, trying to justify my behavior. Others might say I would do well to leave the past in the past; no harm, no foul. They might believe that the past, exposed, only causes more pain for those in the present, or that “living in the past” leads to self-pitying misery. But I don’t believe that revisiting the past means you’re living in it.

A friend of mine, poet and essayist Sarah Wells, commented on my essay, mentioning her own penchant toward the dark. She explained that a fleeting thought sometimes comes to her as she’s driving: jerk the wheel toward the guardrail. She’s not unhappy or suicidal or depressed. The thought simply arrives as a breath might. She could inhale, hold her breath, and let the thought become her. Or she could exhale. Exhaling it is her “willful turn toward the light,” she said.

Of all the characterizations of my essay, I think that one is most apt. Writing is a way of making sense—this is nothing new, of course. But I find that when I write so personally, exposing myself in the ways that I often do, I need to remind myself of this. Another friend commented that the essay made me seem normal, human—the highest compliment. When we try to white-bread ourselves, to present ourselves as caricatures of so-called normalcy, we reduce our lives to shadows of what it means to be human. In the writing we make a conscious decision to turn toward the light rather than stay in the darkness of our murderous, suicidal, thieving, conniving, cheating hearts. Rather than self-pitying, the writer learns to know herself, smile, wave goodbye to all that, and become a better version of herself. It’s also best to keep on speaking terms with our dark selves, acknowledge them, and even accept them for helping us to become the people we want to be.

Jennifer Ochstein has published book reviews with Brevity and River Teeth Blog. She’s also published essays with Connotation Press, Hippocampus Magazine, Evening Street Review, Lindenwood Review, and The Cresset.

The post My Murderous Heart appeared first on Newfound.

The part of the show that most piques my interest happens when police investigators haul the suspect into the interrogation room. The scenes are high anxiety as investigators try to buddy up with the suspect and get definitive proof while the suspect tries to evade the truth and not give herself away. Secret camera video footage often captures a person out-of-sorts, divided between herself and what she’s done. I can relate.

Often when I tell people I write creative nonfiction, specifically memoir, a kind of anxious interrogation begins: What is creative nonfiction? How can you be old enough to write a memoir (I’m 39)—and why would anyone care about your story? What are you writing about? I often feel like the suspect being secretly videoed in the interrogation room, trying not to give myself away as some kind of narcissist who thinks her life is so important that others want to read about it. There is an implicit assumption that I’ve got some kind of axe to grind against those closest to me, as if I feel the need to interrogate the people of my past. It always gives me pause, forcing me to think through, again, why I write what I write. Even more, I begin asking, why write at all? Why create any kind of art?

Like a suspect who never straightens out her story, I come up with a different answer every time, depending on the circumstances in which I find myself. This time it’s because I’ve been teaching undergraduates.

Memoir and essay seem less about interrogating the other and more about interrogating the self (maybe that’s why it’s often mischaracterized as “navel gazing,” a form of self obsession). When I teach memoir to undergraduates I remind them of this—memoir as interrogation of self—because they often make the beginner’s mistake of interrogating everyone but themselves, interrogating every idea except their own. It’s a mistake I often make in first drafts, and the writing normally turns out poor.

Maybe any kind of art-making is an interrogation of sorts. If art is a means by which we create meaning, and I think it is, the artist seems like the ultimate interrogator shining the spotlight first on herself and her own assumptions and then taking a wider and wider stance in wider and wider concentric circles, blowing it all up to find a singular truth. Like the Dateline murder mystery suspect who seems beside herself until the truth comes out, there seems to be a kind of karmic relief when the artist unveils her work. The spotlight is turned off and the dead can rest.

Jennifer Ochstein is a writer and teacher living in Indiana. She has published book reviews with the “Brevity” and the “River Teeth Blog” as well as essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Evening Street Review, Lindenwood Review and Connotation Press. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

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