Anne Liu Kellor is the author of the memoir Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging, which will be released on September 7, 2021. She is interviewed here by APALA member Alyssa Jocson Porter.
Alyssa Jocson Porter (AJP): Please introduce yourself and briefly describe your literary work and career path to date.
Anne Liu Kellor (ALK): I’ve loved to write ever since I was little, but started calling myself a writer in my twenties. While I’ve published many essays over the years in journals I love, such as Seventh Wave, Longreads, and New England Review, it took me a long time to find a publisher for my book. For over fifteen years, I’ve also taught creative nonfiction, mostly to adults through the Hugo House in Seattle. Helping other writers, especially women of color, Asian, and mixed-race people, learn to trust in their voice and explorative process, regardless of whether or not they seek to publish, has been a huge gift to me. As someone who knows silence and isolation, helping to create community feels amazing.
AJP: Congratulations on the publication of your memoir, Heart Radical! I know it was about 20 years in the making. What first inspired you to write this memoir and what themes emerged as you were piecing it together?
ALK: Thank you! My first trip to China in 1996 coincided with the rebirth of the writer in me. Then I started taking writing classes in college, and by the time I returned to China in 1999, I knew I would someday write books. I never expected it to take this long to publish my first one! But I knew right away I had to write about my pilgrimage to my mother’s homeland. While I initially was more drawn to travel writing, as well as exploring my connection to Buddhism and Tibet, the longer I stayed the more I realized that I needed to focus on my connection to relearning Mandarin, as well as my heart’s longing for intimacy and connection with others.
AJP: Why memoir? In your book, you describe the silences passed down through the generations of your family. Does writing very vulnerably about your own life provide some personal healing from these inherited silences?
ALK: Definitely. Memoir and personal essays—or more broadly, creative nonfiction—has always been the genre I’m drawn to. There’s something essential for me about needing to own my experiences and voice directly, and I’m constantly challenging myself to be more vulnerable and courageous on the page. Coming from a family and culture that values saving face and not speaking publicly of one’s pain—much less shame—I’m coming up against inherited values that go back way farther than my immediate family. Although I constantly feel like I’m walking an edge between saying too little and saying too much, I also trust that my impulse to speak my truth comes from a place that understands how silence breeds shame, which in turn breeds hiding and disconnection from our deepest selves. Each time I break a new silence, each time I say something aloud that I kept private before, a part of myself become more fully accepted and thus accepting of others too. And yes, also healed.
AJP: How do you think your personal identity, especially your mixed-race identity, influences your writing?
ALK: Growing up bilingual, Asian American, and mixed race created many layers of self-consciousness in me, all of which I’ve been learning to unpack through writing and beyond. We all have layers in us that feel different, like we don’t quite belong to one community or another, but some of us feel this more acutely. That kind of heightened self-awareness can breed self-judgement and fear, but through writing it can also give birth to so many ways of dissecting and unpacking and seeing ourselves and the world. I have inherited silence, but I’ve also inherited a deep sense of complexity that lends itself to not easily seeing things as right or wrong, black or white. Whereas I used to think my writing was too wishy-washy because I didn’t come to grand, clear conclusions on matters, now I see this as my superpower, the ability to introduce nuance, complexity, and contradiction. To ask questions. To name how both this and that can be simultaneously true.
AJP: In Heart Radical, you write about the process of learning and regaining your mother language, and I’m sure a lot of us can relate. Where are you now in this journey of improving your Chinese language skills? What keeps you motivated to continue?
ALK: After I came back from China in 2002, I dedicated myself to learning even more Chinese at the UW and through working bilingually with Chinese immigrants. But sadly, this immersion in Chinese-speaking environments has long since faded. The demands of motherhood, as well as writing and working in English, took over, besides occasional visits with relatives or my parents’ Chinese friends. But when I finally went back to Taiwan in 2019, it was a huge relief to realize how easily I could sink back into the language, and to know that even though it’s been so long, a lot of the vocabulary is still in me, waiting to be accessed. I really want to return to Taiwan or the mainland again in the next few years, because I was reminded of how important it is to keep the Chinese language alive in me. It’s a huge part of me that otherwise goes dormant and silent, underground but still present.
AJP: You and I met last year when I took your creative writing class where we read and wrote in response to Cathy Park Hong’s essay collection, Minor Feelings. For me, participating in a class where my instructor and all my classmates were API/AAPI was especially powerful because all of the writing spaces I had been in before were predominately white. What has your experience been like advocating for identity-based writing classes and cultivating BIPOC writing communities?
ALK: Teaching classes for communities of color has been life-changing for me, especially as a mixed with white person who mostly grew up in white-dominant environments, and long struggled to know if I fully belonged or would be trusted in spaces for people of color. It took many years of self-study, interrogation, and articulating my desire to connect more with other writers of color for me to finally start making this happen. And once I did, I realized how many of us felt the same way—hungering for this kind of space, but rarely experiencing it. Maybe some of us have been to racial equity trainings, but these are not usually intimate spaces where one can fully dig into our vulnerabilities, questions, longing, and shame. It takes time, creating the right container with shared boundaries, and a lot of trust to go deeper into group work. Writing is the perfect vessel, because it is deeply personal, but then also it is ultimately meant to be shared. We want to be heard. First by ourselves, and then by others.
AJP: What advice would you give new professionals, especially those from diverse backgrounds, who are interested in a career in writing?
ALK: Take classes, find instructors you trust, and communities that feel welcoming. Let yourself free-write copiously without worrying about editing for as long as you want, so that you don’t self-censor or get stuck in your own judgmental, critical mind that tells us we don’t have anything important to say. Maybe start a blog or newsletter you send to your friends. Once you’ve developed a deep trust in your own voice and in your own authentic desire to write, this is when you can trust yourself to begin editing, submitting, and networking more—to enter the business side of writing. Since so much in publishing runs on connections, however, start building your literary community now. Make writing friends. Follow authors you love on social media and promote their work. Become a good literary citizen, which operates on word of mouth and mutual exchange. Become a part of the conversation. That way, when you are ready to ask for help down the road, you will already have nurtured genuine relationships.
AJP: You’re being interviewed by a librarian, for an audience of progressive Asian and Pacific Islander American library professionals. What are your thoughts on libraries and their place in building diverse communities?
ALK: I love libraries! Libraries were my refuge as a child and continue to feel sacred to me today. They represent democratic access to a world of ideas and people, a world that might not otherwise exist in whatever town you live in. You might grow up not knowing one other Asian American family, or not knowing one Asian American writer or mentor, but once you stumble onto the portal of the larger community that exists out there, your whole sense of what is possible, what you can do with your life, who your people are, or how you can use your voice—all of that can change. I hope the Asian American community can continue to grow stronger through creating conversations around our amazing lineage of authors.
AJP: Who are five authors we should be reading and why?
ALK: I just read Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner and her candid voice and electric energy pulled me in and didn’t let go. Sonora Jha’s How to Raise a Feminist Son is essential reading for all parents of boys. My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem should be required reading for all human beings living in racialized bodies who have inherited thousands of years of trauma. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson also explores our inherited shared racial history in the U.S. and beyond, pushing at how we think about categorizations of race. And of course, Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong is a must-read for Asian Americans especially, as we continue to grapple with our identity and ask, what connects us? She’s also just a bad-ass writer.
AJP: In Heart Radical, you write about matters of the heart—spiritual connections, romantic desire, searching for purpose, yearning for closeness with your mother. If you could give this younger Anne some words of wisdom, what would you tell her?
ALK: Trust yourself. Trust your heart/gut. Your deeper self always knows what it wants and needs. Not everyone is going to love your words or choices, but it is you who must live with the consequences of your own silence.
AJP: How are you celebrating the release of Heart Radical? And what’s next for you?
ALK: I bought myself a new dress, earrings, and shoes with the hope that I’ll be able to see way more people in person this fall! I’ve bought so many books during the pandemic from indie authors and bookstores, and continue to see this mutual support as essential to my emergence as a writer into an even larger community. I’m doing a lot of online events this fall—my launch with the Hugo House and Elliott Bay is on September 15th in conversation with the amazing Joyce Chen, co-founder of Seventh Wave Magazine. I’m also reading with Third Place Books and Kristin Millares Young on September 28th, and am planning other events up and down the coast that can be found on my website, anneliukellor.com.
This fall I’m also launching my second year-long program for womxn and nonbinary writers working on creative nonfiction manuscripts, teaching a class for womxn of color at the Hugo House, and starting to send out my second book, Uncertainty, Trust, and the Present Moment: Essays from In Between, to publishers. Whenever I can, I try to read—especially more poetry and lyric memoirs/essays, as my work continues to become more dense. And I plan to keep offering more courses for mixed-race folks as well, including a webinar on November 6th, sponsored by Seattle’s JACL. At core, I’m still just trying to balance my need for solitude and community, being the extroverted introvert that I am!
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