The featured author of the blog for the month of January is Mr. Kenneth Yu a.k.a Kyu He is a writer and the editor of the Philippine Genre Stories. He has two newly published books The Greatest Fight of Sunny Granada and Other Stories (Anvil) and Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing (Penguin Random House). As guest author, Kyu answers three questions about craft and the themes that permeate the anthology.1. In “The Story of Sunny Granada,” death becomes a point of connection rather than finality. What drew you to use a dying moment as a space for reckoning and reconnection?
In "The Greatest Fight of Sunny Granada", I used the knockout that one sees often in MMA fights as "dying" because at the point of knockout, the fighter will lose the match which is like dying to any competitive athlete. Then I used the "my life is flashing before my eyes" as a device to set up the back story of Sunny Granada so that the reader can then understand the stakes of the fight. For athletes, especially top level ones, defeat can be painful, not just mentally but physically (I've read and watched interviews of athletes after devastating losses and you can see the pain in their expressions) so I wanted to drive home how painful this loss is to the protagonist of the story. But I also used the "life flashing before my eyes" idea to set up not just the back story, but also to hold the key to how Sunny could make his comeback.
2. Many stories in the collection feel like acts of coming to terms rather than resolution. How do you think about closure in fiction, especially when longing, regret, or pain stretches across time or generations?
Whenever I think of or see people having to deal with situations (large or small) that upset the previous order of their lives that they were satisfied with, I often see them trying to restore that old order, with no changes. It's a longing for "We've always been this way, done things this way, we can't let it go." In my current frame of mind, I think change is constant, be it from evolving points of view, technology, growth, maturity, personal revelations, and each of these contribute to change big or small. Therefore, restoring the old order, as it was experienced before, is impossible, and when that stubbornness to stay the same clashes with the inevitability of change, we get that conflict. To use your words, coming to terms with and accepting the fact that the old ways will always give way to new ones is healthier and better for one's own peace. It's a matter of adapting to change rather than resisting it at the cost of so much energy and pain.
Again, this can be both internal and external, affecting individuals as well as societies. The fascination with nostalgia and "the good old days" is particularly at odds with this need to adapt, because nostalgia, with its message of "these were better times", a message that can entrap us, makes one forget that time and the world is moving on and we should go along with it. Eventually, the new ways will become old, too. It may be healthier if the old learns to adapt to and with the new, together, and where applicable, give way to the new with humility and dignity.
A healthier outlook would be to remember the past, learn from it, consider its positives as well as be realistic of its negatives, and treat the uncertainty of change that the future holds as something to learn from and adapt to. This attitude keeps us from stagnation. There really is no going back, and to quote that old proverb, "You can't go home again." I am aware that change can be for the better or worse, but that is a reflection more of the external, of things beyond our control. The moral framework around which adaptation revolves should be concerned with the decisions we make over things within our control, one that is hopefully for the better and guided by respect and consideration for others and ourselves.
Well, at least, that's my current frame of mind, which, of course, is always subject to change itself, haha.
It had been pointed out to me by a reader that I infuse my stories with hope, which I humbly admit, took me by surprise. I was not consciously aware of that. I actually thought I wrote from an experience of, as you say, discomfort, the negative, and I fully explore that as well as I can in my fiction. But perhaps the hope is subconscious, now that you and that other reader had mentioned it, and because I am still able to refuse to give in to the seeming reality that discomfort and despair is the general way of things.
You mentioned "Spider Hunt" and "Blending In" as hopeful only after discomfort has been fully felt, and that is intended. I think that it is in these stories that I explore the possibilities of how bad negative situations can be. But as I wrote them, yes, I did indeed turn the situations around, making readers (and myself) see that yes, there is a way to recovery. "Beats", too, taken as it is, seems hopeful and like a paean to the beauty of the marine world. It is that, true, and was inspired by my daughter's excitement at her first dive into the sea. But it was written with the sad knowledge that we are losing much of our oceans to pollution, which right now feels irreversible (but again, I refuse to believe so, maybe [in a] delusional [way]). But the hope is by reading "Beats" one can appreciate and help care for our seas. Perhaps the grace comes from the acceptance of discomfort, the realization and self awareness of our own shortcomings and dissonance, the remorse and regret (yes, regret!) for our mistakes, and the humility to work at rectification. A tall order for people, especially proud people not used to facing their mistakes, but hopefully, not impossible.
Kenneth Yu is on social media as Kenneth G Yu on Facebook and @kenneth_yu86 on IG. You can get a copy of Kyu's books by following these links:
The Greatest Fight of Sunny Granada and Other Stories
Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing
