Issue 3: Interview with Grace Tong
“The head is awkward to transport. Airport security asks a lot of questions, staring at the head sitting in the top of my tote bag. Is it less than 100ml of liquid? the security man asks.”
~ My mother’s head by Grace Tong
Your short story "My mother's head" explores a mother-daughter relationship with a surreal twist. Where did you get the inspiration for this piece?
The inspiration for this piece came from an art exhibition at the Wellington City Gallery called ‘Terminal’, themed around airports and flight. Ed Atkins’ video installation ‘Safe Conduct’ (2016) shows a man going through airport security – but he has to put each part of himself separately through the x-ray machine. This got me thinking about how awkward and inconvenient it would be to try get a body part through airport security – specifically a head. The inevitable next questions were who would be trying to take a body part through airport security and why? And that’s where the story came from. It had to be a familial relationship, I think, because I wanted that kind of love/obligation/commitment to push the main character into this strange journey.
Your work often explores connection and disconnection in relationships (I loved your piece Homebirds in Stasis Journal). What draws you to exploring these themes?
Thank you! That’s so kind. It’s an interesting question – I think themes around relating appear quite naturally in my writing. I’m obsessed with awkwardness, I’m kind of an awkward person and I enjoy reading awkwardness on the page. I’m also very sentimental, so those two things pull at each other within my writing. I think it’s also the part that character plays in writing. A lot of my characters tend to be worrying about something, and most of those worries come from bumping up against other characters within different relationships. There’s an intimacy and love that draws people to each other, but then there’s often a competing anxiety or complication that pushes against it.
You were shortlisted for the ReadingRoom residency for your short story collection with the working title "Where it Turns Rocky" and your stories have appeared in a range of NZ journals. When did you first start submitting short stories and why?
I was one of those ‘always reading, always writing’ kids. I did a short fiction workshop in 2014 while I was at university and they encouraged students to submit work. I had a piece in the Dominion Post newspaper’s Sunday magazine, and then a piece published by Headland journal in 2016. Headland recently relaunched and has published some amazing stuff this year!
I kind of stopped writing for a few years then came back to it in 2019. Last year I completed an MA in fiction and wrote my collection then. That deep immersion into the form was incredible. It’s really boundless what a short story can do. At the start of this year I thought I was going to take a break from short stories but then I read Julie Koh’s Portable Curiosities. It is so inventive and a masterclass in the short story form. I started writing ‘My mother’s head’ not long after reading Portable Curiosities.
Which writers or poets are at the top of your reading list at the moment?
As well as Julie Koh, who I can’t stop banging on about, I’ve just finished Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy. Her writing is so good right down on the sentence level, but she also walks that brilliant line of funny and loving and sad all at once. I’ve started her novel no one is talking about this just this week.
Emma Barnes’ poetry collection I am in bed with you. Sometimes a book gives you exactly what you need without you even knowing it, and sometimes that’s Sigourney Weaver.
Margaret Atwood’s novel The Edible Woman really resonated with me a couple of years ago – there’s a scene where the main character is lying on the bed while her fiancé is talking to (at) her and she’s kind of sick of him and she rolls onto the floor and under the bed and he doesn’t even really notice. That moment has just stuck with me for a long time.
I’m also slowly working through George Saunders’ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain which is all about writing. It was some of the guidance in this book which helped me finish ‘My mother’s head’ – he talks about not holding back the action in a story, so rather than knowing what happens next and writing up to that moment, make the moment happen as soon as you think of it (as the writer), and then see what comes next. It’s more interesting that way. He also examines causation in stories in great detail – how it’s important to ask why each thing happens in a story and how it impacts on the next thing.
Grace Tong lives in Aotearoa and recently completed an MA in creative writing. Her writing has appeared most recently in Newsroom, Turbine|Kapohau, and Stasis Journal.