Just after I approached Grace Talusan to do this interview, I learned that my 15-year old daughter’s English teacher included a chapter of Talusan’s book as required reading in the class. I felt a sudden appreciation for the difference between my high school years and my daughter’s. My Texas high school English teacher would never have selected readings by an immigrant woman of color—not even Amy Tan, who was the only Asian writer I knew about in high school. We certainly would not have discussed the immigrant identity, sexual abuse, and biology of the female body. There are moments in life when we know that the world has changed for the better. For me, the coincidence of my teenage daughter read this memoir while I was preparing to interview Grace about it was one of them.

The Body Papers by Grace Talusan won the Restless Prize for New Immigrant Writing and is, at its heart, a survival story. Talusan writes about how she endured childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a family member, depression, cancer, and the confusion around her identity as a Filipino immigrant. While so much of Talusan’s story is about her silence, her voice as an author is raw, honest, and poetic. It is a voice that is stirring and inspirational—to the 44-year-old mother who wishes she had read stories like this in her youth so that she could have found her own voice sooner, and to her 15-year-old daughter who reads them at the very time that she is finding her way in the world.

It is a great honor to talk to you about your memoir, Grace. The book starts with a description of making yogurt in Manila. You write what reads like a beautiful love letter to your niece, saying that you want her to believe in “…wonder and magic, in alchemy, in something invisible and alive that can transform liquid into solid.” You also say that she did not know then that you, her beloved aunt, had been sexually abused. Why did you choose the process of making yogurt, that ritual really, to begin this story?

At first, I was unsure if this was the right starting place for the book. I feared that my obsession with yogurt making would not be interesting enough to a reader and they would put my book down. So I played around with other openings, shuffling chapters around, until eventually the yogurt chapter seemed like the best choice. Once it was in place, I couldn’t imagine any other beginning. The narrator thinks about, hints at, or touches on almost every topic and theme expanded upon in the memoir. If you’ve ever studied writing with me, you know that I care deeply about process, and by writing about making yogurt, I had the opportunity to write about process, trial and error, and being open to failure, as well as magic. The other fun thing about the yogurt chapter is that several people have told me that they started making homemade yogurt. One gentleman even brought his homemade yogurt to a book party. It was his first time making it and he was so proud. I love that my chapter can inspire a reader to try something new. 

The narrative here covers many facets of your identity – as an immigrant, a woman, a survivor of sexual abuse by a family member, a patient, and a writer. When taking a collective view of these threads, how would you say that the act of writing relates to trauma?

Writing has been an incredibly important process (there’s that word again) for me in reconfiguring my relationship with the traumatic events of my life. I write (or avoid writing) about the difficult parts of my life in order to make sense of myself, to vent, complain, grieve, and express the complexity and nuance of being alive. This is not writing that anyone will see. It is for me. There is writing about trauma that I develop and revise towards publication with an audience in mind. This is an act of writing that feels empowering. I am sharing what happened to me in the hope that someone else will respond to what I’ve tried to communicate. Maybe they will understand or relate or feel compassion or even outrage. Maybe they will do something because of what I wrote. Even though I published a memoir containing my most private moments and thoughts, I am generally a private person. Some may even describe me as secretive or even withholding, someone who keeps her cards close to her chest. I think that is a direct result of the trauma I experienced and I have to work hard to connect with others and feel trust and safety in relationships. Writing is a way for me to reach out to other people and be a part of this world despite my post-trauma difficulties.

Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New England. She graduated from Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writing at UC Irvine. She is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. She is a longtime member and teacher at Grub Street. The Body Papers, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is her first book.

Read Grace’s full conversation with Sejal in the Fall 2020 issue of Carve, available in print and digital.