Kim Knight lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband and their groodle. She writes fiction and non-fiction and enjoys integrating technical aspects of linguistics in her work. Her book on essay writing was released through Routledge earlier this year. Her essay “Making the Inaudible Audible: Finding My Great, Great Grandfather” appears in the Fall 2022 issue of Carve.
You say at one point, “If our name is our identity, who is my grandfather without his?” Later, near the essay’s end, you write, “our name is our constant.” It’s the journey from “if” to direct assertion that I find so interesting. Can you say more about how your thoughts on this topic changed during the writing & revision process?
My thoughts on this topic started in my kitchen. I open the piece by sharing this silly ritual I have of talking to my dead grandmothers, but I wanted a way to speak to this great, great grandfather I’d just discovered but knew nothing about. The first draft was about how different cultures pay respects to the dead through ritual, creating shrines, keeping objects and so on. Most rituals involve naming the person to be remembered, and this is where I got stuck. I knew his name wasn’t quite right. This changed the entire direction of the piece. It then became about identity and the power of names, how they humanise and dehumanise people and objects.
We name our pets, give them identities, make them family. I’m sure the “Ship of Theseus” conundrum wouldn’t have the same effect if it was just known as ‘the ship’ conundrum, even the axe conundrum isn’t about any old axe, it’s “Grandfather’s.” Someone asks, who are you? and we respond immediately with our name. So much of my grandfather’s poor behaviour feels like a reaction to losing his name, his identity. The metamorphosis of it, from Ah Me Fat Hock, then finally to George Fathock, after many changes in between, seemed to tell the story of his displacement: the constant moving, changing, unsettling—the only consistency is this dislocation. I do really sigh ‘Ah me!’ when I pass by the docks. By ritualising this disconnection, I do feel a bit more connected to him.
Your essay features four lists, two of which are written as poems in simple, natural language — almost like the rhymes we might find in children’s books. What was your intention with these poetic moments? What did poetry offer that prose did not?
I like your description of the language. There’s elegance in simplicity, and clarity. There’s also something chilling about describing horrifying events in a child-like way. The first poem explains the process of human trafficking in Guangzhou in the nineteenth century, a shocking practice. The next poem depicts some ‘perhapsing’ of my grandfather’s experience coming through Customs and having his Chinese name written in English for the first time. The experience of one, to me, is just as harrowing as the other and I wanted to emphasise this. I chose poetic form to separate these moments from the other lists because they are both profound events.
Where I depict my great, great grandfather arriving at Customs in Melbourne, Australia, I wanted the reader to make the connection between this and the previous section, because both of these events are dehumanising. His arrival in Australia is a pivotal moment: The lack of documentation, losing the written Chinese version of his name, this is where it all starts, with this seemingly simple process of entering the country and declaring himself. Everything goes awry from here.
Ultimately, this essay is a work of both imagination and research. You scour pots and imagine conversations with the dead; you scour newspapers and try to constellate facts into a story. Even though we as writers know it’s impossible to genuinely understand our ancestors from the past and embody all their feelings, we keep trying. What do we gain, despite our inevitable failure? And when we try stepping into the unknowable hearts of people from the past, is there anything we lose?
I love that phrase “unknowable hearts.” And this is so true when all we have are documents and newspaper clippings. I think we gain a broad appreciation of their world from a distance. But when we invent too much to plug the gaps, we risk creating caricatures, or creating well-rounded, but largely fictional characters. In this way, we lose their voice, their “hearts,” because they can’t tell us how they felt, and no matter how hard we try, our imaginings—filtered through our technologies, our values and so on—will never suffice. I think we keep trying though because we want to humanise the bits of information we have, shape paper trails into living, breathing people. I think this is about identity and connection too. On the other hand, sometimes we need to be comfortable with not knowing.
Describing the process of not knowing is just as much a part of the story, and in many ways the story here is not just my great, great, grandfather’s, or my grandmothers’, but the story of my investigation and the frustrations that came with it. And it’s quite confronting to me that I’ve revealed to a bunch of strangers I stand around in my kitchen inventing conversations with dead relatives over a cuppa. So, I guess something I gain is some further understanding of myself too.
What are some of the books or artworks that inspired you or gave you energy while you worked on this essay?
At the time I was writing it, I read quite a few personal essays which described the failings of research with as much detail and reflection as the discoveries, such as Elmo Keep’s personal essay, This is not an Exit. This helped me feel more at ease writing about my own disappointments and conclusions. I also drew a lot of inspiration from A thousand tiny fettered steps, by Michelle Hamadache, which you can read here. I love the way she writes, simply at times, then she drops this lyrical poetic prose at the right moment and it just sings. I like the way she structures her work too; she weaves so many different narrative elements so expertly. Plus, I love ekphrasis and blending artistic modalities, anything a bit unconventional.
Not sure that The Bulletin’s 1886 image of the Mongolian Octopus gave me any positive energy, but certainly motivated me to write. It’s a terrible image, but placed my great, great grandfather’s deplorable behaviour into some cultural and historical context. It was one among many images and documents from the time that cemented my sympathy for him and other migrants. You can see it here.