Poets & Writers – July-August 2019

41 POETS & WRITERS^

O

n the day before the Chal-

lenger is set to launch, ten-

year-old Gavin, the narrator

of Chia-Chia Lin’s stunning

debut, The Unpassing, falls ill and

drifts out of consciousness. When

he wakes up, a week has passed,

the Challenger has exploded, and

his sister Ruby has died from the

very illness he just survived. Gavin,

who once believed that “things that

had been splintered could be intact

again,” wakes up to a splintered

world. The novel is set in Alaska, a

fitting frontier for this book about

a family of Taiwanese immigrants

who are staking their claim on a new

country, grappling with grief, and

trying to reconstitute, relearn.

Chia-Chia, who lives in the San

Francisco Bay Area, is a graduate of

Harvard College and the Iowa Writers’

Workshop, where we met. Reading

The Unpassing reminded me of all that

I loved about her short stories back

then—the way that landscape isn’t in-

cidental but rather central and alive,

the way the characters are never easy

and never bend to our expectations,

the boundless wisdom. There is a

chapter in the novel in which one of

the characters gets lost in the woods.

As chaotic and bleak as those scenes

are, I was struck mostly by what a joy

it is to read Chia-Chia, to find myself,

once again, in her capable hands.

Can you talk a little bit about your path

to becoming a writer? How does it feel

to be talking about this book, to be wait-

ing for it to be published?

It pains me a little to say this, but I’ve

been writing for two decades. During

that time I’ve tooled around in several

careers, become a mother, and seen my

life reshape itself in other ways. My

preoccupations have changed; when I

read my old work now, I feel somehow

both mortified and bored. So despite

the festering anxieties associated with

writing for so long without publishing

a book, it’s now a deep relief to me that

I did not publish one sooner.

Talking about my book is hard for

me. When I’m writing, all I

know and care about are these

characters. Their tics. How

they harm one another. How

they reach out and whether

others notice when they do.

But when people ask you

about your book, they want

to know about the sweeping

topics: Alaska, grief, family

trauma, immigration. And

it feels like anything I could

possibly say on those topics

would be insufficient and

maybe even reductive, since the novel

itself is, of course, what I have to say—

there’s no shorter way for me to say

it. I know many writers feel this way.

Still, some—like you—manage so well,

and I’d like to learn from that. All that

said, the experience of receiving ques-

tions has been incredibly gratifying. I

can feel a shift happening—my novel

leaving the realm of manuscript. Now,

instead of questioning my own writ-

ing decisions all day long, I’m asked

to consider new questions that have

arisen from the story itself. This makes

it seem like a real book more than any

physical binding could.

I’ve been a fan of your writing since

the day I read a short story of yours in

workshop at Iowa, and so I was so very

excited to read The Unpassing. How did

you come to write this particular novel?

Did you know you were writing a novel

from the start, or did it come together

slowly?

In the beginning stages there were

enough ideas fighting their way in

that a short story could not have held

them all. In this way I knew it was a

novel, though I didn’t know exactly

what a novel was—and, let’s be hon-

est, I still don’t. But I wanted to write

about this particular family. I knew

the family would be permanently frac-

tured. I knew the woods would both

engulf them and comfort them. I also

had unfinished business with Alaska;

I’d written previously about the inte-

rior, but the region that kept calling

me was south-central Alaska, where

I’d lived and worked for a

stint. I wanted to look at

the landscape—mountains

and mudflats and forests

and water—from the eyes

of a child. And not a par-

ticularly complex or clever

child but simply a child who

was grieving.

You have such a masterful
command of setting. Some
of my favorite passages
lin: f. yang; gyasi: michael lionstar are those that take place

FIRST FICTION 2019

Yaa G yasi

author of

the novel

Homegoing,

published

by Knopf

in 2016.

INTRODUCED BY

Chia-Chia Lin

whose debut novel, The Unpassing,

was published by Farrar, Straus

and Giroux in May.

Agent: Richard Abate

Editor: Emily Bell

Publicist: Lauren Roberts