Space Exploration: K-Ming Chang
Astronauts perform some strange superstitions before they shoot off into orbit to explore the vast expanses of space. NASA commanders play cards with the tech crew the night before a launch, continuing until the commander loses a hand. Russian cosmonauts pee on the right rear tire of their transfer bus on the way to a launch. These are strange quirks, but they are crucial for these space-explorers to feel comfortable before and during a mission.
Writers also have rituals that must be performed in order to shake off bad vibes and get into a zone where they feel comfortable putting words on a page. When we read a great book, we only see the final product, and not the obsessive care put into the work environment that allowed for its creation. In SPACE EXPLORATION, our goal is to demystify writers’ environments and explore the ways in which they’ve been created and curated, and how they affect the mental spaces of the authors who inhabit them.
We asked writers to tell us about their necessary spaces; the physical spaces as well as the desired headspace to write. We asked about their rituals— special meals that have to be eaten pre-writing sesh, only writing in purple ink, lucky pieces of clothing that may have once inspired a particularly powerful passage. We asked them to engage our senses and tell us which aspects of process must be deliberate and what is arbitrary. These are the spaces they shared with us.
This feature comes from K-Ming Chang, whose debut novel BESTIARY was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
I love to read and write in transit – in the backseats of cars, on the subway, in trains, while walking – basically, anytime I’m supposed to be alert, I completely untether myself from my surroundings. I joke to my friends that the most California thing I miss is having accidentally-deep and life-transforming conversations on the freeway. There’s something about spending long amounts of time in a car with someone else, not facing them, that causes conflict and/or unspoken feelings to emerge. I’ve learned most family secrets while talking to my aunts from the backseat of their shared 1992 station wagon, a car they got at a salvage auction. It’s that strange combination of not having to face someone, while also being confined to a tight space with them (I could smell their breath, and sometimes one of us peed into a bottle) that becomes ripe for revelations. The first story I ever remembered writing was in the backseat of that car – my mother and I co-wrote it together on a drive to Reno when I was 8. We were on our way to meet someone I don’t remember. I only know that she kept looking at herself in the rearview mirror. To distract her, I started telling her a story about a hamster born from a ham. The story was a clear rip-off of the Momotaro story, about a heroic young boy born from a peach, but I thought that Hamster in the Ham was a lot more original. My mother kept adding tangents to the story, off-shoots and adventures, and by the time we got to the end, four hours had passed and I’d almost finished transcribing it in my Barbie hardcover notebook.
The first words I ever wrote for my debut novel were also written while between places – my mother and I were sitting in a bus together when she turned to me and said, 我们讲故事吧! (Let’s talk story!) She told me a story about duck farming in Yilan, and how you were supposed to starve the ducks so that they’d be forced to forage for food away from home. It made their meat more flavorful and tender when they scavenged on their own. It made her sad, though, refusing to feed them. She told me that sometimes cruelty was a form of kindness. That’s bullshit, I told her, and she laughed and said I was right. I wrote down her duck stories in my notebook, and not long after that, I left for the opposite side of the country. Her stories followed me, and two years later, when I was in her kitchen, she said: it’s been a while since I told you a story! I think I’m running out. I told her that all we needed to do was get on a bus and pretend to go somewhere. She laughed and said I was right, and the next time we were sitting on the bus, she told me that the happiest time in her life was when she was dating my father and he picked her up in a car. It turns out, my mother told me, it wasn’t his car! He was just trying to impress me! But what I remember was that he was eating in his car. A hamburger. Eating in a car! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know people ate in their cars! What if he’d stained the seats? Men don’t take care of their things, she told me. Write that down!
When I went back to New York, I took a train uptown and opened the notebook I’d filled with recipes before leaving California. Underneath a recipe for chicken and mushrooms was a blotted sentence that said Remember – Men don’t care! I laughed, and underneath that entry, I started writing the first draft of a flash fiction story called Gloria. Back then, it was a story formatted like a dictionary, titled Girls I Have Hurt. One name per entry. By the time I got to my stop, I’d reached G – Gloria. Gloria, I thought. I know this girl. She thinks she’s better than us because she’s got dime-sized nipples and an almost-new navy Honda. Everything she prays for comes true. I decided to miss my stop and keep going. Seated across from me was a girl who crossed her legs. She was wearing pantyhose and a baseball hat, a combination that delighted me. Between her ankles was a red plastic bag filled with oranges. She’s going to a temple, I realized. She’s going to offer something. I finished the first draft of the story like an offering, something I’d burn when I was done. Something that would live only as smoke. It was liberating, writing toward dissolution rather than wholeness. It felt sacred and also irreverent. That’s how I wanted to write the narrator of Gloria, I thought: it’s about a girl who loves reverently but who despises herself for it.
My mother always said I should burn something every day. We used to burn garbage, she said, but you can’t do that here. But burn something. I didn’t read the draft of Gloria I’d handwritten in my notebook until months later, when I was taking a train back home. It felt like a homecoming, reading the opening lines, remembering the girl with the oranges, the offering. The story ends with a love scene between the narrator and Gloria in the backseat of the almost-new navy Honda. I remembered my mother telling me she fell in love with my father in his car – except it wasn’t his, I reminded her. Right, my mother said, but I didn’t know that yet. I remembered lying in the backseat of the car as we drove to Reno, how we rounded up the mountain, how we drove so close to the edge that when I looked out the window, I thought we were flying.
K-Ming Chang / 張欣明 is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. Her debut novel BESTIARY (One World/Random House, 2020) was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Her short story collection, RESIDENT ALIENS, is forthcoming from One World. More of her writing can be found at kmingchang.com.