One Woman's Writing Retreat: Rahna Reiko Rizzuto Interview


	Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
	Rahna Reiko Rizzuto agreed to be interviewed via e-mail by C. T. Atherton. *CA: Tell us about the evolution of Why She Left Us. How did a woman with a degree in astrophysics decide to write a novel?* RR: I majored in astrophysics because I thought it would be fun, but I quickly dropped it after I left school. I didn't actually begin writing until 1992. My mother called me one day to invite me to go with her to the 50th anniversary of the opening of the internment camp she was sent to when she was a child. Up to that point in my life, I knew very little about the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II, and what I found out while I was there outraged me. I decided then to write a novel about the internment. But when I was finished with my research, I realized that the subject was too big and not big enough at the same time. There was such a range of feelings and experiences around the internment…it would take a book the length of James Michener's Hawaii to do it justice. At the same time, the people that I interviewed didn't restrict themselves to the time they spent in the camps. They told me about their lives. CA: Since this novel draws from various time periods, how much and what kind of research did you do? RR: I went to the places where the book is set--including the Santa Anita racetrack and what is left of Amache, but as you can imagine, much has changed. I also did a lot of library research. The goldmine was fifteen interviews I did with Japanese Americans who had been interned. Some of them said they hadn't even shared their stories with their children. Others told me what I call "and then I found out" tales. As in: "And then I found out that my real grandfather had committed suicide in a Japanese prisoner of war camp." I had to piece together a "truth" from revelations and fragments. As I result, I am very interested in exploring the differences between fact and memory in my novel to find out how and when they overlap. CA: How long have you considered yourself a writer? RR: A chapter from Why She Left Us was published in a literary journal fairly early on, and that was a turning point for me. Because, when you tell people you are a writer, their immediate response is, "Anything I might have read?" The truth is, we are writers long before we are published, but it helps to have something in print. CA: I read in the acknowledgments section that you thanked the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Tell us something about them. How did they help? RR: It's an organization that was formed in 1992 to give Asian American writers a home. When I first encountered them, it was a tiny group, and now they have a bookstore, a literary award, writing workshops, scholarships, and offices in Los Angeles and New York. I took a writing workshop there shortly after I began working on the novel, and they were the first ones who didn't judge the work on its "Asianness." In other workshops, students told me, for example, that my characters weren't Asian enough, and that I should put pictures of Mount Fuji on the walls in their homes so the reader would remember they were Japanese." CA: You shift viewpoints so convincingly in your novel, with ease and grace. How do you get inside your character's heads--or how do they get inside yours? RR: I can actually hear their voices--each has a different cadence and urgency to their sentences. Kaori's, the matriarch of the family, was the hardest to find. She is a person who would not tell you her story fully, so I decided to put her beyond life--in the spirit world--where she would be forced to look back on her actions in order to move on. Then one night, when I was drifting off to sleep, I heard someone say, "My life doesn't return to me in any order. Moments flip-flop, overlap, sometimes they come only in splinters," and I knew I had her. CA: Why did you choose to write in present tense? RR: There are so many flashbacks in the book that I did it partly to make a distinction between the past and present so the reader could remember where s/he was. But I use the present tense for the flashbacks, and the more standard past tense for the scenes that are actually unfolding in the present. I made that choice because the revelations in this book are in the past, and the present tense allowed me to slow the action down and fill it in the tiny details that would encourage the reader to fill in emotions and feelings that the characters themselves might not be able to share. CA: What were your greatest fears, doubts, worries in writing this book? Or were you fearless? RR: I didn't know how the Japanese American community would receive the book. Part of me was worried that they would not appreciate the fact that I set the story of my very flawed family against the backdrop of the internment, which was a time of painful and completely unjustified discrimination against them. I had to put that fear away and let myself write. Because the bottom line was, the people who were interned were people before the internment and after it. And I couldn't freeze them in time and view them solely as victims. CA: Any advice to other writers? RR: Be patient. Give the work a chance to evolve, and also to find the right home. At this moment, I am keenly aware of how important it is to have an agent, an editor, a publishing house that love your book. Because there are so many books out there, and they are the ones who can make it stand out. *CA: You are receiving high praise from the critics for your first novel. It wouldn't surprise me if Why She Left Us* soon became a bestseller. How has publication changed your life? RR: It's so rare to hit it big in the publishing world. Success for me will come when my writing income is enough to live on. My husband and I have two little boys, and it doesn't matter how many books I sell, we both still have to be there for preschool orientation, the five A.M. nightmares, and the flu. So I think my family will help me stay grounded and focus on my next book. CA: What will your next novel be about?** RR: It's about twins--two hapa haole (half-Japanese) girls who grow up in Hilo, Hawaii just after World War II. It's very different from Why She Left Us in time and place, but once again, there are characters who cannot tell their own stories, and family members who have to fill in the holes in the past to go forward. About the Author: Bio Order Why She Left Us from Amazon.com.
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