Rachel Schwartzmann: Welcome to Slow Stories. I’m Rachel Schwartzmann. I'm a writer, creator, and the author of Slowing: Discover Wonder, Beauty, and Creativity through Slow Living, coming September 17th from Chronicle Books.
For those of you just tuning in, Slow Stories is a multimedia project that began with this podcast and now includes a newsletter on Substack. There, I write about things like time, creativity, and pace—and on this show, I interview artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators who share slow stories—and big ideas—about living, working, and creating in our digital age.
So before we get into the episode, I wanted to share a really exciting announcement: I've spent the last couple of years writing and revising my first book, Slowing, which is out September 17th of this year with Chronicle Books. That said, it's now available for pre-order anywhere books are sold. And for those of you who don't know, pre-orders are incredibly important for all authors—but especially first-time authors like myself. They signal to bookstores and retailers that there's interest in the book and really lay the foundation for my career as an author, which I'm excited to continue.
All that to say, I'll be sharing much more about Slowing in the coming months, and you can follow Slow Stories on Substack for those updates and follow me [on social media] @rachelschwartzmann. But for now, I'll leave you with this: Slowing caters to many literary sensibilities: essay and memoir, creative wellness, and personal growth. Language and lyricism are front and center, but there is also a practical component. There are various ways you can engage with and experience this book. For that reason, I don't know where exactly you'll find it on the shelf, but I'm confident it will fit somewhere in your home. That's where I wrote it, and that's what it means to me. I can't wait for you to read it!
Now, on to the episode, which begins with an opening story from Amy Lin, who shares how a piece of art simultaneously moved her and slowed her down. Here's more from Amy.
Amy Lin: I'm Amy Lin, a writer and educator. I am the author of Here After, a grief memoir. Part of my practice of rest involves regular time spent viewing art, a ritual that finds me literally slowing to a stop to consider what art offers us about the experience of being alive. The piece that moved me the most last year was Ragnar Kjartansson's "The Vistors," which is a multi-screen video installation played over the course of an hour in a darkened gallery. The eight screens show Kjartansson and seven of his musician friends singing and playing a different instrument in separate rooms. Each artist is alone, isolated from the others, connected only by headphones, yet playing in unison. Kjartansson, for his part, plays the guitar while naked in a bathtub. The artists are housed within the faded, but still glorious expanse of Rokeybar [farm], a 19th-century estate in upstate New York.
"The Visitors" is hypnotic at times, spare at others, brimming with emotion and longing. It evokes a state outside of time, a tender and soft braid of joy and grief that holds the audience together; surrounded by a descending melody, richly woven harmonies, the audience becomes a living sculpture formed by sound. It is impossible to see and hear each part of the piece simultaneously. You must move even within the spell. The music casts. You must move to see all the players. To hear them. Their individual instruments grow louder the closer you draw to their screen.
I entered "The Visitors," tired and weary, thinking I would just listen for a moment only to find myself held there with everyone else until the final moments where the spell is torn through by the firing of a cannon on the estate grounds. The musicians peel off their headphones, leaving their rooms together. Together. Champagne spills over the edges of glasses, and the musicians leave first, wandering into the green stretch of the Rokeby grounds. And then the listeners—such as myself—then we finally leave, too, returning to whatever time holds for us. Returning as I did with a sense of a thaw, a softening in whatever winter each of us carry.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Thank you so much again to Amy for sharing. Be sure to tune in later in the season to hear my conversation with Amy, and in the meantime, you can follow her on social media @literaryamy and order her debut memoir, Here After, anywhere books are sold. Now, here's my conversation with Victoria Chang.
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Across three parts, Victoria engages with the work of renowned artist Agnes Martin, who ultimately provides a portal for Victoria to consider the nuances of identity, existence, death, grief, depression, and time. While these themes may be universal, Victoria's voice is singular. Page after page, her passion for language becomes all the more apparent. As she writes in "Gratutide, 2001": "What am I outside of language? Is this the solitude Agnes spoke of—standing in an auditorium without a microphone or an audience, at a podium reading wind. And where the skin that has been wound tightly around me my whole life is also the thing that I've been writing on. To think, everyone will write one final word."
And in this interview, she shared more about her relationship with process and pace, the nuances of writing and publishing in this day and age, and what she's learned as an artist, educator, and mother.
Victoria's quiet confidence was present in every part of this conversation, and I walked away nourished and ready to greet the world—and make art with meaning. You'll see why shortly. Without further delay, here's Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the World.
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Victoria Chang: Oh, I'm everything outside of a writer. Writer isn't really what defines me. It's what I probably spend the most time doing or trying to do. But it's not at all who I am. I think of myself as just a person who likes to look at things. That's all.
Rachel Schwartzmann: What are you looking at these days?
Victoria Chang: Everything. I mean, you know, if I hear the neighborhood owl, I will go run outside and try and see it or see its shape. I'm constantly looking at artwork [or] visual arts. I don't know. I just like to sit back and watch people look at trees and birds. I just sort of marvel at the world, in some ways. You know, as you get older like me—and I've seen some things happen to my parents who are no longer here—I start to think, wow, this is my possibly first and last time in the city, or looking at this particular tree in this place. I think a lot about this as my first and last time, probably, which isn't sad. I think it's actually quite the opposite. I think it makes me appreciate the things that I'm looking at more.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, it's a really beautiful way to look at things. I think in a previous interview, you mentioned that you thought of yourself more as a creator or artist than a writer. And I'm curious if you could tell me a little bit more about your relationship with seeing and creating and what one of the first things you made was.
Victoria Chang: I think [that] a writer sounds like it's a profession, and people sometimes talk about being a poet as a career. And I always struggle with that—and I can always tell who thinks like that, too! I actually don't even think of myself as just being a poet or a writer. I just think I respond to the world. I'm sort of in conversation with my life experiences and the things that I see and experience through various things that are available to me—so whatever it is in the moment that's available to me is how I might respond. Sometimes it's language, sometimes it's not. Sometimes, it's other things, other material things. It could be an ink brush or thread.
I just sort of look around and see what is available to me or the things that I'm thinking about [and] how my hands might want to respond by holding a pen or by typing on a computer or by using thread, a needle, markers, or ink. So yeah, I don't really think of myself as being just a writer or poet. I feel like that's just some name that our industry has sort of defined us as. I think for me, the only way to navigate the world is to respond to it. That's how I would describe it.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Is there ever a moment when you feel like responding in a way you hadn't before? Whether it's performing arts or something totally outside of your wheelhouse, have you come across that at all?
Victoria Chang: I'm actually quite uncomfortable in the public. So, even doing a poetry reading or having people look at me while I'm engaging with art. I don't like people to look at me, and I think that I like to hide and be in the background. Yet oftentimes, for whatever reason, I'm not in the background, which really makes me uncomfortable. Things like dance ... require one to be looked at. And so I think the things I engage in tend to be things to do quietly. I don't knit, but those kinds of things. You quietly do things in private on your own with earbuds in, and it's just really for my own engagement.
Then, I can decide if and when I would like to share things with the world or not. The world could be like two people, or it could be 200 people. It just sort of depends. I like to dissociate myself from my own writing and art. But I think our culture likes to collapse those two things a lot. I think our culture rewards that collapse, and I tend to be like, No, no, that's not me. That's the writing. Go, go look at that, or go read that. But I'm often called to sort of speak to something I made, which is something I've gotten used to but not something I always necessarily feel comfortable doing.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, that really resonates. I mean, Slow Stories was born from that tension of being in an age of performance and seeking external validation. And I think these conversations have helped me recalibrate how I think about all of that. It's a lot to untangle.
Victoria Chang: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. I think as you were saying now, it's really hard, and everybody seems like they're just shoving themselves out into the sphere and the public, and there's pressure to do so. And I don't know, I get that pressure, and I feel it, and I see it, but at the end of the day, I mean, what I claim and hold for myself is really valuable to me at all times. And the persona that we push out is performance. I mean, we'd all be lying if we said it wasn't, and actually, I don't know. I think sometimes people want performance because when people are too naked and too honest, it's uncomfortable. So it's like what's the lesser evil? Perhaps [it's] performance.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, it's a strange time... strange feels like the right word.
Victoria Chang: I don't know if anyone ever feels synchronous with the times that they're in... I feel very asynchronous with the times that I'm in. And I don't know if anyone—I'm sure someone will be like, oh, I love the era that I'm in—but I feel super asynchronous, which is fine. I feel just lucky to be alive, and this is what we get. It's so interesting to live through this time period.
Rachel Schwartzmann: For sure. And I think on that note, I mean so much of your work deals with grieving circumstances like this [and] memory. I actually just finished your book, Dear Memory. Do you still engage in letter writing?
Victoria Chang: I think everything I do is letter writing. I even think of my thinking as letter writing. There's a whole thought process that happens when I look at something. It's a letter. I always feel like I'm in correspondence with something and talking to something while I'm writing. So, I think all my poems are letters in many ways. They're just maybe not formally letters.
The new book is in correspondence with the art of another person who's no longer here and someone I didn't know, and that's a form of letter writing. I'm writing letters to Agnes Martin. That's kind of how I think about art making. Otherwise, I'm like, what am I doing? If I'm not talking to someone, it just strikes me as being odd. I wouldn't even know how to write a poem if I was not talking to someone. I don't really think too much about the reader only in as much as I'm aware that I'm making a piece of art. Otherwise, I'd write in a diary, right? So I'm making a piece of art, but I'm usually in correspondence with many, many other things.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's really interesting. I mean, in Dear Memory, you write: "Memory works like this. You are astonished. You remember only what astonishes you." And in With My Back to the World, you note, "Perhaps it's not memory we're trying to capture, but everything instead of it." And so, you know, as you talk about writing to a person, an entity, a memory, I'm curious what you've learned about writing about the past and if you think there are certain responsibilities in writing about the past, especially if a person that it involves is no longer here.
Victoria Chang: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a huge responsibility. It's even bigger if they are here!
I started writing about my own experiences when I was very young and things like my father [and] my mother. People would appear in my poems, and I was constantly worried and thinking about those things—as we should. I think it's important to think about those things—on the other hand, I think it's really important to honor your own experiences and ask the questions that only you can ask and say the things that only you can say.
It can be dicey if the person is still around. I've written about my sister, and she got really angry at me, rightfully so, but I also felt like I had a right to write about the things that I wanted to write about. And so [if] we are not allowed to write certain things and told by other people, it's almost like someone's basically killed a part of you or killed you. And I find that to be terrible for an artistic and creative person. On the other hand, when we write about other people, it's like we're stabbing them, you know? It's not their own experience. We're thrusting our own views onto them. So, it's equally violent on both sides.
I think it's for each artist and writer to figure out how they want to navigate a particular situation. I didn't start really writing about my father until he had a stroke, and he couldn't read or understand anything anymore. My mother could, but she was already fading quite a bit. And so, they never really read much of anything that I wrote because of those reasons. Then, early on, they didn't read many of my poems either, and they weren't really literary people, so it's not like they wanted to read anyway.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, [that] makes sense. My first book actually comes out later this year, and there is an element of memoir to it, particularly involving my parents. And it's hard. [Laughs]
Victoria Chang: Every person has to do it differently. So there's nothing you can say that could be truly helpful to someone because everybody's experience is different. Every person is different. Every writer is different. Every artist is different. Every family is different. And it's almost like everything's moving all at once. And it's very difficult to provide any sort of solace or advice for people who are grappling with that. Each person, unfortunately, needs to navigate it on their own. And what we have as models are all the things that have been written before us to use as examples of what could be done and maybe what was too far or what wasn't enough. You know, that kind of stuff.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I interviewed Maggie Smith last year and she had a great way of putting it: finding our permission slip books, the ones that show us what's possible.
Victoria Chang: Maggie's a great one to talk to those things about. I would say she's on the farther spectrum of what the material [is], and then what she's sort of pushing to navigate is farther than what I'm doing. I think understanding where you are on that spectrum and then finding your exemplars is a great exercise in saying, okay, this book is the space that I wanna be in. Figuring out and identifying those books is part of that exercise of understanding how and where you want to go with your own writing.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. I do wanna talk more about With My Back to the World, but there was one particular moment in Dear Memory that I think is also pertinent to this conversation. You know, in the book, there are recurring letters to different figures in your life—like your mother and father—but I was really struck by your letters to "Teacher." In one of the letters, you wrote: "What I learned from you was to forget the sun, that the moon burned more, to cling to things that didn't seem to leave a trace, such as memory or silence, or cruelty or beauty." I thought that was so beautiful. And I wanted to ask, is there something that you hope a student's letter might say to you?
Victoria Chang: Oh yeah. I mean, I think as an educator, I feel like the kinds of people that I educate are so different from each other that the one thread of the way my pedagogy works is—and has always worked—in more of just giving people their permission and to just be themselves. Because I feel like a lot of the instances where I was taught when I was younger were to write like this, be like this, and look like this. And I just wasn't any of those things. I was constantly feeling I was on the outside of everything. And it was only later that I realized that being on the outside of everything was actually the biggest gift that I could have felt. So I try to transfer that gift to my students now, which is, look, the most interesting people and art to me are uncategorized. It's stuff that is most different than everything else that's being created. So just do whatever feels right to you, and don't worry about how it fits into this or that, or how you might be different. Just do what you do. That's what I try to do: [give] permission and generosity.
Sometimes, in literary circles, especially poetry circles, there can be a lot of negative emotions of cruelty, meanness, and pettiness, as well as immature emotions that artists can feel sometimes and that manifest themselves more publicly these days. And I'm just really not interested in that emotion or those sets of emotions. I'm interested in kindness, generosity, capaciousness, expansiveness, and openness. Those are the words that mean a lot to me. So I try to build those things into my pedagogy and my spirit if that makes sense. [I want] to do my part to sort of counter all the negativity that can exist in the world of being an artist, which is very different than being an Artist. Making stuff is so joyful. I don't know why it can be poisoned. I'm like, how can something so joyful be poisoned? You know? I just won't allow it to be. So, I try to bring those mindsets into the way I live in the world and also teach.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Have your students taught you anything about maintaining your creative well-being or those moments of generosity?
Victoria Chang: Yeah, I mean, I think what they've taught me is if you create an environment of kindness and generosity, we'll all get in line. [Laughs] They can all be in that space. I mean, I've had some really challenging teaching situations, but I think if you do the groundwork at the very beginning and also model a certain kind of generosity, everyone can—most everyone—I've found can sort of at least temporarily play and exist in that space.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I think the best way to learn about who you are as a person [or] as an artist, and what you want to say is to learn from other artists. On that note, maybe we can pause here and have you read From With My Back to the World.
PASSAGE READ BY VICTORIA CHANG ︎ PURCHASE WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD︎︎︎
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Rachel Schwartzmann: So I'd love to talk a little bit about Agnes Martin and your relationship to her work. I mean, I'll say first that I really fell in love with her work after seeing it at Dia: Beacon, and then later, when I read Olivia Laing's Funny Weather, I think she actually wrote of her work "The Islands ": "It isn't easy to catch the workings of these paintings in words, since they were designed to dodge the burden of representation, to stymie the view in their incorrigible habit of searching for recognizable forms in the abstract field. They aren't made to be read, but rather responded to, enigmatic triggers for spontaneous upwelling of pure emotion."
Victoria Chang: Yeah, that's really beautiful. I mean, for me, I had read her writings more deeply first, and you know, I knew of her work [but] I think the [art]work has to be seen in person. It's really hard to get a feeling of what the work does when you don't see it in person. But I liked her writing a lot. They felt very kind of Buddhist-like. And there was a familiarity about the tone of her writing and the way that my mind sort of thinks, as well as the way that maybe I grew up. So I was very connected to her writings and then wasn't as connected with her physical art pieces until the MoMA had commissioned a poem on any one of their pieces in their entire catalog. And yeah, I really struggled to find a piece to work on. And then finally, I just thought, well, maybe I'll just go look at Agnes Martin's pieces. Let's see if they have any on their site. And they did. And then I picked the plainest ones I could find, and I think that that sort of started my relationship with really understanding the way those grids were seemingly so static but were just generating constant electricity. And that began my long relationship with her work.
At the time, I was also just really, really sad and had been sort of grappling with my parents' long, long illnesses for so long that I really just didn't realize how that impacted me. And I was going through some bodily changes and health issues [too], and so all of those things kind of just started coming out once I started looking at Agnes Martin's pieces and just doing a lot of research, and suddenly the whole thing opened up, and I just felt like I was in one long conversation with her and her work.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, that comes across for sure. Obviously, one visual element that is true to Agnes's work and something that you explore in these poems is her use of lines. In one poem, you write Agnes's lines: "desire to touch each other, but never can. Depression is a group of parallel lines that want to touch but never can." And later, "Perhaps all lines are lies." It's just interesting for me to think about lines or linearity because art-making feels anything but that. So, I'm not really sure this is a question but more of a comment on how art and these everyday shapes can help us think about things that are out of our control. Like time and creativity...
Victoria Chang: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. And how a lot of things are cyclical or you end up in the same space many years later, and you know, I think that we come back to the same space but much older, and then the space changes because of that. My relationship with Agnes Martin and her work just went through that same process. And I think I'm just always interested in those bigger questions: Why are we here? What are we doing? What am I supposed to do when I'm here? So, I just don't care about a lot of the things that happen in the world. Or try not to care too much about a lot of them because I'm always thinking about those larger questions. And that's not necessarily a good way to be because then I have to force myself to say, okay, what, how can I contribute to the real world? Because I'm constantly not in the real world. I feel like I'm constantly in my own world, you know? So I have to force myself to remember, hey, don't forget you're in the real world. Don't forget to live here. I don't feel like I live here. I feel like I live in my mind, in my own imagination. I'll look up, and like eight hours have passed, and I've forgotten that I actually live on this during this time. So I think it's important too if you're constantly sort of in those big questions and metaphysical, big, existential things to poke yourself and say, Hey, don't forget you're gonna miss out on your life because you're so engaged with your own imagination.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I guess on the note of questions, do you think there's something that we should be asking of poetry or something that poetry is asking of us?
Victoria Chang: Poetry has been around forever. I think there's clearly a need for it. And I think because of all of the ineffable qualities... there are lots of other ways that people make art, but I think poetry is always this really interesting thing that we've always done. And I think it tries to answer the unanswerable questions—at least the good poems in my mind do, if that makes sense. The poems that sort of shut closed [and] a sense of knowing just don't really interest to me. And I know some of my poems like shut close, but I hope they don't shut close in a way ... even a declarative is sort of an invitation to disagree with it because I'm really just playing around with language. When you read lines are lies, I was like, "Oh, I'm sure I was just kind of messing around with the fact that lies sounds like lines, you know?" it's like I don't necessarily think about meaning that much, oddly, I'm just sort of using language to sort of tool around and explore these larger issues.
Rachel Schwartzmann: As you're kind of working through these explorations or these ideas, how would you describe your relationship with pace?
Victoria Chang: I actually am an incredibly quick thinker. My brain is constantly moving. I have an idea a second. I'm like my dad; he was very entrepreneurial and visionary. He was always thinking about this idea or that idea: what's next? And my brain actually totally works like that. And so it's not very slow. But when I'm looking at something, I'm constantly walking and then stopping. If I hear something, usually a bird, I'll look up and I'll stand there for a long time and just look for it or look at it.
One thing I've noticed is other people don't really do that. I'm sure some people do, but not where I live. And so I think my brain moves very quickly, but when I am in that sort of artistic mode—that sort of mode of creation—it's very slow, and I can write poems very quickly, but I can spend years and years like working on them. So I think, for me, it sort of depends.
I'm a naturally quick person, thinking-wise and work-wise, for example. I'm constantly in leadership positions and things like that. I think because my brain works a certain way in those contexts, but by no means do I enjoy those things, if that makes sense. I would much prefer to just quietly read if I could just sit all day long and read randomly and just write or draw, or that's what I would do. And I've spent many a day doing those things. I'm not at all suggesting that I don't have the time to do those things, but I literally can feel the electric joy through my body when I'm doing that. And so that's really where my joy lies. It's just like the whole day's gone, but it was just spent thinking, drawing, writing, whatever, reading all of the above at different times. That's really my favorite thing to do.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I think I'm like that in a lot of ways, too. I found that you don't necessarily need to be slow all the time.
Victoria Chang: No, you can't. I also think you can't because it takes a lot of energy to be slow. I mean, it's hard to be in that sort of creation mode. For me, making art can be very exhausting and emotionally exhausting, but it can also be very joyful. It just depends. It also depends on what you're writing. It depends on where you are in the phase of your making. Some days just flow, and then other days it's just like, wow, everything I've worked on today is totally awful. But you know, it's fine because the next day it's so joyful. You feel like you just reached something that you didn't expect. And so I think every day is different.
Rachel Schwartzmann: And I guess on the topic of slow, I'm curious what comes to mind when you hear the phrase slow stories?
Victoria Chang: I mean, something that just takes its time ... allows the reader to just pause and contemplate a little bit longer. You know, these days. I feel like things just move really fast, and emotions are very high, and people can be very reactive, right? And so I feel like when I think of slow stories, I just think of [the word] contemplate.
Maybe it's a hearkening back to when I was a child: I would just stand outside—in the freezing Michigan weather—and just look quietly around at how still everything was in the wintertime. But then, if I waited long enough, everything was moving. You could hear things crackling. The chimneys were piping out really slow smoke that almost looked like a painting. So to me, it [means], just stop for a second, and you'll see how everything is actually alive and moving.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Obviously the name of this project is called Slow Stories, and I've been thinking about what it meanI've me as well. And a word that keeps coming up is honesty. A slow story is honest.
Victoria Chang: Thoughtful, yeah. Respectful of the human condition and the mind.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. On that note, maybe we can have you read again, particularly from "Today."
PASSAGE READ BY VICTORIA CHANG ︎ PURCHASE WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD︎︎︎
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Rachel Schwartzmann: This is a question I've asked a lot of authors on this podcast, and I'm curious to get your take, especially since this collection deals with grief so beautifully: How do you think writing about grief is the same as writing about power? Katie Kitamura once said [in response to this question] that there's so much power in grief, which I thought was really poignant. And I also think there's so much power in claiming grief on the page. Victoria Chang: I actually think the opposite. I actually think grief is about surrendering. I think it's about letting go of control and power and the desire to change. I think it's allowing yourself to sort of flow with the grief along your side, like a friend, a companion. And also, I think it's accepting that it probably won't ever go away and that it will constantly change. And that you can't control it as if it's a companion that's separate from you, yet it's always at your side. So, I think it's the opposite of that kind of reclamation or desire to control or power. Those words just don't feel like my own experience.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I think you said in one of the poems [that] depression was made by a person or a person that you never met. Something along the lines of that... That just came to mind for me when you were talking about grief.
Victoria Chang: Yeah, I'm the worst person to ask about my poems because I don't even remember writing that. [Laughs] But yes, it sounds vaguely familiar. Yeah.
Rachel Schwartzmann: And how does it feel to read them out loud? I know you don't like being looked at in that way.
Victoria Chang: It's really strange because I was really in these poems when I wrote them and revised them. And now, to hear people talk about them after they've read them—and some people have read them because they've been out in the world to some people— the responses have ... made me smile. One of my friends read [the book] and we did an interview, and he was like, Hey, like these are really dark poems. People take different things out of them. This particular person was like, oh, these are really dark poems—are you okay? And so that's a funny response that I get from some people.
Then other people are just really interested in me, the little drawings that are in there. Other people are really interested in the relationship with Agnes Martin. You know, people take away different things. Some people are really interested in the middle poem, which isn't Agnes Martin; it was inspired by On Kawara's "Today" series. And so it's funny to me that people experience the poems differently.
I just remember being really in it. I was deeply embedded in the work that years passed, and I felt like those were just years of my engagement in conversation with Agnes Martin and her work. And I remember feeling that way. And so to read them aloud now many, many years later is so strange. I didn't think about it. I didn't think about how people would respond, I guess. It's sort of funny to hear how people respond now because people are just starting to respond.
It's been fun to see how people respond, and I was like, oh yeah, I guess they are really sad sometimes. And I just don't think about it because I just lived my life, if that makes sense. And I wasn't afraid to express certain feelings. In fact, I was trying really hard to see what it was that I was feeling. And I was like, I'm just going to name it. I'm just going to say that word: depression. In fact, I'm just going to keep trying to say it because, obviously, I'm afraid to say it. So I may have said it quite a few times. I think that people might wonder about my emotional well-being and my mental health. Those questions come to me now. I just think they're funny. They, they make me smile 'cause I'm like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess I did write about those things, and now I have to answer those questions.
Rachel Schwartzmann: What's a question that you hope people start asking more often? And this can relate to your work [or] life? Really anything.
Victoria Chang: I feel like I don't really care. People can ask whatever they want. I don't mind. No question is too this or too that. It's my own doing, so I accept responsibility for it. I didn't understand what was going to happen [when publishing], and now I really do understand what happens. It took me a while to realize, oh, when you put a poem in the world that you are asking for in today's world. A response in yesterday's world, not so much, right? I think today it's different. So, all poets, I think, must deal with this to some extent.
I was a little bit shaken and shocked by the amount of response that I received with Obit. I learned my lessons since then: that can happen. I hadn't expected those types of things to happen. So now, I think many years later, I'm much better equipped, I suppose, to handle public questions or things like that because I didn't really understand what was happening at the time and was very jarred by it and confused by that experience and frankly inexperienced ... I think it was just really unexpected and really shocking to receive that kind of response to something that I made. And it was hard to be honest, because it was about my mother's death. So, to hear people talking about it, it was really hard. I didn't realize the response was going to be what it was. I had no idea. And so I think since then, I've learned a lot of valuable lessons.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I'm not sure if this is too personal of a question, but as a mother yourself, are you anticipating a response from your daughters?
Victoria Chang: Yeah, I mean, I think one has already read the whole book Obit, and I actually wrote about that recently in the prose that she was crying the whole time. It was really sad! The other, I think, is more like, you know, that's too sad, I’m just going leave that alone. So they have very different personalities. One goes kind of right in, and the other one avoids. And so I don't really worry too much. I think they'll approach my work in their own ways at different times or not. It doesn't matter.
In terms of responsibility, I've written about them quite a bit in my own ways, but I've always wondered if what I'm writing is okay. And are they going to read it later? And I try to keep their lives separate from mine and very private. And so sometimes people ask me funny questions, like in terms of social media, and I was like, oh, no, no ... people think I'm being oddly private about it or just sort of hiding something. I was like, no, it's just my way of respecting them. And other people can do it entirely differently. It's their choice. But for me, it's like I'm responsible and able to use only my own face, and my own likeness, and my own body, and that's it. I have no permission to use anyone else's, but it may be an extreme opinion.
In my writing, I want to write about them so much more, but I really do leave them out. Even though it doesn't seem like it, they're more like caricatures. It's not really my children. It's like I'm thinking about them as characters. They're representations of a relationship with mothering if that makes sense.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, I only ask because there was one line in the collection—I think it was in "Leaf in the Wind"—where you wrote that you brought one of your daughters to see Agnes's work. And you said you "spent the day so close to each other's happiness they began to smear together to create a new form." And I thought that was a really kind of lovely observation because not all mothers can see what's right in front of them or choose to look. [Laughs]
Victoria Chang: It just impacts your whole life. You know, I keep reading a lot of Sylvia Plath lately because I have to teach a short course on Sylvia Plath. Every time she writes about her children, I'm like, Ugh, that's exactly how I feel. They weren't always these positive tones toward her mothering, and I mean, I really think for some of us, it nearly killed us, you know? And in some cases, it may have contributed to killing her. And I think it's very difficult to be an artist and be a parent. I mean, you can't even take care of yourself sometimes. And then to have that weight of responsibility of two beings is just [hard]. There have been many days where I have been so overwhelmed that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to survive parenting.
I still think that on a daily basis. For some of us, it's just ... I just feel like I'm not equipped, I'm not built this way, and it's so difficult. And I just look at some parents. It seems so natural to them. And, for me, when I read Sylvia Plath, I'm like, yes, I so relate to you! You are like my parenting doppelganger. I understand those things that she writes about parenting because not a day has gone by when I felt like it's natural. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: I mean, I can't really comment. I'm not a mother yet, and I'm still trying to figure out if I can go down that path. But I'm always just so interested in mothering and making art. I would imagine no day is ever the same. [Laughs]
Victoria Chang: Yeah, it changes from hour to hour.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, I feel like there is so much that we've covered in this conversation and so much more we could probably talk about, but maybe to close things out, we can have you read one more poem.
Victoria Chang: Sure.
PASSAGE READ BY VICTORIA CHANG ︎ PURCHASE WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD︎︎︎
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Rachel Schwartzmann: That was my conversation with Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the World. You can purchase Victoria's books anywhere books are sold—though we recommend supporting local and independent bookstores if you can. You can also follow Victoria online at victoriachangpoet.com. I'm Rachel Schwartzmann, and you've been listening to Slow Stories. Thank you so much for tuning in.