CANR

• A Small Apocalypse: Stories TriQuarterly Books (Evanston, IL), 2024

• Laura Chow Reeve website - https://www.laurachowfun.com/

  Laura Chow Reeve is the author of the short story collection A Small Apocalypse. Her writing and graphic work can be found in The Offing, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, Catapult, Joyland, and elsewhere. She is a winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and was a Blackburn Fellow at the Randolph College MFA program. She lives in Richmond, VA.

• The Rumpus - https://therumpus.net/author/laura-chow-reeve/

  Laura Chow Reeve
  Laura Chow Reeve is a writer living in Jacksonville, FL. She has an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. Laura is a VONA/Voices alumna and winner of the 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

• Chicago Review of Books - https://chireviewofbooks.com/2024/03/15/ghosts-and-swamps-a-conversation-with-laura-chow-reeve/

  Ghosts and Swamps: A Conversation with Laura Chow Reeve

  BY MALAVIKA PRASEED
  MARCH 15, 2024
  An interview with Laura Chow Reeve on her debut short story collection, "A Small Apocalypse"

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  When Laura Chow Reeve and I first met in 2022, we were students at the same low-residency MFA program, Randolph College. We workshopped pieces of novels in progress and learned from many brilliant faculty mentors. Now, in 2024, Laura is a graduate of the program and is celebrating the publication of her debut short story collection, A Small Apocalypse. I was immediately drawn to this collection for its queer characters and themes, its inclusion of the speculative, and its nuanced depiction of my home state, Florida. The collection explores hauntings, both figurative and literal, and what those hauntings can mean for both interpersonal relationships as well as one’s relationship to the larger world. At its core, the book celebrates the weird, surreal, and tender aspects of human life. I sat down with Laura via Zoom to discuss her craft, the composition of her book, and so much more.

  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

  Malavika Praseed

  I’m interested in how story collections develop from this germ of an idea to a full-fledged work. I recall you telling me that you’d been writing these stories for ten years. What was the first story you wrote for this collection and how do you think your writing has changed since then?

  Laura Chow Reeve

  The first story was “1,000-Year-Old Ghosts” and I wrote that back in 2014, so about ten years ago. There are these buckets within the collection that correspond to where I was living at the time of writing, so when I first wrote “1,000-Year-Old Ghosts,” I was in an Asian American studies master’s program at UCLA where I was writing a creative thesis. Not all of those stories are here, but some of them are, and I think those stories are the most interested in exploring a mixed-race identity and how that can be better understood through speculative elements. I don’t think those themes are lost in the other stories, but then I moved to Florida and my exploration of that exploded into Florida. You have “Rebecca,” which started as a queer retelling of Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” and then I became infatuated with Danny as a character and saw them as a person profoundly grieving in a world that doesn’t recognize that kind of loss in a heteronormative world, so that opened up to “Sewanee” and “A Small Apocalypse” and “Migratory Patterns.”

  I also used to begin early stories with this “What if?” premise. What if we could pickle our memories to protect ourselves from intergenerational trauma? What if everyone was matched on a website and there was this eugenics element? I think now, especially in the last two years, my writing has started to focus on the relationships between characters and less of an argument. More of an exploration of people within a larger societal context.

  Malavika Praseed

  I love literary depictions of Florida, and I love that you took on queer, BIPOC Florida, I felt this kinship with the work. I feel like with Florida, especially now, there is this sense of embarrassment when it comes to claiming the state. I’m interested in knowing about how you claimed Florida and wrote into that nuance?

  Laura Chow Reeve

  So, I am not from Florida, but I would feel no shame about being from there. I love Florida in so many ways, I was just there for a friend’s wedding and it was very queer and wonderful, I was with all these beautiful friends who I love, many of whom still live there. My partner has said before, “Humans don’t deserve Florida.” There is so much natural magic, mysticism, spookiness. I know I write a lot about humidity, but there’s something in the air that’s both stifling and mischievous. I was introduced to Florida as I was falling in love with someone from there. My partner, their community, all of it, head over heels. I’ve never felt more inspired in my writing than when I was living in Florida, specifically Jacksonville. At the same time, writing while still being clear-eyed about the harm the state can inflict on queer and trans people, and people of color. Even though I’m not from Florida, I will fight for it and will fight for the people from there. They’re resilient and loving despite everything happening to them and their loved ones.

  Malavika Praseed

  You mentioned your growth with the collection, how some of the stories are more explicitly speculative and others maybe less so. To me it was interesting to see both types of stories in one collection. How did you decide these belonged in one collection?

  Laura Chow Reeve

  This was a question that came up when I was on submission and when we thought about ordering the stories. The ones that are more realist are my set of linked stories, like “Sewanee” and “Migratory Patterns, but they still exist on a spectrum of speculative. I was never doubtful that they all belonged, because when read all together you see the larger narrative thread, seeing a literal ghost encounter haunt some of the other stories. You know these exist in the same space. I think I feel resistant to the idea that not all of the stories are speculative, because they all exist in the same universe. I hope readers allow the magic of some stories to seep into the others.

  Malavika Praseed

  SEE ALSO

  INTERVIEWS
  The Present as It Piles Up: An Interview with Lydia Kiesling on “Mobility”
  Who are your literary inspirations? Who are the people you think about, that you return to, that feed your soul?

  Laura Chow Reeve

  Someone who’s always speaking to me is Octavia Butler. Talk about someone who explores all the juiciness of what speculative fiction can be, along with thinking about what liberation can be. I think of Karen Russell as a Floridian writer and a masterful short story writer. Her first collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, has some of my favorite stories of all time. I’d be remiss in not mentioning Her Body and Other Parties as an influential collection. I also think Carson McCullers, as a Southern writer. Those are the ones coming to mind right now. And I mean, Toni Morrison goes without saying.

  Malavika Praseed

  I apologize, this is the hardest question. A lot of my readers are aspiring writers, a lot are queer, people of color, trying to get books out there. Do you have any words of wisdom?

  Laura Chow Reeve

  It’s all going to sound cliche at this point, because I’m still that person, the person trying to figure out “How do I do this?” I’m still searching for that same advice. I think persistence and stubbornness are really helpful to have. We face so much rejection; even after acceptances and wonderful things happen, rejection still happens. It also requires you to resist isolation and embrace community. As cheesy as it may sound, find your people and celebrate them. Don’t look at this as an exchange, that there’s only a little for all of us. But if you resist jealousy and envy and embrace the people around you and celebrate where they are, that helps keep you invested. It’s easy to feel consumed otherwise. A practice has turned into genuine joy for me. I want to see them win and I want to lift up their wins.

• ReproJobs - https://www.reprojobs.org/blog/radicalroadmaps

  MAKING REVOLUTION IRRESISTIBLE: AN INTERVIEW WITH LAURA CHOW REEVE OF RADICAL ROADMAPS
  IMG_0805.jpeg
  Laura Chow Reeve
  Pronouns: she/her

  Digital: radicalroadmaps.com, @laurachowfun, @radicalroadmaps

  Email: radicalroadmaps@gmail.com

  One of your favorite nonprofits that everyone should give to: Survived & Punished

  ReproJobs: Your stunning roadmaps and artwork caught our eye on Instagram and through several of your projects, including the Color Out Cash Bail coloring book, as a phenomenal way to educate people about complicated and nuanced issues through narrative illustration and graphic recording. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to this work?

  Laura: Thank you so much for your kind words. While I’ve only been graphic recording for about a year and half, I’ve been doing cultural organizing work for many years. About ten years ago, I got involved with Girls Rock Philly, “a youth-centered music organization dedicated to building an intergenerational community of girls, women, and trans and gender-expansive people. Through the practice of fearless expression, artistic experimentation, and collaboration, we build the confidence and leadership skills needed to transform ourselves and our communities,” and then soon after the Girls Rock Camp Alliance. So, long before jumping into the world of graphic recording or organizing the coloring book, I deeply valued art, creative expression, and cultural work as a part of movement building and organizing.

  I actually hired a graphic recorder, the brilliant Emily Simons, for a youth retreat I was organizing for my day job. When she arrived, she very generously talked about her approach, coached me through a practice session, and let me play with her materials and kit. She has done a lot of graphic recording work for movement orgs, particularly Southerners on New Ground, and so we also talked about and shared our values in doing this work. I feel really lucky to have met and connected with her, and we’ve even had the opportunity to collaborate on some projects.

  Some of the best advice I got from Emily was to just jump in and try. I had the opportunity to practice graphic recording at my day job during staff meetings and at local SONG Richmond chapter meetings. But what really helped was just drawing every day and taking frameworks and concepts I was excited about or learning about and practicing translating them into a graphic format. My Radical Roadmaps instagram account was actually started as a way to document my practice and to keep myself accountable, I had no idea folks would connect with it in the way that it did.

  I should also say that I had a lot of experience as a trainer and facilitator, so I already had experience supporting conversations, listening to folks, synthesizing things, etc. I also was always a “doodler” when taking notes, both in school and then later in trainings and workshops, so I think my brain naturally wanted to connect visuals and information.

  I also just want to name that some of my best work and favorite projects (like the coloring book) have all been done in collaboration and I truly can’t do any of the work I do alone. I was on a call a few months ago and Kelly Hayes said something like “good is what I create in concert with other people,” and that is something I’ve held really dear to me since I’ve heard it. I also think a lot about how Mariame Kaba starts every webinar that I’ve been on recently by acknowledging all the folks who made it happen (logistics folks, translators, captioners, graphic recorders, tech support, etc.) and how she names that anything worth doing is done with other people. That’s all to say, I guess, that I’m appreciative folks are excited about some of the graphic recording work and illustration work I’ve done recently, and it’s all in concert with or because of other folks’ brilliance, labor, talent, and skills.

  Using Restorative Practices at Home, graphic recording for the NYC TJ Hub
  Using Restorative Practices at Home, graphic recording for the NYC TJ Hub

  ReproJobs: Graphic recording might be a new concept to a lot of folks. Can you talk about what it is, and how it can help people understand and capture information differently, particularly for people who process information differently?

  Laura: Graphic recording, at least my understanding of it, is (often) live visualization, synthesization, and documentation of a meeting, panel, workshop, strategic planning session, almost anything really. Live graphic recording, when shared on a screen or done in-person at an event, can support visual learners stay grounded in maybe more abstract conversations, as well as help all participants remember key information during and after a session. Graphic notes or recordings shared after a meeting/event/etc. can capture the feeling or vibe of a conversation better than a document of typed notes, can help folks who may not have been able to attend better understand what folks talked about, can be a great touchstone for an organization or collective of folks as they build on their work. These graphics can also invite new folks in, especially to conversations they may not have thought they had a connection to previously or maybe didn’t know enough about to dive in.

  ReproJobs: What is your creative process when you’re thinking about a roadmap concept to convey information? What inspires you?

  Laura: I do some prep before a call/webinar/panel/session. That usually includes talking with the organizers, getting a feel for the agenda (if available before-hand), setting up my color palette, and prepping my canvas (on Procreate) with any titles, logos, and/or more detailed drawings (like portraits) ahead of time. Usually once the session starts I dive in and start note taking and drawing. One thing I really love about graphic recording, or at least in my own practice, is how in the moment it is. I let the conversation lead me, and even though I’m working on an iPad at a desk, it can be a really physically, as well as mentally, draining experience (but often in a good way!).

  I’m inspired by other movement artists and graphic recorders (here’s a list of some folks on my website), inspired by the smart and sharp folks that I get to listen to on almost a daily basis now. I’m also inspired by textures, collage, layers. I’m always exploring new brushes and techniques that I can utilize on Procreate.

  I’m also really inspired by learning new things, both the content of these conversations, but also creative practices. I’m self-taught for the most part, so it’s fun to learn new tips/tricks in Procreate and those always inspire me to stretch my creative practices. I’m also trying to beef up my drawing skills and plan on taking a drawing class next year to keep that muscle strong.

  Graphic recording for the National Harm Reduction Coalition
  Graphic recording for the National Harm Reduction Coalition

  ReproJobs: Many nonprofits and campaigns are moving to more visual art to share our stories and explain complicated issues to organize our folks. Why do you think art should be accessible and critical to social change?

  Laura: There have been so many smart folks who have talked about this, specifically Toni Cade Bambara who famously said, “As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.” I know lots of folks use that quote as a touchstone in their practice, and I certainly do as well. I think cultural work is critical to social change because it allows us to visualize the (purposefully) invisibilized systems that oppress and marginalize folks, but also, maybe even more importantly, articulate what we are working towards, the worlds and systems and relationships with each other and the land and governance that we want instead. I think art and cultural work can also make our political education work more engaging, can support all types of learning, and invite folks in, to engage deeply in a way that centers creativity and imagination.

  ReproJobs: You do live graphic recordings of events. How do you synthesize the information into nuggets to memorialize after the meetings?

  Laura: Honestly, I do my best. It’s a skill that I still feel like I’m cultivating and something I feel like I do successfully sometimes and not so much other times. I’m a really focused listener when I’m graphic recording, and I often go with my gut about what feel like the main takeaways, questions, next steps, action items. It helps when facilitators I’m working with repeat things for emphasis, say things like “what I’m hearing is…,” and ask clarifying questions. It’s also helpful when folks use metaphors and descriptive language that I can pull into my illustrations. I have the hardest time synthesizing when I find myself getting really nerdy and excited about content because I just want to write down what folks are saying word-for-word; sometimes that can be a helpful strategy, but I know graphics that are overly wordy are often not as helpful, and actually can be overwhelming for folks.

  ReproJobs: What’s your reflection routine?

  Laura: I’ve always wanted to be a better journaler (who knows, maybe 2021 will be my year?), so I don’t feel like I have a “routine.” However, I do a lot of reflection on my values, practices, and actions. I ask myself if my practices and actions are aligning with my values. I try to assess if and how big the gap is between my actions and values if there is misalignment. It’s been a helpful practice when it comes to critique (both self-critique and critique from others), and has helped me figure out when I need to pause and address something and when I can allow myself to (as Mariame Kaba says) #KeepItMoving.

  ReproJobs: What’s an area of social justice you’re growing in?

  Laura: I think all of them! I hesitate to call myself an expert in anything and feel like I’m always learning, growing, and stretching my analysis and how I put my analysis and values into practice. One thing I’m particularly focused on right now, is Transformative Justice-- I’m a part of a small study group right now and we’re working our way through the Creative Interventions toolkit. I’m also really interested in how I navigate conflict with folks and how that can be a really loving and transformative thing rather than something that’s automatically scary or “bad.”

  ReproJobs: How do you wind down your workday?

  Laura: It’s been so hard to do this during COVID-19, especially because I work completely from home and because I have a full-time job on top of my graphic recording work. My partner is a helpful (and needed) accountability buddy to get me to “unplug” and stop work for the night. Walking my dog, Scout, around the neighborhood is helpful, sitting down for a meal with my partner too. Anything I can do to get me away from my computer and iPad, really.

  ReproJobs: What’s your power attire?

  Laura: I feel most like myself, so I guess this is my power attire, with dark winged eyeliner, a crop top, and boots.

• The Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance website - https://vsdvalliance.org/press_release/meet-laura-chow-reeve-youth-resilience-coordinator/

  MEET LAURA CHOW REEVE, YOUTH RESILIENCE COORDINATOR!
  June 28, 2018
  The Action Alliance is thrilled to introduce to you Laura Chow Reeve, our new Youth Resilience Coordinator! Laura comes to us from LA, Philly, and most recently Jacksonville Florida. She took a few moments to talk with us about her path, her loves, and what lights her up about prevention work.

  LAURA, WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

  I’ve moved across the country, bouncing from coast to coast, three times. I’ve lived in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, but most recently, I lived and soaked up some magic in Jacksonville, FL (and its surrounding natural springs).

  While in Jacksonville I worked directly with LGBTQ+ survivors of sexual violence, and I have always been invested in working with youth and doing social justice and anti-oppression work. For the past 6 years, I have worked with Girls Rock Camps, programs that use music and creative expression as tools to fight for intersectional gender justice. I first started at Girls Rock Philly and continued to do work with the Girls Rock Camp Alliance, an international network of over 100 camps, in various roles. (I encourage you to check out your local Girls Rock or Queer Rock camp! I’m a proud supporter of Girls Rock! RVA here in Richmond!)

  I have a MA in Asian American Studies from UCLA where I completed a collection of short stories that explores intimacies of the queer mixed-race body through magical, speculative, and fabulist forms. While at UCLA I also helped co-found a workshop for writers of color on campus and taught undergraduate Gender Studies and Asian American Studies Classes.

  I’m currently working on a collection of short stories and have a novel project still very much in its infancy. My writing has been published online and has been anthologized. One of the most exciting moments in my writing career was when LeVar Burton read my short story “1,000-Year-Old Ghosts” on his podcast LeVar Burton Reads. I am also the Southern editor of Joyland, an online magazine that publishes fiction and non-fiction.

  WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP ABOUT PREVENTION WORK?

  For me, prevention work is anti-oppression work and vice versa. I love having big movement building conversations, using our brains and hearts to imagine the world we want to live in and then build towards that vision together. I also love the day-to-day, working on new curriculum, sharing resources, and supporting folks doing prevention work in their communities. I feel fired up when we talk about the ways in which prevention work is connected to transformative justice, racial justice, economic justice, reproductive justice and queer liberation, and even more so when we start doing that work with other folks in our communities.

  IF YOU WERE AN ANIMAL (BESIDES A HUMAN), WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL WOULD YOU BE AND WHY?

  There is this short story by Ken Liu that I love called “Good Hunting” about shape-shifting fox spirits (huli jing, Chinese mythological creatures/spirits). I want to be a shape-shifting fox spirit.

  WHAT’S ONE GOAL YOU HAVE FOR YOUR FIRST YEAR AS THE NEW YOUTH RESILIENCE COORDINATOR?

  I’m excited to explore new ways to engage with youth in our space, whether that look like a camp, youth training opportunities, or a youth advisory council! I’m about to head to North Carolina to observe NCCASA’s Young Advocates Institute in July to get some inspiration. I hope to dedicate lots of energy into clarifying how we make space for youth leadership and voices in our work at the Alliance.

  Laura can be reached at lchowreeve@vsdvalliance.org or 804-377-0335 x 2109. Drop her a line and welcome her to Virginia!

• Hyphen - https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2017/08/ive-yearned-so-much-my-life-know-more-about-my-family-%E2%80%94-conversation-laura-chow-reeve

  "I'VE YEARNED FOR SO MUCH OF MY LIFE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MY FAMILY" — A CONVERSATION WITH LAURA CHOW REEVE
  Hyphen's Senior Literature Editor, Karissa Chen, speaks to Laura Chow Reeve about her award-winning story, memories, and more.
  Karissa Chen
  August 29, 2017
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  When Laura Chow Reeve’s short story, “1,000-Year-Old Ghosts,” came through the slush last year, I knew immediately I had found something special. It is a beautiful story, about memories and language and culture and family, offered up with an unusual twist: the family pickles memories. I accepted the story a mere week after it was submitted and published it that June.

  Since then, the story has gone on to win the 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, has been anthologized in Catapult’s PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017 (just published on August 22, 2017), and was recently read by LeVar Burton on his podcast, LeVar Burton Reads.

  Recently, I called Laura at her home in Florida from a small writing colony in upstate New York. The connection was crackly and Laura’s dog kept whining for attention, yet we had a great time talking about memory, personal history, “weirdness,” and pickling.

  This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

  —Karissa Chen, Senior Literature Editor

  Karissa Chen: Let’s first talk about your story, "1,000-Year-Old Ghosts." What I love about it is that you took something as abstract as memory, with all the stuff that’s caught up in it—the pain of not forgetting but also of remembering—and turn it into something tangible, like pickling. Could you tell me a little bit about how you settled on pickling as a metaphor?

  Laura Chow Reeve: I first wrote a version of the story when I was doing a "Fun-a-Day" project in Philly, so I wrote these really short stories every day and one was about this daughter coming home to her mom and finding these physical memories. She finds them underneath the doormat first and then she goes throughout the house and finds them. I think I settled on pickling because I just think pickling itself is a really interesting process. It preserves something but it also alters whatever’s being pickled. Memories are constantly evolving and changing, and everyone’s memories of one thing can be completely different. So I thought pickling was a really interesting way of talking about that and the weird process of how we remember physically.

  KC: Well, it’s interesting, too, because it kind of does this dual thing—it’s acting as a metaphor but, also, if we think about what we inherit from our grandmothers, aside from the stories they tell us (or don't), it’s oftentimes a craft. Like how I learned to make dumplings from my mom; there are these physical things we do with the people we love, things they’re teaching us and passing down to us. It’s interesting that this grandmother is like, “I don’t want you to hold onto the burdens of anything, I’m not going to give you my memories—but let me teach you this other thing. I’m still passing this thing down to you.”

  LCR: I also feel like food is a really interesting way that that happens. A craft or a recipe can be passed down, but so can habits. I think a lot about the habits I inherited from my mother that she probably never intended me to have. One really silly one I have is how I put up my parking brake even when the road is flat. That is one-hundred percent a habit I picked up from my mother because she does it. So even in those small moments, just by being around that person and those little things that they do, you start mimicking them. That’s mentioned in the story: the narrator even says, “Popo taught me never to make [pickling memories] a habit,” but she does because it’s a habit that her Popo had. It’s not just those memories or these intentional things that are passed down, but also these unintentional things that the people we love do, things that we start to do, too.

  KC: I want to talk a little bit more about this memory stuff. You present this dichotomy where there are these people who just want to forget—that’s the grandma, who’s like, “I’m here now, these painful things are behind me, I don’t want to remember them. I’m not even going to teach my daughter Cantonese because I want her to just speak English,”—and there’s the grandma’s daughter, who says something like, “No, I want to remember everything,” and asks her mother, “Why do you get to choose what we get to remember?” I feel like those are two very common, different approaches when it comes to the immigrant experience. There’s this gap in knowledge and there are these experiences that you’re missing a crucial part of, especially if you’re a first-generation American. So I’m curious, in your life, how has that tension between forgetting and remembering played out?

  LCR: I was thinking a lot about these refusals to pass on certain things, and language was the biggest thing for me. My grandparents didn’t teach my mother and my mother’s siblings Cantonese pretty purposefully as a way of assimilation—they thought they would be better off this way. They made this decision for them and then, obviously, [the language] never trickled down to me, other than a few words here and there. Growing up that way was always so frustrating to me. I’ve always wanted to know how to speak, and I think I was really thinking about why someone else gets to choose what I know and how I connect with people in my family? In the story, I think it’s just this one person who really holds the power of deciding, but I don’t think that’s how it works; I think that families kind of make these decisions together and probably not even consciously.

  I have an uncle who is really invested in knowing our family’s history. It’s pretty interesting because I’m a later-generation Chinese American and a mixed-race Chinese American. My grandfather was born here in San Francisco, in Chinatown, and on my other side, my great-grandmother was born in Stockton. It’s not very common because, historically, with the Chinese Exclusion Act, these larger families weren’t happening, and there aren’t as many Chinese Americans with longer generational ties to the United States. But my uncle found all of these government documents of my great-grandfather applying to go back and forth [between the U.S. and China]—because my great-grandfather was actually a merchant. He gave me copies of them, and that obviously inspired "1,000-Year-Old Ghosts" even though the details are not super faithful to what actually happened.

  I guess I’m just trying to think about the ways in which I’ve yearned for so much of my life to know more about my family and about that specific side to my family. As someone who is racialized and trying to navigate what that looks like without having these direct and concrete ties to the culture that people expect—one of those being language—it’s always been this desire, this constant yearning, that I hope people feel in the story, too. It’s also about the complexities of what that yearning looks like.

  KC: Yeah, that yearning is often something that can’t be fulfilled because a lot of times we can’t know that full story. Even if you have the opportunity to ask your grandparents, like you said, they’re older, they may not be able to remember a lot of the details anymore or, for some people, you don’t think to ask until it’s too late. What I think is interesting about "1,000-Year-Old Ghosts" is that by making it physical, even though the grandmother is banishing these memories and putting them in jars, she holds onto them. In the story, unlike in real life, the narrator has an opportunity to smash open these jars and to reclaim the memories that she wasn’t given an opportunity to have. When I read that, I thought, "Man that’s really cathartic because we don’t have that chance in real life, but we wish we did. We wish it was as easy as finding that jar." Why do people hope to come across a diary that their grandmother kept or why do we go through Ancestry.com? It’s because people are looking for these artifacts, these physical remains of history that aren't available to them.

  LCR: On the one hand, it’s exciting because you finally get to see what’s in the jar, but she’s also remembering that her mom and grandmother are gone. So it’s this really lonely moment of finding these things that maybe make you feel closer to [these people], but you can’t talk to them anymore. What she’s also yearning for is a way to connect with these women in her family, and it happens too late.

  My grandfather recently passed, and we were going through his house and found all these pictures. It’s really amazing—how much we have, but also he’s not there for us to say, “Tell me more about this or this.” Or, recently, I was with my family and I learned for the first time that one of my great-aunts, one of my grandfather’s sisters, was a singer and a performer in a Chinatown nightclub. I’m super interested in this and am thinking about basing some of that for a novel project, but no one really knows anything more about it and I don’t know who to ask.

  So that moment when she finally opens the jars, she’s like, "Now what?" Nothing’s fixed in that story. Now that she knows everything, she feels the same...but also overwhelmed.

  KC: I want to pivot a little bit. I really like this story for its form and tone. It’s sort of magical realism and tackles questions that I think are really common within diasporic literature at an interesting angle.

  LCR: So when I was working on my master’s thesis at UCLA, which was a collection of stories that this story was actually a part of, I was interested in magical realism, science fiction, and speculative fiction. I kind of told people I was really interested in “weirdness.” I would try to name that in a more articulate way, but it still became “weirdness” and queerness and trying to talk about things like memory that are abstract. As a queer person of color, I just don’t know of any other way to talk about the way I engage with the world than through alternative forms or alternative story structures or having something magical happen. It’s always been the kind of work I’ve been interested in both reading and writing.

  Right now, I’m living in Florida, which I really love, but it’s also really hard. It’s a place that is often disavowed—it’s a place that people joke about cutting off from the rest of the United States, as if Florida is the only place where like white supremacy and homophobia and transphobia exist. And it’s also in the South—I’m living in northeast Florida, which is right near the Georgia border, so I’m living right near the Bible Belt. That’s really difficult, but the South has so much magic and resilience in it; folks of color and queer and trans folks of color have done so much work in living here and resisting these awful things that exist here and everywhere. And they often get left behind in many ways: LGBTQ organizations in the South get a dismal percentage of funds compared to anywhere else in the United States.

  But Florida is also just weird in this really great way—there’s dinosaurs that live here, like alligators and manatees. It’s just bananas. The nature is out of this world. Sometimes you can go somewhere and it can feel prehistoric in this really amazing way. I’ve also just been writing a lot about Florida, writing a lot about how it feels to be here. One of my stories is really invested in how Florida feels haunted in these ways. So it’s not just about memories for me, but also about navigating living here. I’ve been using a lot of magical realism to talk about that in my fiction.

  KC: Why don’t we talk a little bit about LeVar Burton reading "1,000-Year-Old Ghosts" on his podcast, LeVar Burton Reads. I imagine that was the first time you heard someone else read your story out loud like that, and obviously he was reading it in a way where he was interpreting what was on the page. I’m wondering if there was anything about the reading that was surprising to you or anything even in the conversation afterwards, when he talks a little bit about what resonated with him personally.

  LCR: It was surreal. I’ve never heard someone read my work before, period. He did such an amazing job. There were parts when I didn’t remember what happened next, and he kind of made it new for me. I didn’t know that was possible because this story especially, of all my writing, I’ve read or heard so many times; I’ve thought about it and engaged with it often, especially after it got published in Hyphen and all of the subsequent things that happened. LeVar reading it felt like it was brand new to me. That was exciting and really weird. Also, I didn’t know I would love this because I’m still a pretty new writer in this way, but I love hearing people talk about my writing and how they interpret it and what it means to them. He was just so generous and tender in the way he was describing his relationship to that story and his personal connection. I loved it. And even if there weren’t things that I intended, they were interpreted differently [by readers], and I think that’s still one of my favorite parts. It rekindles my interest in the story, even if it’s one I wrote a long time ago.

  KC: Obviously, the story resonates with me because I also have Chinese American family, so it’s very directly applicable to me. But listening to LeVar speak about your story really reminds me of the power of literature to reach many people. I think it's interesting because LeVar is a Black man from a different generation, and we get to hear how it resonates with him on a different level.

  LCR: White folks often expect people of color to read all of their literature, and we're supposed to connect with it in an emotional way. And we do, but they think it’s impossible for someone else to connect with the specificity of like…well, like my story specifically—as a mixed-race Chinese American navigating these questions of immigration and diaspora and loss. But, yeah, I really loved those kind of personal connections [LeVar] brought or even that cultural connection he made about traditions in West Africa. I really enjoyed hearing the way that he connected to my story and opened a new doorway into it.

  KC: I think it’s really great to see the power of fiction, especially these days. I don’t know about you but, given all the bad stuff going on in the world, I have these moments where I ask myself, "Is there something more direct I can be doing? Is writing a story worthwhile, will it actually change anything?" But it’s important in this cultural moment to be reminded that this work can reach so many people—and not necessarily just the people you might consider your small tribe.

  LCR: I mean, I’m in no way comparing myself to this person, but I believe Octavia Butler’s writing has become integral to social movements, with Octavia’s Brood, but also in general, the way her fiction has inspired activists and organizers to do really important work.

  KC: Speaking of that, what are some books or writers that have inspired you or informed your work?

  LCR: Octavia Butler, who I already mentioned, who is, like, everything. One of my favorite books is the The People of Paper (2006) by Salvador Plascencia. That book gutted me on a level I hope to one day gut my readers (which is a really awful metaphor!). I just finished The Border of Paradise: A Novel (2016) by Esmé Weijun Wang, and I was really blown away. Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You (2015) also really blew me away. Tananarive Due has this collection called Ghost Summer: Stories (2015); she has these stories about Florida, which I’m really enjoying. And Kelly Link is a person I really love—she was actually one of the judges for the PEN American award and that was the most exciting thing for me. Karen Russell, too. But mostly I try to keep my bookshelves full of women of color writers, folks of color, and queer writers.

  KC: I'm wondering if you want to talk a bit more about any current projects you're working on. Are you working on a collection? A novel?

  LCR: I have the very beginning of a novel started, but the short fiction I’ve been writing has felt more interesting and urgent. I’ve just started thinking about what a collection could look like and I’m really excited about it.

  KC: I just have to ask...do you like pickles?

  LCR: Ha! I’m so glad you asked this. Yes, I love pickles...I want everything to be pickled.

Reeve, Laura Chow A SMALL APOCALYPSE TriQuarterly/Northwestern Univ. (Fiction None) $24.00 3, 15 ISBN: 9780810146945

Queer and mixed-race people challenge boundaries and defy expectations by virtue of their very existence in a story collection infused with the sticky, swampy heat of Florida.

In many ways, this debut collection functions as an exploration of radical subversiveness--of race and ethnicity, of gender and sexuality, of models of family and community, even of species. Lines blur, categories coalesce, and hybridity reigns supreme. A member of the West Philly punk scene begins to develop reptilian physical features. Queer Jacksonville residents form a close-knit social circle that endures through incestuous romantic entanglements. Besides the recurring appearance of the Jacksonville friends, the most prominent commonality among the stories is the fact that multiple protagonists share a background as the children of Chinese mothers and white fathers. In practice, this means they are constantly on the receiving end of attempts to dissect their racial identity, familiar with the alienating experience of being constantly othered. A bookish teenager vacationing at a Polynesian-themed resort is repeatedly asked if she is a "native" by other tourists before a tragedy befalls her family. A university employee living in an Orwellian society navigates a state-run dating site that exclusively pairs people of color with white people. A young woman taught how to pickle memories disposes of "the white woman at the grocery store who told me I was prettier because I wasn't 'full Chinese'" in this manner. Haunting in its treatment of family legacy and cultural inheritance, that story, "One-Thousand-Year-Old Ghosts," is one of the strongest here. Not all the stories measure up to the standard it sets, with some being much thinner and less polished. Nevertheless, the collection highlights the everyday burden of shouldering bias and misconception, but never at the expense of the individuality and humanity of its characters.

Stories that explore what it means to buck the status quo amid suspicion of--or hostility toward--anything different.

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"Reeve, Laura Chow: A SMALL APOCALYPSE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786185751/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fd59a5dc. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.

• Fiendfully Reading
  https://fiendfullyreading.com/2024/03/15/a-small-apocalyse-by-laura-chow-reeve/
  Word count: 322

  A Small Apocalyse by Laura Chow Reeve
  Posted on March 15, 2024 by fiendfullyreading

  A Small Apocalypse is a collection of short stories, many of them with interweaving characters, exploring both uncanny situations and everyday queerness. Memorable individual stories tell tales of people turning into reptiles and tragedy at Disney World, whilst a group of queer friends in Florida form the basis of many of the stories, exploring ghosts and alienation and a dead flamingo. Themes that run throughout the collection are swampy Florida, Asian American experience, queerness, and unsettling moments.

  As someone who isn’t always a huge fan of short story collections, I was drawn to the blurb of this one, particularly the queerness and mention of something bad happening at Disney World, and I’m so glad I was. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed both the standalone stories and the ones which featured recurring characters, and the two types of story interweave in the book like you never know what might recur and what won’t, which I found an extension of the slightly unsettling vibe of some of the stories. I did love the Disney theme park story, both in its execution and in the story it tells, and I also really liked a lot of the more mundane stories that focused on character, relationships, and place, that place mostly being Florida. I appreciated how much even the interconnected stories were very different, offering some building blocks from other stories but also being their own thing.

  If you’re looking for short stories that come together as a collection, that explore queerness, race, place, relationships, and fears in ways that are both everyday and weird, then A Small Apocalypse is well worth a read. It made me feel refreshed by the idea of short stories and what it means to read a collection of them by an author.