I want to live in a world where everybody deserves everything.
I've been meaning to ask Carrianne Leung
I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human
What is your first memory of existing?
I was lying on the floor of my uncle and aunt’s apartment in Hong Kong. There was an open door to the balcony, and there were these sheer white curtains blowing. I moved myself right underneath those curtains and just watched them dancing above me. Sometimes the wind would die down, and the curtains fell on my face. It was so exquisite to me. I became conscious of a self, a moment, beauty.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?
I wrote a poem in Grade 5 about Helen Keller. I was obsessed with Helen Keller. It was probably inappropriate and ableist how I was obsessed with her. But the idea that she didn’t have a language to communicate with others, and then she did, was so compelling to me. So I wrote a poem about her. It rhymed, and it was strange to me that it gave me so much pleasure to write it. I handed it in as a book report assignment because I think I was reading a book about her and her teacher. (OMG, I was obsessed with her teacher, Annie Sullivan too.) The teacher loved it, and he gave me a A+++ on it. He handed it back to me with this look like I was a puppy who suddenly stood up and said hello. I guess that was what it was like to him because I was the silent Chinese girl, and he probably didn’t even know if I could speak English, never mind write a poem with rhyming couplets. Besides the pleasure of creating that poem, I also understood that what I create has an impact on others too. It was a revelation.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?
I never have nightmares. Sometimes I have gorgeous dreams of otherworldly places, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had that. I have a recurring dream that pisses me off though. It’s about contact lenses. I try to put them on, but they grow as big as saucers, and I don’t know how to put them in my eyes. I keep trying and trying, and they get bigger and bigger until they’re the size of buckets. It’s weird.
What is your favourite or significant coincidence story to tell?
There are no coincidences. Just synchronicity. I have no stories to tell because there are so many. A psychic told me once that I am a conjuror, descended from a long line of conjurors, so that’s how I make sense of synchronicities. But can I conjure things like a bucket of money landing on my lap? Or a cheeseburger to knock at my door when I really need one? No. Such small scale, practical, everyday coincidences/conjuring have not happened yet. I’m working on it.
Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?
I can’t think of one at the moment. Every emotion is overwhelming to me these days. I feel like I have no skin, so all the things in the world enters me and fills me with too much. Too much violence, too much callousness, too much love, too much beauty, too much of everything.
Can you recount a time (that you're willing to share) when you were embarrassed?
Before I was medicated for my anxiety, I was embarrassed all the time. You know that anxiety-infused playback in your mind in the dead of night? Why did I say what I said? What do people think of me? Why am I so awkward? When I think back on it now, I cringe with embarrassment at my embarrassment. Haha. But honestly, after menopause? Nothing embarrasses me anymore. The drop in estrogen, for me is like the antidote to self-judgement. I’m in my whatever era. I guess what I am saying is: Embarrassment and its opposite, whatever that is, is a chemical experience.
What do you cherish most about this world?
That my son lives here.
What would you like to change about this world?
The world is a huge and vast place. I become more aware, as I age that I only glimpse a tiny slice. I am also aware that I have the capacity to only understand an even tinier slice. Who am I to “change” the world, per se? And yet, I have been shouting into the wind for changes for almost my entire life. I suppose I want much more dignity for all living things, including this large-scale concept/place we call the “world”. Dignity, I guess is as good enough of a word as any, and might it cover all the conditions that make such lives possible?
What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.
It will be ok. You are doing exactly as you should.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?
100%. I feel them with me every day. My grandmother is always leaving me things and showing me funny, undeniable signs. My grandmother has a great sense of humour. She may even have honed it in the hereafter.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?
Everyone. Even those who might hate me, and I hate them. Even those who are fundamentally motivated by hate. I want to live in a world where everybody deserves everything.
Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and assistant professor at the University of Guelph in Creative Writing. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies from OISE/University of Toronto. She is the co-editor with Lynn Caldwell and Darryl Leroux of Critical Inquiries: A Reader in Studies of Canada. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo, published by Inanna Publications was shortlisted for the 2014 Toronto Book Awards. Her collection of linked stories, That Time I Loved You, was released in 2018 by HarperCollins and in 2019 in the US by Liveright Publishing. It received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, named as one of the Best Books of 2018 by CBC, That Time I Loved You was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019, shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards 2019 and long listed for Canada Reads 2019. Leung’s work has also been appeared in The Puritan, Ricepaper, The Globe and Mail, Room Magazine, Prairie Fire and Open Book Ontario. She is currently working on a new novel to be released by Harper Collins Canada.
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Another great piece. "Too much violence, too much callousness, too much love, too much beauty, too much of everything."