The Fiction of Limbo Novelist Paul Yoon Explores Laos’S Forgotten War

MONTAGE The Fiction of Limbo Novelist Paul Yoon explores Laos’s forgotten war. by bailey trela y fiction is constantly in of characters, times, and places—New York, transit,” says novelist and Spain, South Korea—are also obliquely tied Briggs-Copeland Lectur- to the war as a way of investigating the psy- “Mer Paul Yoon. “If I were to chological aftermath and physical displace- self-analyze it, my guess is that it probably ment it engendered. comes from the fact that my history is one The experience of diaspora is reflected in of transit, of being in limbo.” the warp and weft of Yoon’s fiction—in the For Yoon—whose most recent novel, Run ruptured movement of his plots and in the Me to Earth, came out in January—the earliest spare, minimalist prose that seeks to capture, Paul Yoon awareness of family history is indelibly tied impressionistically, the flashing-by of lived YOON PETER to his grandfather, who fled North Korea for reality and the peculiar play of memory that world, and for me that evokes, or represents, the south during the Korean War. “When I accompany physical displacement. A sense of the way I want readers to experience a story think back and ask myself what I remember place permeates Yoon’s writings, which tend and its characters, as well.” about my family, it all begins with stories to fracture along geographical lines. In Run Me to Earth, the landscape serves in about my grandfather sneaking across the For Run Me to Earth, he chose to address a part as a symbol for memory. The book’s first border as a refugee.” different anchoring event: what he calls the section follows Alisak, Prany, and Noi, three Yoon’s grandfather never immigrated to the “shadow history” of the bombing the United teenagers orphaned by war who are serving United States, although he visited a few times States conducted in Laos beginning in 1964, as couriers for a makeshift hospital thrown when Yoon was young. The author’s parents a nearly decade-long assault that devastated up by international aid workers in an aban- met after both had moved to the States in the the country with more than two million tons doned mansion. At the behest of Vang, the late 1970s, but impermanence remained the of ordnance. During research for The Mountain, head physician, they swerve through the norm. He remembers his parents and their Yoon learned about the campaign in Laos, a countryside on dilapidated motorcycles in friends sharing their experiences of immigrat- conflict frequently overshadowed by the Viet- search of medicine, passing through the end- ing and the way, once arrived, they contin- nam War that lent itself to his interest in in- less rain of bombs and carefully negotiating ued to drift, moving from California to New direct thematic explorations. The new book’s fields pitted with unexploded ordnance. At York or vice versa. Growing up, Yoon himself plot follows a small cast of characters as they one point, Alisak and Prany look on as Noi shuttled around within New York state, rare- leap across continents and decades, from the makes her way through a minefield: ly staying anywhere longer than five years as 1960s to the present day, and from Laos to Per- They watched Noi move across his father, a doctor, moved from one hospital pignan in southern France, Sa Tuna in Spain, upturned earth and broken bits of to another. “There was always this constant and upstate New York. What’s remarkable, stone, the soles of her feet searching for movement to find happiness, and a place to given the bombs that open the book and the patches that appeared untouched. She settle and make a life,” he explains. “I think successive tragedies that send its characters would be avoiding the feel of a hard, that motion is just embedded in my sense of wandering through the world, is how the nov- curved surface under the dirt as much life and story.” el remains so grounded, in a very literal sense. as she could. Every time she stepped Those early experiences have helped shape Yoon’s fictions crystallize around moun- forward, she dug her heel in, leaving a a body of fiction remarkably attuned to the tains, islands, fields, and landscapes. Part- solid footprint she could follow back. exigencies of flight and the perpetual search- ly, he says, this stems from a deep respect Noi’s passage through the field is delicate ing that often typify immigrant narratives. In for nature, though it’s also in some ways and calculated, leaving traces in the landscape 2009, Yoon published Once a metaphor for the act that are tied, like breadcrumbs, directly to the Shore, eight interlinked of writing and storytell- survival. Years later, when Prany returns to short stories set on a fic- ing itself. “When I think the mansion, Yoon again emphasizes the phys- tional island off the coast about the natural world, icality of memory: “Always to his surprise, it of South Korea. His 2013 and the landscape and en- was this house his mind had often leaped to novel, Snow Hunters, traces vironment, I think of tre- these past years. The way he roamed the halls. the life of a Korean refu- mendous layers—whether Entered the rooms and opened drawers as gee who escapes to Brazil that’s layers of sky, layers though each held a mysterious treasure. The by cargo ship at the end of of earth; what’s on the way they were all together.” the Korean War. And in land, or what’s under it,” The web of connections in Run Me to Earth 2017’s short-story collec- he explains. “It’s a very is vast and fine. Instead of fleeing the coun- tion, The Mountain, a series three-dimensional, layered try himself with the help of a smuggler, Prany 56 May - June 2020 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE decides to offer his place to a young girl, Khit, of the fortuitousness of connection—strange, my hope was that the reader would fill in whom he stumbles upon—a decision that sets after all, to think that bodies might disap- the rest.” This goal, along with his desire “to off a delayed chain reaction. Later, in Spain, pear, that buildings might collapse and re- write the biggest possible story in the most Khit has an extended conversation with Ali- gimes tumble, while a note might drift over minimalist way possible,” means that Run Me sak, the only member of the book’s original continents and years to its proper recipient. to Earth is a novel of gaps and elisions that, trio to escape Laos. When the book’s brief When composing this novel, Yoon had a in its leaps backward and forward in time, final section leaps ahead to 2018 and finds particular structural metaphor in mind. “I manages to capture the emotional fractur- Alisak contemplating this encounter and the looked at it as a kind of canvas,” he says. “The ing that strikes Yoon’s characters, and the pe- wisp of paper Prany had told Khit to give to book has five parts, so each of them, to me, culiarities and paradoxical desires of their him, the paper’s fragility becomes a symbol was like a different part of the canvas—and wounded hearts. Setting the Stage Joshua McTaggart leads London’s Chelsea Theatre into a new era. by olivia munk ondon’s chelsea theatre can be second life as its found off a main road in the Royal joint artistic di- Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, rector and CEO. L a neighborhood where household At the time, Mc- incomes are typically three times the na- Taggart was the tional average. By contrast, the theater it- founding artis- MAURICE / ALAMY SAVAGE STOCK PHOTO self is tucked into the World’s End Estate, tic director of another London theater, The The artistic mission of the renovated a public-housing complex built in the 1970s Bunker, which he and a business partner Chelsea Theatre is partly informed by its public-housing neighborhood. that also includes a school and a church. The had converted from an abandoned parking irony of affordable housing hidden away in garage into a thriving off-West End locale. an area rife with cafés bearing names like (Ironically, The Bunker lost its lease in 2019, sible but encouraged, he says, with support “Juice Baby” and antique shops selling a victim of the ever-shifting ecologies of Lon- from the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club £35,000 chandeliers is lost on no one; this is don’s arts and real-estate industries, and is and the Office of the Arts. the borough where, in 2017, 72 people in the set to close this spring, just as the Chelsea After graduating from Harvard with a Grenfell Tower council flats lost their lives prepares for its eventual opening.) concentration in history and a secondary to a preventable fire and became the face McTaggart discovered a love of theater, field in English, McTaggart plunged into of inequality caused by the British govern- and directing in particular, at Harvard, London’s “fringe” theater scene, directing ment’s austerity program. thanks to campus extracurriculars. (He plays on shoestring budgets in rooms above The 30-year-old theater has just completed graduated before Theater, Dance, and Me- pubs and managing theater festivals. Then an 18-month, £2.5-million dia became a concentra- came The Bunker. There, he says, “being an capital campaign refur- tion.) His most memo- artistic director meant making sure the toi- bishment and now faces rable shows included a lets got cleaned as well as picking plays.” He a new challenge.

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