Michael Karpa

Oyster River Pages: How is your art or writing informed by current social and/or political issues?

Michael Karpa: As a gay man, the impact of being out (or not) on the lives of LGBT people has been a core subject, as has belonging. But with the recent explosion in the national consciousness of racism and anti-immigrant feeling, it has become increasingly apparent that for me there is a deeper issue: Passing. My father was a forced laborer for the Nazis, then lived  in a refugee camp for three years, where he finished high school before coming to this country. My mother grew up in South Texas of mixed Anglo/Mexican roots, too Anglo for the Mexicans and too Mexican for the Anglos, as she put it. Since my dad worked in construction, we moved around, always hitting a new place, where each family member would undertake to fit in. Where this interests me as a writer—on florid display in this piece—is where assimilation blurs into fitting-in blurs into passing. My dad needed to be perceived as American not just for employment, but to forget everything that had happened to him. My mother, similarly, grew up under strong pressure to pass for Anglo, not Mexican. Both parents worked on their accents (South Texas for my mother), just as I worked on not being perceived as gay. Passing was key for all of us.

We were also passing for each other, isolated in our struggles and yet locked tightly together on the same side, us against the world. We concealed. But year by year, relentlessly growing tension on immigration – through Wilson’s California, Bush’s wall, Obama as deporter in chief/architect of DACA, to the full-blown xenophobic explosion of the Trump era – has pushed me to acknowledge a lot that had become second nature to conceal.

Now Black Lives Matter is foregrounding frank expression of people’s lives, exposing violent racism that, honestly, everyone knew was going on all along. Everyone knew. This eruption is obliterating silence. As a writer, I have often taken risks. Despite being shy, fearful person, I somehow would end up writing stuff that readers advise I leave out: sex, race, violence, foreignness, language. I have been told to not write about my family, because I didn’t “look right.” I’d concealed too well. No one knew who I was. That became the interesting bit, because concealing doesn’t create anything other than absence. It’s an unmooring. So how do unmoored people create a new self when there is no destination, no point of departure? That’s what I am after. How the passing person settles. I try to find what’s real. Because people know what’s real. Everyone knows. And for me, there’s never been a better time to be real.

ORP: We often think of ourselves as writing or making art, but the process often changes or makes us as well. How do you feel like your writing or art makes you?

MK: The basic reason I write is to make myself speak. Of course, I want to be heard, but before that, I have to get the words out. Writing has been one pounding-heart experience after another as I wrote some revealing piece in my room, then dared to read it in a class or workshop, or publicly at a reading. The pressure was physically intense. Once, a fellow student brought a microphone and speaker to class, because no one could hear me when I read. The humiliation stung. I used the mic but could not stop lowering my voice proportionally. I wanted and did not want to be heard. Finally, I resolved to up my natural voice. I wasn’t very successful, but at the same time, it didn’t kill me. Sometimes, stepping up to a mic or under the spotlight, I have felt like I was just going to pass out. Once, walking up onto a brightly lit stage in front of hundreds, I was sure I was going to do an Ann Margret into the orchestra pit. I didn’t. I survived it all. And with this story, I am again filled with trepidation at the idea of people reading it. But here it is. For better or worse. And what I know now is that each struggle makes the next one easier. In the end, we all need to speak. We have that in common. Plus, coming out the other side of the ordeal is a blast.

ORP: If you could add a prologue, an epilogue, or an addendum to your piece, what would it say?

MK: In my mind, my piece already has an epilogue. It’s short though: Greg gets a job. With income comes an apartment, where he comes out and lives happily ever after with a completely new set of friends. OK, maybe not so short. Maybe a lifetime.

ORP: If you could choose one writer or artist, living or dead, as a best friend or mentor, who would it be? Why?

MK: Lydia Davis would make a fabulous mentor. Her plain, everyday language is relentlessly accessible and free of those weird turns of phrase that can creep in when you approach your own writing from the outside instead of the inside. Plus, she’s a translator, as I am (I translate Japanese for a living), so we could talk about that.

ORP: What do you think is the most essential advice that most writers and artists ignore?

MK: Don’t reject harsh criticism, which means don’t be afraid to cut.

 Mike Karpa is a queer San Francisco writer and translator of Japanese and Chinese. His fiction and memoir has appeared in literary magazines such as Tahoma Literary Review, Tin House, Chaleur, Sixfold, and Faultline. He is most recently interested in the difference between passing and fitting in. You can find out more on his website https://mikekarpa.com/. Read his story “Scarce Adjusted in the Tomb” (Issue 4.1).