In what ways did your political or community activism influence the subject of what you write about or your approach to writing?     Well, it's hard to say because it's all integrated in a way. I guess I would say what I learned about internment. It was definitely something that made me very angry and was very sad and tragic to me. I think one phase of my life--doing very concrete kind of activist work--was a really helpful and healthy outlet for me. There was this point where I stepped back and started to write more about it.

What kind of writing did you do?    I guess I was turning to my own personal writing by then that had to do with my own sense of my self in the world. When I was growing up, my mother had this picture of her brother who had died in the internment camp sitting in the dining room. He was always this person she always talked about, and aunts and family friends talked about [him] as this really special person. He died at age nineteen I the camp. That was sort of the focal point in relation to internment. I related to it through my mother's sadness about it. She had been twelve or thirteen when he died, and I just couldn't imaging going through that experience of being in this camp in this really desolate place, sitting by your brother's bedside as he died. I've always admired my mother that she went through this experience and thought what a strong person she was.

 What do mean by "sense of self?"     I guess that had a lot to do with racial identity and being racially different, growing up in a mainly white suburb, and in coping with that difference. Racism was definitely part of my childhood.

When you first starting writing, what kind of writing was it?     Fiction. I started writing [as an] undergraduate. I took one of those writing workshop classes and wrote intensely personal stories that were really about being different racially in terms of the body. Feelings of alienation, about not fitting in the white ideal of beauty. And I also wrote about my uncle, his death.

Can you talk about ways that you use the body in your writing and why?     The racist persecution of Japanese Canadians and Americans really has to do with the physical difference. It's not like there were Germans who were interned in the same way Japanese Canadians were. I think it was really clear that it was because they racially different. They were the racial "other." When you look back at old archival images from newspapers in British Columbia dating back to when the Japanese first came, you see the depictions [are] so hideous and ugly.

I think when people go through this experience of racism, they start to internalize that, and start to feel that they themselves are ugly.

Another thing Irene and I notice is the use of hair. I guess that kind of goes along with use of the body and other physical characteristics, but can you talk about -

-what hair means to you and why you use it in your work?         Well, I think, as you say, hair is like a key racial signifier of difference. But also, in the novel itself, it's also something that is a point of beauty, say, for the character Chisako. I guess in that way, I was influenced by some Japanese writers. I guess the first writer who influenced me in that way was Kawabata Yasunari. When I first read him in my early twenties I had a sort of revelation, I guess. He eroticizes the Japanese woman's body, and the way he describes hair--black hairas not simply being black, but different shades of black. And to discover the beauty in that--in black hair--but also the nuances of it and the variations within it. That sense of aesthetics, I guess, was kind of a revelation to me.

How do you respond to the criticism that by identifying as an "Asian Canadian" writer you are ghettoizing yourself?       I dont have that problem, because I feel like theres a need for work about Asian Americans and Asian American experiences. Theres a need for representation. Even though theres so many Asian Americans and (Asian) Canadians in North America, theres such a dearth of images. I feel there's that need. I dont really have a problem with that--feeling ghettoized--but to be honest, I feel like the Asian Canadian/ Asian American audience is the most important audience to me. I dont want to be exclusive, but I speak to that audience first.

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