Photo credit: Jackson Hagner
Interview by Franz Seachel
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, and community healer. She is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, which was chosen by Emma Watson for her online feminist book club and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry collection, a place called No Homeland, was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, and her essay collection, I Hope We Choose Love, received a Publishing Triangle Award. She writes the advice column “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse” for Xtra.
Her latest, Falling Back in Love with Being Human, is a collection of love letters to the deepest, sometimes dark, often forgotten, and misunderstood parts of humanity. Thom writes letters addressed to racists, misogynists, TERFs, and the monsters inside us all. The book is also an invitation to feel, breathe, and remember parts of ourselves we often push aside in shame. It is an invitation to love despite it all.
Franz Seachel: I’m looking forward to talking about the new collection. It was one of those reads that encompassed so many conversations I’ve been having with other people, about the world and how people act. It was very heart-opening. I’m wondering how it came about. I was listening to your conversation with Janice Jo Lee for Brick Books where you mentioned it began with the letter to J.K. Rowling. Beyond that, did you have other letters sitting around and then decided to put them together after that one, or was it only after that you decided you were going to write letters to all the different people?
Kai Cheng Thom: Oh, I love this question. So it’s true, it started with a J.K. Rowling piece–that’s when the idea for it to become a book came out. It’s so funny, I haven’t thought about this much. The truth is, I am very much in love with the epistolary format and have been writing letters to various people for a long time. Actually, when I was in undergrad, I wasn’t studying creative writing or anything related, but I really wanted to be a writer and was taking a class on the classics and we were reading Sappho, the original queer angst poet, and she has these fragments, they’re not even full poems, but they’re addressed to somebody. And the thing about those poems is, even though you don’t know who they are addressed to, it’s not clear, like the power of the direct address, the second person, really hit me.
And so almost all of my poetry starts in the second person. From there, it’s a very natural leap to writing letters. I started thinking, okay, I could write a book of letters. I looked back at some of the work that I had done and I realized a lot of the material was already there. Pretty much the Kai Cheng Thom writing story is like, I have a broken heart and then I write to the objects of that broken heart. I’ve never articulated that angle on the book before, but it’s very much just letters to lots of people or like a lot of letters to the broken heart.
FS: I’m wondering because I know it’s both part of your artistic practice and your just general way of moving through the world, to lead with love. So the idea of these being love letters per se was it a conscious choice or did it just happen that way?
KCT: Oh, my God. See, I didn’t even notice that. This is like therapy. I’m just like, whoa, you’re right. So obviously, it was not intentional.
The part that is conscious of me, actually, is that I’m just gonna say this knowing it will go into the magazine…I really hate myself. There’s a big part of me that’s completely full of poisonous self-loathing. The thing that I’m really clear about is that when we hate ourselves, that emerges from us and becomes hatred toward other people. My self-hatred is something I’m working on in therapy and my own spiritual practice and whatever. Most queer and trans people are taught to hate ourselves. It’s just something I know about humanity, that lots of humans actually secretly hate ourselves. The part about the book that’s really in contrast is, I know how easy it is for me to hate, but moving with love and writing love letters is about seeing that and trying to change it into something else because I don’t want to be a hateful person.
FS: Thank you for sharing that.
Digging more into letters as a form, and going back to the conversation you had with Janice…you mentioned with poetry, the writing is led by emotion. You noted when you do your infographics, the writing is led from a more logical point. I’m wondering where you see the epistolary format.
KCT: On the spectrum of heart to mind, I don’t know if this is gonna make complete sense. But if we think about a body of work as an actual body, I think of poetry as the heart. And then infographics or essays are the mind or the brain. For me, the epistle is the hands. Because the hands reach out.
I think the thing about a good epistolary piece, whether a poem or whatever, is [that it] throw[s] a line of energy out into the world. It touches something. The whole piece is reaching in some way. So much of me is just reaching out. Yeah, [the letters] can be mostly harsh, but [they are] also partly mine, and then it’s [reaching] put into action. And that’s the book too. Part of the form is the epistle, and then part of it is these prompts. So much of what went into this book is the longing for movements, to cross into someone else’s world and find a way to be with them, and then also hoping that other people can start to do that. As I’m speaking, I’m just realizing like, how much of these poems, these letters were driven by like, the longing to somehow put love into motion.
FS: Speaking of those other sections, the prompts after the letters, how did they come to be?
KCT: I love a workbook, it’s actually quite funny. Outside of my writing life, I’m a professional coach. I do life coaching and transformation coaching, and I teach coaches as well. I was preparing my PowerPoint slides and my infographics the other weekend, and I was like, oh, you know, actually a huge part of the self-development movement that took place in the 80s and 90s was in the form of worksheets.
Do not underestimate the power of a piece of paper and then there’s like a question and some lines for you to answer. The power of that is so amazing, people could see themselves in a question and then they get to write the answer or do the answer in some way. I actually really hope that people are going to write in the physical copies of the books, like I hope they write their answers to the questions or, or draw them or whatever. If the letters are about throwing a hand out or a line out into the world and connecting with someone, the workbook prompts are about them reaching back if they want to, to make it interactive. I’m always so curious about like, poetry as a solo art form. Most of the time, you know, you put your thoughts on the page–page poetry not spoken word–you put your thoughts on the page that goes out there and that’s it. I want there to be room for response.
FS: This act of reaching creates a certain amount of vulnerability. And as you perform these letters and share the book, I’m curious, within that vulnerability where ideas and practices of self-care come into play, both with writing the actual book and then as it goes out into the world.
KCT: I’m happy to say I have some now. If you’d asked me this question, like, two or three years ago, I would have been like, well, I don’t know. Now, a big one for me is the sacred pause. So I use this term from a teacher named Caffyn Jesse, who’s here on the West Coast. Caffyn is actually a sacred intimate, like a somatic sex education teacher. I’ve heard that Tara Bra, who is a meditation teacher, also uses the term “sacred pause.” For me, it’s a very simple practice of stopping wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. Everyone can just stop. Like, take a breath, go internally, and scan the body. In the sacred pause, we can ask ourselves all kinds of things like, ‘Am I okay? What would I need to be okay, what do I need to hear for myself?’ This is the one practice that I most consistently use. I can use it when I’m about to step onto the stage, I can use it when I’m about to, like, go on an interview call or step into a conversation like this one, or just in the middle of the day when I’m by myself. And it’s so important to me because I don’t do that unless I remember. The pause reminds me [that] what I’m feeling in this moment matters. When a book comes out, there’s so much pressure to go, go, go, go, go, sell it, sell it, sell it, sell it. But, how we feel about that matters.
FS: I think your book is a good embodiment of the pause, especially with those invitations, or, as you call them, workbook moments. Usually, a story creates momentum where we are guided through it but you really gave the reader room to absorb each section.
There was lots of time to really sit and intake and digest. To think about feelings in relation to other people’s feelings. A lot of people, myself included, have been engaging in hard conversations about the state of the world. Your book touches a lot on these topics of human nature and addresses a lot of questions we all ask without answers. I feel like your book offers a grace to just sit in those moments and be like, it’s okay to just think about these things and have all these questions and, maybe not know, but still wonder.
KCT: Oh, thank you for sharing that. That is exactly what I want for this book. I’m like, what you think about it, you specifically, and then also the other readers, matters. I liked that there was room for that.
FS: I’m kind of steering a little away on a lighter, more fun note. What are some of your favourite artistic or literary games and devices that you use in your creative practice that some people might not necessarily think about?
KCT: I’m a little embarrassed to say this actually, because it feels kind of basic, but I shouldn’t shut myself down… I like this one practice that starts my solo writing practice. And it’s the humble list. I am a devotee of lists. It could be a shopping list. Or it’s a list of things I think I am, and then you can write a list of things I think I’m not, and those are poems. Right? And so, you know, when I teach poetry, I always start with lists because people think they can’t write poems, but they can because if you can write a list, you can write a poem.
FS: Do you have any other advice for people starting to write?
KCT: I have three things. One is, I think this is a cliche, but it’s the most important one: if you write then you are a writer. You are a writer. So many people have this impostor syndrome. I’m not a writer. My writing is bad. I’ve never finished something. No, if you have put the words on the page, you are a writer. If you have stopped, maybe, you know, start again and immediately write one sentence; write one word and you’re a writer again. Writing, it’s [an] action and as long as you’re doing [it] or you have done it recently, or whatever, then you’re in process, and that makes you a writer.
Writing, I think, for me, anyway, it’s about life. If the writing is stuck, then I would say, make time where you wouldn’t be writing and do something else that supports the writing. Like, you sit down here, like it’s not coming, keep the hour or the thirty minutes or the ten minutes, whatever it was, and read in that time instead, or like watch an inspiring TV show or walk in the garden[…] Feed your soul, you know? And if you go for a whole year of like, just every time you want to write in our blocks, you walk in the garden instead and think about like, what is this writing trying to become? I think that’s worthwhile for a number of personal health and also creative reasons.
And then, lastly, I would say, for people who are wanting to write, read other people’s writings who are writing things that are similar to what you love to write. Find a community.
FS: That’s so important. Even though we write alone, the act of engaging in the material, of reading, is a communal act, so we’re not really in this alone. Is there anything that I missed that you wanted to include or speak about?
KCT: So this book was kind of scary to write. This book is so much about writing letters across conflicts. Essentially, I call across and I think that’s like unpopular right now, maybe it’s simultaneously popular and unpopular. There’s like a strong sense of polarization. It’s a cliche to say [this is a] polarized time, but the polarity I feel about this book is like, “It’s okay to talk to them” and “No, it’s not okay to talk to them.” I think it’s a legitimate concern.
If we write with love to people, or groups that are harming us, is that somehow legitimizing them, legitimizing harm? It’s a question that tortures me. I wrote the book anyways because an important distinction that has emerged for me is that I don’t ever want to legitimize harm, but I do want to legitimize humans, and all humans harm.
Kai Cheng Thom is an award-winning writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. She was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers for her surrealist novel, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir. She is also the author of several other books including a poetry collection, an essay collection, and two children’s picture books. Kai Cheng writes the advice column “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse” for Xtra.
Franz Seachel is a South-Asian settler residing on unceded Coast-Salish lands. She is a writer, organizer, workshop facilitator, and multidisciplinary artist. She believes art makes living bearable and is doing her best to put more colour into the world. She means this both in the sense of brightening up the mundane with creation, as well as in her mission to uplift the truths of marginalized bodies. She is currently working on her first novel, in addition to other multidisciplinary art projects. Franz hopes you dream often; she hopes you find reasons to stay. You can follow her on Instagram, @franz_seachel.