{"id":57505,"date":"2019-02-06T01:35:38","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T01:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57505"},"modified":"2019-02-06T01:35:38","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T01:35:38","slug":"nina-li-coomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57505","title":{"rendered":"Nina Li Coomes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nina Li Coomes<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking of Marvels: interviews about chapbooks, novellas, and books of assorted lengths<\/a>
\n2018-03-26<\/p>\n

William Woolfitt<\/strong><\/a>, Editor<\/p>\n

\"nina\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201chow does one carry oneself in the between?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

haircut poems<\/em><\/a> (dancing girl press, 2017)<\/p>\n

Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was born in Nagoya, Japan<\/a> and moved with my family to the United States<\/a> on January 1, 2000. Most of my writing is informed by the \u201cbetween\u201d of existing as both Japanese and American, existing in both of these places, even the literal travel it takes to get from one place to the next. I\u2019m not sure what led me to start writing exactly. Perhaps it\u2019s genetic. My mother has told me before that she wanted to be a writer as a child, and my father told my sister and I what he would call \u201cverbal stories\u201d for much of our time growing up. There\u2019s something about growing up shuttling from one country to another though that impresses upon you just how temporary or fleeting something might be. In many ways, I think my writing comes from a place of urgency, of wanting to note everything in case it fades…<\/p>\n

…Which poem in your chapbook<\/a> has the most meaningful back story to you? What\u2019s the back story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps not a backstory, but the poem \u201cyesterday\u201d draws from a couple snapshots. The preoccupation with red and red lips in particular comes from something I once heard at a Mixed Race Studies Conference<\/a> about how after the war, in US occupied Japan<\/a>, comfort women wore red lipsticks to signal their availability to American GIs<\/a>. As you may know, comfort women<\/a> were employed by the Japanese government in Korea<\/a>, the Philippines<\/a>, and even in Japan<\/a> where certain women were designated a sexual buffer for soldiers, whether they were Japanese soldiers or American ones. I think this is a very shameful, condemnable part of history that needs to be better acknowledged. I also think a lot about how mixed-race children after the war were primarily borne of this violence, and what it means to come from violent histories, and how one might reconcile ore reclaim them…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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