{"id":57974,"date":"2019-04-21T16:56:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T16:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57974"},"modified":"2019-04-21T16:56:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T16:56:12","slug":"discovering-the-illusion-an-interview-with-t-kira-madden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57974","title":{"rendered":"Discovering the Illusion: An Interview with T Kira Madden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aaww.org\/discovering-the-illusion-t-kira-madden\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Discovering the Illusion: An Interview with T Kira Madden<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aaww.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Asian American Writers\u2019 Workshop<\/a><br \/>\n2019-03-18<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pikshuen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Pik-Shuen Fung<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aaww.org\/discovering-the-illusion-t-kira-madden\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/aaww.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/t-kira-e1552676097984.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<small><a href=\"http:\/\/tkiramadden.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">T Kira Madden<\/a>, <em>Photo by Jac Martinez<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cMagic and writing, it\u2019s all misdirection, defamiliarization, and at its best, the ahhhhh moment of surprise.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Nothing is steadfast in the childhood of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57955\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls<\/em><\/a>, only a slow unraveling. An only child born out of an affair between her wealthy white shoe-brand father and her Chinese-Hawaiian model mother, <a href=\"http:\/\/tkiramadden.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[T Kira] Madden<\/a> went back and forth between the chaos of her home, where her parents struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, to the misery of her <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Boca_Raton,_Florida\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Boca Raton<\/a> private school, where she faced ostracism as a queer biracial girl.<\/p>\n<p>Madden writes, \u201cI wanted love the size of a fist. Something I could hold, something hot and knuckled and alive.\u201d To contain, to hold, to be vulnerable\u2014these intense desires both shape and propel her exploration of grief, trauma, pain, and forgiveness. Composed as a kaleidoscope of darkly shimmering fragments, this courageous debut memoir is the documentation of one woman\u2019s attempt to write down and rewrite her own history, so as to make space for more love.<\/p>\n<p>I had the chance to speak with T Kira on a freezing afternoon in January. She welcomed me into her cozy home, where there were glowing candles, a pot of roasted <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Buckwheat_tea\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">buckwheat tea<\/a>, and two energetic poodles who insisted on sitting around for the conversation&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire interview <a href=\"https:\/\/aaww.org\/discovering-the-illusion-t-kira-madden\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMagic and writing, it\u2019s all misdirection, defamiliarization, and at its best, the ahhhhh moment of surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,666,13743,8,20],"tags":[16449,29727,29722],"class_list":["post-57974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-gaylesbian","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-asian-american-writers-workshop","tag-pik-shuen-fung","tag-t-kira-madden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57976,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57974\/revisions\/57976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}