The Poetics of Architecture, Music, and History: Fiona Sze-Lorrain in Conversation

In this insightful interview, Tony Huang, editor-in-chief of The Hong Kong Review, sits down, metaphorically, with poet and writer Fiona Sze-Lorrain to discuss her latest work, Dear Chrysanthemums. Their conversation delves into the moral challenges of fictionalizing politically charged histories, the nuanced role of music and poetry in storytelling, and how culinary and cultural traditions sustain diasporic identities.

Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories, by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (Scribner, 2023)

Huang: You weave historical figures like Madame Chiang Kai-shek and Marguerite Duras into your fiction. What inspired you to place these real-life icons alongside your fictional characters, and how did their actual histories shape the narrative arcs of women like Chang’er?

Sze-Lorrain: I didn’t have “historical fiction” in mind when I began writing these stories. I was interested in a palimpsest, a “cosmos.” I’ve always been fond of Old Shanghai and Paris in the nineties. The characters in my stories were both fictional and real. The actual histories guided me through the larger questions, but emotions remained the work of character-building.

Huang: Wukang Mansion in Shanghai is described as a “glowering king” or a “shabby tyrant” that looms over the characters. What drew you to this specific architectural landmark as the setting and catalyst for the tragic story of Ling?

Sze-Lorrain: I’m interested in the architecture of Shanghai, particularly the vicinity of Huaihai Middle Road. I’d visited the Wukang Mansion and met people who lived in or nearby the building. Ling is a composite character. It took me some time to weave this backdrop into her story “Death at the Wukang Mansion,” because the Wukang became more of a competing character rather than a site.

Huang: As a zheng harpist yourself, the story of Mei and her composition Combat the Typhoon feels deeply personal. How much of your own relationship with the guzheng and your experiences in the music world inspired the “proletarian art” narrative in the final section?

Sze-Lorrain: I felt more intimate with the material, which helped me generate narratives without worrying too much about authenticity, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t find writing about music difficult. I’ve been playing Combat the Typhoon since 1990; every take is different. Thirty-six years have hardly made me an expert, it’s the contrary. I approach it with a beginner’s mind. No past, no future. Just the present.

Huang: A recurring theme is the burden of secrets, whether it is Ling’s “deviant” passion or other “collective amnesia” regarding serious social upheavals. Why was it important for you to explore the tension between what is remembered in private and what is erased by the force from outside?

Sze-Lorrain: Because I don’t believe in secrets or erasure.

The act of remembering isn’t just an antidote for forgetting. It carries a weight that shifts from honesty to elegy.

Huang: From the specific preparation of “Shanghai sela” for Madame Chiang to the mooncakes shared in a hospital ward, food often serves as a tether to a lost homeland. How do you see culinary traditions functioning as a form of survival for your characters in the diaspora?

Sze-Lorrain: Thank you for asking. Culinary traditions play a big role in the lives of my characters in the diaspora. Food recreates for them smells and memories no longer frozen in the past. It gives them strength to look forward to another day, another life. Literally and figuratively. I’ve grown up with every dish in my stories.

Huang: You chose to structure the book as a series of interconnected stories spanning 1946 to 2016. What narrative advantages did this “novel in stories” format provide for capturing the fragmented nature of memory and trauma across generations?

Sze-Lorrain: A novel in stories contains various points of entry. It allows me to embrace the tension of memory and impermanence instead of resisting it.

Huang: The book includes letters, musical notation, and haiku epigraphs. How do these diverse forms help you convey “the equally hurtful edges of fiction” and the “mishaps of verity”?

Sze-Lorrain: The answer lies in your question: diverse forms.

Huang: In the story of Mei, you describe musical techniques through “tone-painting” and compare harp strings to sushi. How does your background as a poet influence the way you write about sound and visual art within your prose?

Sze-Lorrain: I can’t analyze the relationship between music and painting and my writing, but beyond the formal, I consider every text a source of poetry and music, every poem and song a story. Imagery and music aren’t disparate elements. I believe in beauty, the wabi sabi and rustic. The flow is what keeps a text, an image, a sound alive. It’s something intuitive and embodied. Less intellectual, at least for me.

Huang: Characters often struggle to find words for their trauma, with one character noting that Parkinson’s is a “loose word for denial.” What was the greatest challenge in finding a language for characters who are fundamentally silenced or living in the shadow of “thunder in heaven”?

Sze-Lorrain: This is a great question. How do we define language? Is silence a form of language too? Must we use words to process emotions or experiences? What about time?

Huang: You note that while the book uses historical references, it is a work of imagination where resemblance to real events is coincidental. How did you manage the ethical challenge of fictionalizing events as sensitive and politically charged as the labor camps of the Cultural Revolution?

Sze-Lorrain: I don’t know, but I believe in bravery. Writing can be an act of bravery.

Huang: As an author who writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese, what were the challenges of translating the specific “Shanghainese accent” or the nuance of “rectifying the wind (zhengfeng)” into an English-language narrative?

Sze-Lorrain: I was thinking in Shanghainese when I wrote most of the dialogue for the stories set in Shanghai. But even for the chapter on Madame Mei in Beijing, I didn’t find it possible to imagine her thinking or speaking in another language other than Shanghainese. Madame Mei is a composite heroine too. I recall having translated her thoughts from Shanghainese to English without much editing. It felt spontaneous and liberating. I couldn’t include all of them in the book, though.

Huang: Music in the book is often described as unresolved or “floating nowhere” like a ghost. As a writer, how do you approach crafting a narrative that mirrors this musical lack of resolution, particularly in stories that deal with displacement and loss?

Sze-Lorrain: Non-resolution is a form of conflict. In real life, I don’t find interpreting intentions efficient or dealing with psychology solution-friendly. I prefer to accept the limits of narrative and stick with facts. Narrative becomes something other than narrative when moral clarity is compromised. Back to your question, I’d start with the end.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a writer, poet, musician, translator, and editor. She writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese. She is the author of a novel in stories, Dear Chrysanthemums (Scribner, 2023), five poetry collections, most recently Rain in Plural (Princeton, 2020) and The Ruined Elegance (Princeton, 2016), and twenty books of translation. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Best Translated Book Award among other honors, she was a 2019-20 Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. She lives in Paris and has performed worldwide as a zheng harpist.

Tony Huang, PhD, is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Hong Kong Review. He is also the founder of Metacircle Fellowship, Metacircle (Hong Kong) Culture and Education Co., Ltd. and Metaeducation. He works as a guest-editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. His poems and translations have appeared in Mad Swirl, The Hong Kong Review, The Best Small Fictions Anthology Selections 2020, Tianjin Daily, Binhai Times, SmokeLong Quarterly, Nankai Journal, Large Ocean Poetry Quarterly, Yangcheng Evening News and other places.

Copy editor: Nancy He