FICTION | Amina Mobley & Larissa Pham Cake and the Pen, An Interview

INTERVIEW

Cake and the Pen

In workshop, Alice Mattison—who we were both fortunate to work with—once said that coincidences can be too convenient in stories. But coincidentally, we discovered we share the same birthday—December 3rd— and conveniently, we were already good friends. When Alyssa and Marge, who are also birthday twins, suggested doing some kind of interview to mark this phenomenon, we were excited to plumb the creative possibilities of such a striking coincidence. We conducted this interview across sixteen timezones, typing in the same shared Google doc, as befits the international nature of our friendship.

Amina Mobley and Larissa Pham

LP: Can we start with your note about what Alice said? I feel like that’s really beautiful. We should tell everyone about how we first realized that we were birthday twins, which was on a Zoom call if I recall properly—I think you mentioned something about your birthday coming up? And I said, that’s my birthday too!

AM: How funny. I remember it differently. Both are probably true! I remember texting you, probably whining about something, and I said something along the lines of, “I feel lame being sad on my birthday?” I can’t remember exactly, but I think this was when re-realized that we have the same birthday.

LP: I feel like this is evidence that memory is fallible… I remember it one way and you remember it another. But now that you’re saying that, I also remember texting with you! So maybe the Zoom call was when we shared this realization with a third party. What does it mean to you to be sad on your birthday? I feel like I always end up crying on my birthday. I don’t even particularly like celebrating it, but every year I throw a party because I feel like I have to.

AM: I cry every other year and usually the day after. I’m similar in that I used to plan an elaborate event every year, but it got to be overwhelming. I would secretly like someone to throw me a birthday party but also hate that idea at the same time. I don’t particularly like surprises that I am on the receiving end of.

LP: I’m noting this so that I don’t accidentally throw you a birthday party, but then again, it would be my birthday too. Here’s a confession: I feel like we were close before, but after we learned we were birthday twins, I felt so much closer to you! It was like there was some kind of intimacy that I skipped right through (or to) because it was such a marvelous coincidence. It really isn’t that coincidental, because get enough people in a room together and two of them will eventually share a birthday. But it felt meaningful that you were one of my first friends in the program, and we knew so much about each other’s work before we even learned details like whether one of us was married or not.

AM: I love confessions. I agree that, as strange as it sounds, I felt more open with you after finding out. Somehow this all feels

less cheesy when we can’t see each other as we do this interview. It’s funny how we have different memories of the same events. Memories land differently for each person.

LP: I love that I got to see you carefully word that last sentence, because it makes a difference. It’s nice to see your writing process like that. I’m thinking about what birthdays represent right now, and what Alice said about coincidences, and it made me want to ask you if you believe in fate or destiny. A birthday is ultimately just a day, but if you believe in astrology, for example, it can say so much about you and who you are. Do you believe in fate?

AM: My thinking will likely evolve, but I imagine we are born with tendencies. Within that limitation or inclination, we have some autonomy to make things better, or worse, for ourselves. For example, we met in the program thanks to fate, but how did we become friends? It was a little bit of luck, but also care and effort on both parts.

LP: You know, I think every important encounter in my life has been the result of a coincidence, and often from a decision I could have easily not made.

AM: I want to know more about your belief in fate then.

LP: Okay, so I actually have a thought about fate now, which is that I kind of believe in it, but it never seems to come about in linear ways. And that makes me think about, drumroll, plot, because that’s something I struggle with—not just writing with plot (or making stuff happen, I guess) but writing it in a way that it doesn’t feel contrived—that it doesn’t read as though events

are merely falling into place, with no art to it. Like, if writing is like life, or resembles the truth of life somehow, then a story should be simultaneously as unpredictable and as causal as life itself.

AM: I have many follow-up questions but they all lead to different paths. A few things come to mind when you say this. I read an interview with a writer who said he was careful what he puts into his stories because they all end up happening to him down the line. This terrified me. Now whenever I write a character that resembles myself in any way, I am scared to make anything bad happen to her. Something else that comes to mind is that I just came back from Rome, a city that has a suspenseful quality to it. For example, I would be walking in a quiet alley and all of a sudden Trevi Fountain appears. I later found out that this was supposedly deliberate, that the city planners purposefully designed the city to incorporate an element of surprise. In other words, the unpredictable and often suspenseful atmosphere of the city design was intentionally manufactured.

LP: Omg. Are you going to write a story set in Rome? It’s so interesting that you feel that way, because I feel like the characters I write are always me somehow. And usually the things that happen to them are either things that have happened to me, or… equivalent emotionally to things that I’m trying to work through. It’s not that my writing is autobiographical, I guess, just that it often begins from a personal place.

AM: I really want to know how you allow yourself privacy but be true on the page. I guess this might be more related to your non-fiction work. I also sometimes make stuff happen to my

characters that I worry will happen to me. My logic is that if I make it happen on the page, it won’t happen to me in IRL. I do that less often recently though.

LP: I love hearing about this spooky, almost animist/magical relationship to writing. I have trouble making bad things happen to characters based on my family, especially at the beginning of the program, but I had to learn to break away from their real life inspirations in order to write with the freedom the story needed. Characters based on me, on the other hand… it’s fair game. I do think something often happens to young writers, which is that people assume our work is autobiographical. Some of that is because it is, and some is because people are lazy. I’ve found that it’s very helpful to maintain a boundary around creative work—that it’s something an artist makes, that there’s craft to it, that it’s been edited.

AM: That is beautiful. I want to read a story at our graduation about a woman whose ex had a cucumber fetish, but I’m afraid to. I don’t want people to think that person is based on me or my past experiences (because it’s not). I emphasize this whenever I show family members my work. But I also don’t want a disclaimer to be required for my work. That boundary you mention is very liberating.

LP: It’s a boundary we can set and reinforce, but sometimes people will be upset about it anyway. Or sometimes the writing feels emotionally true enough (which is a good thing!) that people think that means it’s true. I’ve resigned myself to beating my little drum, saying that even creative nonfiction is still created…

When you set out to write, what is the impulse that you follow? Is it that you want to find out what happens, or that you want to make something happen? Or is it something entirely different?

AM: I often work out real-world problems that don’t make sense to me, usually related to power dynamics. That’s how I often get started, but what I’ve found propels me to keep going is always thinking about the reader. Is this scene, this exchange, and this accident in service of the reader? When I frame my story that way it makes editing and revising easier.

LP: I feel similarly, actually—that there’s some kind of real world dynamic that is interesting and warrants exploration, even if there’s a supernatural or fantastical element to the story. A lot of my work is about mothers and daughters, or women and desire, or some kind of combination of that. Weirdly, I’m usually not thinking about the reader until I get to revision—but sometimes not even then. Do you have an ideal reader?

AM: Someone in their early thirties, half Japanese and half American, and hyper-sensitive. I read that Min Jin Lee did that she was surprised at how her book about a small group of people, Korean-Japanese, became so popular. I like reading about people widely different from myself, but I would be dishonest if I didn’t say that I don’t like stories that deal with characters with very similar experiences and backgrounds to mine, mostly because I don’t think there is a lot of that, yet. But really, my audience is anyone who will read anything I write who doesn’t share my last name.

LP: I love specificity too. I feel like I’m willing to read anything

as long as it is specific and true. I often think about this line from Aristotle’s Poetics, which I am going to absolutely butcher right now, but it’s basically ‘poetry is the universal, history the particular.’ I know he’s arguing for poetry being the higher form, but I think it’s the particularity of history that can extend a hand across space and time to make us feel seen in a universal sense. Like you, I also have a soft spot for writers (and readers) like myself, because Southeast Asian writers are still not really near mainstream. And there is something acutely beautiful about seeing your experience rendered by someone who is not you! Speaking of audience, writing is such a lonely endeavor. Often we don’t have readers for a long time, and when we find readers we trust, it’s so valuable. What does community mean to you?

AM: I like to think of myself as a social person. I gain energy from being around others. Am I awkward and make weird comments sometimes, yes. But still, for the most part, I like people and being around people. The pandemic made me more physically and mentally isolated than ever in my life. As we inch our way out of isolation, I’m finding it hard to balance my social life and my writing time. How do you do it!?

LP: I literally can’t… I go into what I call my writing cave. I don’t hang out with anyone and I write until it gets done and then I celebrate. But I have to go into the cave because I’ve played too much because it’s so fun being alive in the world with people… I really crave community too. A big reason why I wanted to go to Bennington was that I really longed to be around people who

were working on things in progress, who were open to talking about process and learning. It’s cool to go to readings in the city and I am grateful for that, but it’s so nice to get to be in a more vulnerable, exploratory space of drafting together.

AM: Yes, I agree. Should we stop here? Are you awake?

LP: I am awake! But this feels like a good place to end for now.