Filling Gaps in the Self
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         For those not familiar: the title of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel refers to Chee’s first novel, Edinburgh, a fictionalized account of his experience of childhood sexual abuse. While the title may appear prescriptive, the title essay is more evasive and experiential, walking readers through the intense emotional process of writing an autobiographical novel rather than the nuts and bolts of putting words to page. Chee speaks more directly about fictionalizing his life experiences in “The Autobiography of My Novel,” where he recounts how he wrote a “fake autobiography” for a fake version of himself (“someone like me but not me, giving him the situations of my life but not the events”). His own experiences proved unspeakable and, in some cases, unknowable. As a result he ended up writing “across gaps, things I wouldn’t let myself remember” about his abuse at the hands of his childhood choir director. He filled those gaps with research, self-help books, and queered myths. Only years later, after the publication of Edinburgh, was Chee able to delve into those gaps in his memory.

         In “The Guardians,” Chee is at his most vulnerable, detailing how a kiss uncovered a memory he’d long repressed: that of a dream he had of a boy he longed to kiss—the very same boy the choir director used to lure him on a camping trip, where Chee and the dream boy were both sexually abused. Chee writes: “I was twelve when I put this memory away … there was in me a dream of fear, so powerful I made a doll of myself to stay in my place, and I ran away. The doll woke up, stretched, looked around, and believed it was me.”

         Here we see how trauma separates Chee from himself, forcing him to bury and repress the most painful memories. This is self-protection by self-rejection, the negating of the self in order to go on, to make life bearable, and to create of himself a new persona, someone who can put on a brave face for the world. But underneath that mask is the truth. When it finally comes to light, Chee expresses grief at the thought of being led astray by his own desires, of being lured into “what was just another trap in what felt like an unending series of traps,” including those set by the bullies who harassed him at school for being Korean- American.

         There is in Chee’s grief a heartbreaking undercurrent of self-blame common among survivors. So it’s not surprising that he would not speak up but instead internalize feelings of worthlessness and futility that he would carry around with him for decades. That Chee is able to write about his experience with such clarity and vulnerability is a testament to the work he has done in the intervening years to solve “the problem of me.”

         Ultimately, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is not about writing as such but instead about how one man used writing to sustain himself through tragedy, to protect himself from trauma, and finally to discover who he was under all those layers of protection. In reading these essays, we follow Chee on his journey of self-discovery, tracing a path from his host family’s compound in Chiapas to the political actions he was part of in San Francisco and on to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the success of his first novel, and the struggle to write his second. It is only when Chee resorts to lists and how-to’s that the collection falters; otherwise, his elegant, intimate writing style carries the day.

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 Ruth Joffre, author of the story collection Night Beast, has appeared inKenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Lightspeed, and other periodicals.