“A Father’s Legacy” is about a lifelong relationship between parent and child. Given that your relationship spans decades, how did you decide what to include and what to leave out?
“A Father’s Legacy” zooms into a particular point in our relationship—an ending, of sorts. Readers are first introduced to my father at this period in his life when so much is at risk—his immigration status, this under-the-table rented room, our relationship. I tried my best, with every reference to the decades of our relationship, to come back to this present, in Italy with my father.
When deciding what to include, it came down to what represented my father (from my perspective) at his most raw core. The aim, in part, was to reach my father at his most human, most flawed state and shine a gentle light on that.
What made you choose legacies – the long-lasting impacts of white supremacy, the father-child relationship, and your father’s idea that you are his living legacy – as the theme of this essay?
I consider the notion of a child as a living legacy a lot in both my nonfiction and fiction. Being a legacy was ingrained in me starting at a very young age by my father. Back then, I met these claims of his with a sense of immense pressure to become worthy of someone’s legacy.
However, as a theme it takes on a greater significance for me. A legacy is something transmitted by an ancestor or predecessor. There’s a notion that having a legacy means you have control over that legacy. That removes all sense of one’s autonomy and reduces them to a carrier.
I consider the possibility that I am, in fact, my father’s legacy, just not in the way he pictured. I feel for him in this regard. Not in the sense that I perceive myself as a disappointment, but in that we all seek control over how we’re remembered and oftentimes that control is a fallacy.
The descriptions of your father are vivid and tender. What details do you feel most important to include?
My personal essays professor at Sarah Lawrence once told me something I’ve never forgotten: to “sympathize with my characters.” The descriptions of my father in this piece come from a place of true sympathy. They are moments in which I felt my father’s humanity, and the vulnerability in that humanness, most acutely. It’s the lens of an accepting embrace.
Early in the essay, your father seems to have accepted aspects of your gender fluidity; later, he’s dismissive of your identity and sexuality. Was it difficult to revisit this on the page?
There’s a sentence towards the end when I tell my father I’m trans over the phone: “I hang up and try to cry, but the tears never come.” Those tears still haven’t come. I’m not sure they ever will. It wasn’t difficult to revisit as much as it was a reminder. If someone only loves you in the form they approve of, is that really love?
Your father once told you, “In life you’re either predator or prey.” Did this perspective influence your decision to take charge and cut ties?
I had never considered this until I read this question. The morning I left my father I felt myself at a crossroads. However, it also wasn’t as simple as to be his prey or my own predator; to stay or to go.
I still experience the consequences of choosing to cut ties. I miss having a father that coached me through heartbreak. I miss the safety of knowing someone will catch me should I fall.
Throughout “My Father’s Legacy,” you struggle with the choice to detach from your father. Did writing this essay affirm your decision or raise more questions?
I wrote this essay over the course of a year beginning shortly after I cut ties with my father. It started out with memos to myself and voice recordings of my father I had taken during my time in Italy with him. Writing this essay got me in touch with my grief and guilt over cutting ties. Those were two emotions I wanted to convey in the work early on.
I’d say this piece did raise a lot of questions. It made me consider the gravity of my decision in its aftermath and allowed me to admit I was hurting, regardless of whether I made the best decision for myself.
Can you tell us a little bit about your creative process?
Whenever I’m writing, I often start with a very particular idea or image of what I want to convey. Later, I start blocking it out into various visualized scenes that build the idea into a fuller, complex narrative. I believe a significant part of being a good writer comes from being a good observer. Sometimes these observations are formulated into scenes that I visualize and later build into a narrative. Other times I make notes to myself on different observations and build a scene out of them.
What other writers or artists do you see your work in conversation with?
This is a question I often ask my readers, primarily because, in truth, I’m not yet certain who I see my work in conversation with. However, I hope that one day it will be in conversation with the writers that inspire me the most such as: Ottessa Moshfegh, Junot Diaz, Charles Bukowski, Mary Gaitskill, and Catherine Lacey.
What do you hope will stay with readers of “My Father’s Legacy”?
Cutting ties from a parent, as a queer person, is never clear cut. Our parents are people we’re told will love us no matter what and stand by us and hold us when we’re hurt. This is what I hope will stay with readers the most. I haven’t read many narratives on the grief of cutting ties with a parent as a queer person. Especially ones that aim to convey that this form of grief is okay to hold, that you are allowed to grieve someone you’ve decided to distance yourself from.
