Meng Jin, "Our Humans"
It’s December 13. Meng Jin, author of Little Gods, always keeps carbon copies in triplicate.
How would you describe your story?
MENG JIN: “Our Humans” is a speculative story about longing, memory, technology, and what physical distance and physical place feel like when we've displaced much of our living into technology-enabled nonphysical spaces. Also what time feels like.
When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?
MJ: This is one of my oldest stories, and one that has taken the longest from start to finish. I started writing it while I was still in graduate school, in 2014 or 2015. I took it out and put it away many times. I couldn't ever figure it out, but I also couldn't let it go. I kept returning to a mood, a sense of darkness and searching in that darkness. I kept returning to a vision of a Western empire in decline, and people in the East looking at America in pity—a vision that does not seem very speculative today! This story is stylistically very different from my other work, which is more or less realist. But all of my work is interested in memory and time and how it feels to be alive in particular places.
What kind of research went into this story?
MJ: The initial spark was a famous New York Times photograph called "Me and My Human," taken from a bird's eye vantage at an hour when shadows are long. Beyond looking at that photograph, I don't think I researched much. The nice thing about speculative fiction is that you can really dig into the pleasure of making things up.
What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?
MJ: In short stories you can get really obsessive, really particular, really intense. A short story can be one instant, or even less, a direction, a movement, a feeling. It can also hold as much complexity and fullness as a novel. It can open up or circle in, it can explode or wind itself into a knot. I love that a short story can be anything. The flexibility of the form allows as much wildness as control.
Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?
MJ: At the beginning of this year I published a novel called Little Gods. I also have a website and Instagram account where I occasionally post events and updates: www.mengj.in and @mengjinwrites.
What's the best gift you've ever been given?
MJ: I'm not really a gift person, so I'm racking my brain for this question. If we're thinking outside of the gift-box, I can say that the amazing gifts of time, space, and funds that various fellowships and residencies have granted me have been invaluable and deeply treasured. I never could have imagined or sustained a writing life without them. I am truly grateful to everyone out there doing the hard work of supporting artists and art-making.
* * * * *
What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2020 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians.